First time baking on a pizza stone in a home oven. Preheated at 270°C (highest my oven will go) for an hour and baked it for 7-8 minutes. The cheese started to split but my crust didn't brown at all and it was too floppy, almost not cooked.
I made a 62% hydration dough, hand kneaded for about 10 minutes, bulk ferment at room temp for an hour, ball it, left the balls at room temp for another hour and then 12hrs in the fridge.
Any advice is appreciated. Thank you
by damn_son12
10 Comments
It’s your oven, you don’t have enough top heat. This will cause the cheese to dry out before the crust even browns.
What did the bottom look like? It’s possible you don’t have enough bottom heat either, but that’s an easy fix. Either lower the stone or get a steal instead of a stone. Lack of top heat is much bigger problem. I have the same issue in my oven and I haven’t really found a good solution. What I normally do is just pull the pizza out and finish the crust with a blow torch.
Dough looks too thick.
What weight doughball? For that low a temperatures I’d look at tonda romana, so a 180g doughball for a 30cm pizza. Use the grill/broiler too to get extra heat in the stone and to finish.
A lot of experimenting tends to be needed to get a decent pizza in a home oven, but it can be done. Alternatively there’s a lot of pan pizzas that are great in a home oven, look into them maybe
Less dough/thinner when stretched. And maybe broil the last 15-30 seconds(if the bottom is cooked as is.)
I’d say stretch your dough more! Because my oven can only go to 500°F max, I put my oven on broil after the 7 minutes baking to crisp up the top
mmmmmmmm
Very nice. Great rise on the edges.
It looks delicious. Rub a little olive oil on the exposed crust for more attractive browning. Do you think you could bake it another 1-2 minutes next time and see? If you like the crust thickness you could experiment with baking it a few minutes prior to topping it.
I have a pizza screen and I think it helps the dough get crispier in a home oven, might be good if you’re can’t get high enough. I use that instead of a pizza stone and it’s been working great. They’re cheap, it was like $6 for a 12”.
12 hours in the fridge is kind of weird. Usually the point of cold ferment is to let it sit for 1-3+ days in the fridge for a more easily controlled fermentation period.
Anything less than a day you’re better off tuning a recipe for room temp fermentation. You might have underproofed dough on top of some less than ideal baking.
Try the highest rack position in the oven