Pizza - why high temperature?

Question

Hi all,

it is commonly suggested to use as high a temperature as possible when making pizza, sometimes the traditional wood-fired brick ovens of pizzerias, reaching 600 F or more, are mentioned. But how, exactly, does temperature affect the pizza, and why are higher temps better? E.g., why is 3 minutes at 600F different than, say, 15 minutes at 500F, or 25 minutes at 400F (just guessing cooking times here, for illustrations).

And what are the limits, theoretically? Would a few seconds at a couple of thousands degrees work? Or some milliseconds or microseconds at a million degrees?

Answer

Me think (after less than 10 secs. of thinking about it)

The only thing really needing cooking in a pizza is the dough; you want to cook it as fast as possible without over-cooking the other ingredients.

Answer

To get the crispy crust. Lower temp would work but then you get a soft crust. A million degrees and you'd liquefy it. I bake focaccia pizza at 350ish because it's not a thin crispy crusty chewy pizza.

Answer

The longer bread is subjected to heat, the drier it gets. That doesn't stop every corner pizzeria from cooking their pizzas for 10-14 minutes, and all of the leftover crust in the box is the proof that it's not good.

Answer

The best reasons for high heat when cooking pizza are well described here so I will only add that some brick ovens reach well over 1000 degrees at various points and it is not uncommon for some bakers to prepare a pizza in ovens reaching 800 or 900 degrees.

Answer

It's a little bit like popcorn. Popcorn needs extreme heat for the moisture inside the kernel to convert to steam, expanding rapidly and exploding the outer hull. If you cooked popcorn at a low temp, it would dry out and never pop.

With pizza, you don't don't have a hull containing this pressure, but the pressure of the expanding gases is still vital to the volume achieved in the baked product. Without intense heat, the gases don't expand as rapidly and you don't achieve the same volume/oven spring. Longer bakes produce denser crumbs. Dense crumbs are perfectly fine for bagels, but, for pizza, you want puff.

As you get into more advanced home pizzamaking, you learn that temperature is relative. It becomes less about high temps and more about high heat transfer and increased thermal mass. Certain materials conduct heat faster, so a thin $15 Walmart ceramic stone may give you a mediocre 12 minute bake @ 550, while a 1/2" thick piece of steel will give you phenomenal puffy pizza in 3 minutes. When you're aware of the properties of different materials, you can use them to your advantage and produce wood fired results in cooler home ovens- without pushing the home ovens to extreme temps or baking your pizza using a cleaning cycle- as some fanatics are known to do.

The limits are raw dough. As you increase the heat/heat transfer, you'll hit a point where the outside of the crust is cooked but the inside is still raw. In fast baked, less than 90 second Neapolitan pizza, this is called a gum line, and, while you can find some Italians that tolerate a little rawness, it is generally considered a massive defect. 45 seconds is the cut off point. Any lower than that and you risk the dreaded gum line.

Answer

crisp on the outside, tender on the inside perfect crust. 600 is still fairly low though. Traditional wood fired ovens are much higher. I cook mine between 800-1000 and the 800 is when I'm feeling lazy about getting a higher temp. Yes the temp can be too high, because you aren't just cooking the crust but also presumably melting cheese and cooking toppings. Temp is relative to time and the thickness of the crust and amount of toppings. At least that is my experience cooking them on my Big Green Egg.

Answer

High temperatures for pizzas generally imply that you have a thinner crust pizza.
The high temps crisps the bottom of the crust, the inner layer to cook and the cheese to melt.
I define thin crust as crust around 1/4 thick.

For thicker crust pizzas (bready pizza around 1/2" thick crust, you would use a slightly lower temp to cook longer. This allows the inner parts of the dough to cook and not be soggy/raw doughy., but not burn the outside of the pizza.

Answer

my last experiment- crank oven to full temp, while i heat my largest cast iron fry pan on the stove top. flip pan over, slide pizza onto pan bottom and place in oven asap. im going to try parchment paper next time- thats a good idea.

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Pizza - why high temperature?

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