Pizza Oven Temperatures – Is It Time To Turn Up The Heat?
Italian style pizzas – be it Roman or Neapolitan – offer crispy crusts, perfectly baked toppings, and mouth-watering melted cheese. The production of these pizzas all have one thing in common: they’re made in high-temperature brick ovens.
This is why it can feel difficult to recreate restaurant-grade pizzas from home. While a standard home oven can reach high temperatures, it’s incapable of reaching heats offered by wood-fired brick ovens. So, what options do you have? What’s the ideal oven temp for pizza?
In this guide, I’m going to explain why pizza oven temperatures are so important, followed by tips
and tricks to cook amazing pizzas, without the need of a brick oven!
The Importance of Pizza Oven Temperature
When you cook pizza at a low temperature, you’re looking at longer cooking times, resulting in a denser crust. When you cook them at a high temperature, it will take less time, and the final product will be lighter and fluffier.
So, how exactly does a pizza oven work? The increase in temperature allows the gas within dough to expand quickly, resulting in a fluffier and tastier overall product. It also provides ready to eat pizza in a matter of minutes. It’s a win-win!
Learning how to control the oven temp for pizzas means you’ll be able to decide the crispiness of your meals. If you want to recreate that amazing pizza you had at a pizzeria last Friday night, you need to cook your pizza using high temperatures.
Can I Achieve Restaurant Grade Pizza Using My Home Oven?
The short answer is yes. However, it will require some work since a conventional pizza baking temp isn’t ideal.
Cooking temperatures on a conventional oven can reach temperatures as high as 260℃. Commercial brick ovens can reach a pizza oven temperature as high as 425℃. When it comes down to baking pizzas, the difference in temperatures makes all the difference.
What If I Don’t Have Access To A Wood Fired Pizza Oven?
Like I mentioned earlier, you want to adjust the temperatures depending on the crispiness of the pizza that you want. I know that higher temperatures are more favourable for cooking delicious pizzas. However, not everyone has access to a wood-fired brick pizza.
When this happens to be the case, I love using a pizza stone. This is among my favourite tools to recreate restaurant grade pizza in my home oven.
What is A Pizza Stone?
Pizza stones are tools made from clay or ceramic. They are shaped like a pizza, and their size varies (depending on the size of pizza you want to make).
This tool goes directly into an oven or a grill and is an effective way to amplify heat transfer to pizza. This transfer of heat is similar to the effect of cooking a pizza in hotter temperatures offered by pizza ovens.
Using one is easy. Simply follow these 5 steps:
- Place the stone in your cold oven and preheat it to 260℃. Your stone will need to heat up at the same time as your oven. Placing a cold stone in a hot oven will cause it to crack.
- Slide your pizza onto the stone. This will apply direct heat to your pizza. While the stone won’t add heat to your oven, hence making it hotter, it will help to stimulate the cooking environment found within a wood-fired brick oven.
- Bake until the cheese is lightly brown and the crust is crispy.
- Remove your pizza from the stone and turn off the oven.
- Wait for the stone to cool completely before cleaning. NEVER wash the stone. Instead, wipe it down.
Benefits of Wood Fired Pizza Ovens
After a while, you might find you want to take your pizza baking to the next level. Wood fired ovens are as close as you’re going to get to the real thing. If you eat out at pizzerias often or eat these tasty pizzas often, why not invest in a professional oven?
Consider the following benefits:
- – Versatility. With these appliances, you’ll be able to cook much more than a pizza. These ovens are suitable for bread, meats, veggies, and more!
- – Easy to Use. Even if you don’t consider yourself a very skilled cook, a wood-fired oven is designed for any skill level.
- – Fast Cooking Times. With the high heats that these appliances offer, you’ll have ready to eat pizzas in a matter of minutes.
- – Amazing Food Flavour. Nothing compares to the smokey taste offered by a wood-fired oven. This flavour is impossible to replicate with a traditional home oven.
- – High Temperatures. And then, of course, these appliances offer a high pizza oven temperature – which is what this guide is all about.
If you’re sold on purchasing this useful appliance, be sure to check out my top wood fired pizza oven picks! You won’t be disappointed.
Final Thoughts
Everyone wants great tasting pizza; however, it’s not so easily achieved when you don’t have the right materials. I hope that after reading this guide, you understand what temp to cook pizza in. If you understand the importance of high heats and stones, you’ll be cooking up crispy crust pizzas in no time!
