Here's a method for baking a great pizza in
a normal home oven without the use of a pizza
stone or pizza steel. You normally need a
big, heavy slab of thermally conductive material
to brown the bottom of your pizza. Without
a stone, it just ends up tasting like bread
with stuff on top.
But with the method I'm gonna show you, we
shall achieve a brown, crispy bottom by simply
cooking the pizza up on the oven grate itself.
This takes some practice, and the result tastes
a little different from a traditional pie,
but it is very tasty and it is very quick.
No need to pre-heat the oven on max for an
hour to get your stone or steel hot enough.
You just turn on your broiler, all the way
hot. Brits call this a grill. It's the filament
at the top of your oven. Make sure that your
oven grate is reasonably clean and is positioned
up high — second from the top position is
what works for me.
Broilers heat up in a matter of seconds, but
you do need to give this a few minutes to
heat up the grate itself. A good way to test
is just to put a wet towel on the grate. If
it sizzles, it's hot enough. And it'll probably
come up to temperature in the time it takes
to get your dough prepped.
I'm using my usual pizza dough recipe, which
is in the description. I mix up my dough,
portion it into balls, and then put them straight
in the refrigerator for a cold rise — at
least day and up to a week in there.
I'm working with my dough straight out of
the refrigerator. It really helps if the dough
is as cold as possible when it goes in the
oven. A little flour on both sides, and rather
stretch this by hand, I am going to use a
rolling pin. This baking method works much
better if the dough is rolled to an even thickness
throughout. If you don't have a rolling pin,
a wine bottle works great.
I'm rolling and turning, rolling and turning,
just like I would if I was rolling out pastry.
It ensures the dough won't stick to the board
and it helps you push it out evenly in all
directions, though I am shooting for an oblong
rather than a circle.
A rectangular shape will be much easier to
get into the oven and under the broiler — you'll
see. Roll it out until it's not quite as thin
as you want it, because it'll stretch a little
more on the way in. Now, I'm just gonna coat
it in a very thin film of olive oil, and I'm
working quickly before this dough warms up
too much. While it's cold, it's stiff, and
while it's stiff, it's easier to drape onto
the oven grate.
I'll pull the grate out as far as it goes,
and here comes the hardest part — draping
the dough onto the grate oil-side-down. That's
important. Oil side down.
If you have big areas around the edge that
are falling really far down, try to pick them
up and stretch them until you can hang them
over the nearest grate. Remember the grates
are hot.
Evenness is the name of the game, here. We
want every inch of dough as equal a distance
as possible from the broiler. And I do find
I get more even cooking if I slide this in
and then close the oven door. Some people
like to leave the door open when broiling.
I get more even results with this if I close
it.
Then watch it like a hawk. This first part
only takes me about three minutes. I'm looking
for the dough to start to burn. Yes, I'm waiting
for a little burning. A few little burned
spots are standard on a traditional pizza
crust. It's called leopard spotting.
OK, now, freeze-frame. You can see that my
broiler is hotter toward the back of the oven.
The far side is browner than the near side.
If yours is really uneven, you could try rotating
the dough, but it has to cook to a certain
point before it'll release from the grates
intact, so I'm simply going to rotate as I
flip. Over and around. Since we oiled the
downward facing side and we pre-heated the
oven grate a little bit, that releases very
easily. I'm just using my fingers but you
could use tongs.
Now I'm just gonna dress the pizza right here.
It tastes better if it cooks quickly, and
taking this out to the countertop to dress
it would really slow us down. My sauce, by
the way, is just Pastene Kitchen Ready ground
tomatoes. When I have to settle for another
crushed tomato product I usually need to put
in tomato paste to get the flavor as strong
as I want it. Some olive oil, a little sugar,
and some dried herbs — oregano, maybe some
basil, that's it.
Remember, it's a super-thin pizza, so be careful
you don't put on too much sauce. I usually
need to put on a little less than is my instinct.
A little finely grated parmesan on top of
the sauce really improves the flavor. And
then my grated mozzarella. I'm using Boar's
Head whole milk, low moisture mozzarella.
Freshly grated. The pre-grated stuff has anti-caking
agents that interfere with browning.
This is a style of pizza where you absolutely
could use fresh mozzarella if you wanted — the
high-moisture stuff that they use on Neapolitan
pizza. Just don't put on quite as much or
the pizza will be soggy. OK, back under the
broiler this goes, and again, I get a more
even result if I close the door.
Watch it like a hawk. Two minutes later, the
back row of bubbles looks like it's gonna
burn, because my broiler is apparently a lot
hotter back there. I'm gonna rotate the pizza,
which is easy to do now that the crust has
solidified.
Back in, and then just cook it until the cheese
is as brown as you'd like. I gave it maybe
another minute, and out it comes, straight
to a cooling rack to the keep the crust crispy,
but you could pull it out onto anything.
Total cook time there was like seven minutes.
And since the sauce and cheese were only on
there for half that time, you'll notice some
differences compared to a normal pizza. This
sauce has a brighter color and flavor, and
the cheese has hardly broken at all. With
a conventionally-baked pizza, the cheese is
in there long enough to overheat and squeeze
out a bunch of orange grease. There's hardly
any grease here, which is great, in my opinion.
After it's cooled and steamed off for a few
minutes, I'll transfer it to a cutting board
and chop through it. Really crispy crust there.
And of course, we know exactly how brown the
bottom is. Amazing. And the taste?
Amazingly close to a New York-style pizza,
though it is a little different. The because
the top-side crust got some dry heat in the
oven, it has not bonded with the sauce and
cheese quite as much. The layers are a bit
more distinct in the mouth, and the bottom
crust is kinda smooth on the tongue. None
of this is bad, mind you. It's just a little
different.
Another terrific thing about this method is
that we could immediately turn around and
start baking another pizza right after the
first one comes out. The grates don't need
a lot of time to recharge with heat the way
a pizza stone does.
Now, you are no doubt wondering: Why didn't
you just bake it on a cookie sheet? Why not
on the cooling rack? Why didn't you hand-stretch
the dough? Why does it have to be even thickness?
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Now, let's get back to your questions.
Why does the dough have to be rolled out to
even thickness? Why can't you just hand-stretch
it? Well, let's try that. A little flour on
the board, I'll punch it out a little, then
you could toss it in the air or just do a
gravity stretch like this. One virtue of this
kind of stretching is that it gets you uneven
thickness — gossamer-thin dough toward the
center, and a nice fluffy cornice around the
edge. That's normally a good thing. Heterogeneity!
Drape that on the hot grates, everything is
looking good so far, but then notice how much
further along those gossamer-thin areas are.
They're burning, and the thicker areas are
still white. That is not gonna cut it. This
baking method works a lot better if you roll
the dough out to uniform thickness to avoid
a disaster like that.
Here's another good question: Why bother laying
the dough perilously across the oven grates
in the first place? Why not just do it on
a baking sheet? Well, you could. Get your
dough rolled out, rub on a thin film of oil,
and then place it oil-side-down on a baking
sheet. The oil is essential. Without it, the
dough would stick.
Under the hot broiler it goes, and check this
out. It cooks so much slower. It was eight
minutes before I got that much color on the
first side, and that's not even great color.
Since it's been in there for so long, it is
now dry and hard.
We'll top it, put back under the broiler.
This is certainly a lot easier. Cheese takes
the normal three-or-so minutes to brown, though
jeez, I should have rotated that. You don't
realize how uneven your broiler is until you
try to do something like this.
Let it cool, slice it up — and honestly,
that's not bad. If I was hungry, I'd eat that
happily, but it tastes like one of those pizzas
you make with a pre-baked crust from the grocery
store, because that's essentially what it
is. The crust is way over-baked. It's almost
like pizza toppings on a hot cracker.
It's good food, but bad pizza, in my opinion.
When we bake right on the hot oven grates,
we're literally grilling the pizza, just like
we would on a charcoal grill outside. It's
getting radiant heat from above and a little
radiation or convection from below, plus it's
getting conductive heat from the hot grate.
That means it cooks quicker, and loses less
moisture before turning brown.
And unlike a pizza we grill outside, this
pizza we're able to hit with very intense
heat from above to get great color on the
cheese, which is always the problem with grilled
pizza — you never get enough color on the
cheese.
Now, you would logically wonder: Can't we
get the best of both worlds by baking this
on the cooling rack? Again, we're not perilously
draping dough over hot, wide-set grates. Oiled
side goes right down on the rack, and you
can easily slide that rack right onto the
grate. Or, kinda easily.
Now the dough is getting heat on both sides,
which is good, but it's still not actually
touching the hot grates, which means it still
cooks kinda slowly. It took almost five minutes
to get this much color, and that's not that
much color. As I flip it, I can feel that
it's going kinda hard and crackery again.
Top if off, normal three minutes under the
broiler again, and that doesn't look bad.
Let it cool a bit, transfer it to a cutting
board, slice her up, and that's definitely
better than the pizza we baked on the cookie
sheet, but it's not as good as the one we
did on the oven grates. The crust, again,
is just too much like a cracker. It has not
merged hardly at all with the toppings.
Now you might be wondering, couldn't you fix
this problem by pre-heating the cooling rack
under the broiler? Yes, I think that would
work. The problem is that cooling racks, ironically,
are often not designed to get very hot. They
have coatings on them that can break down
and melt. The manufacturer should tell you
what maximum heat your rack is designed to
tolerate. I think this one is like 500 F or
260 C, and surfaces will get considerably
hotter than that when they're right under
a broiler at full strength.
Even if you got a cooling rack that could
take the heat, I suspect it still wouldn't
work quite as well, because the metal will
be thinner, which means it'll retain and then
transfer less heat than you'll get from these
thicker oven grates.
Anyway, I'm sure there's lots of different
ways to make this basic method work. Experiment
with your own tools, and let me know what
works for you. Just remember that every oven
is different. I learned from doing this that
my new oven here has a broiler hot-spot on
the back and to the right. Your oven will
have its own eccentricities.
I recommend making a batch of four or eight
dough balls and just practicing this in your
oven a few times, over and over and over again,
before you actually try to make dinner for
hungry people. But once you get the hang of
it in your oven, I think this a pretty easy
and energy-efficient method that gets great
results and requires no special equipment.
You can't beat that.
