What is the ideal temperature to bake deep dish pizza, and for how long?
I want to bake a deep pan pizza with toppings of mushrooms, olives and mozzarella and cheddar cheese. I have an electric oven.
What is the ideal temperature to bake deep dish pizza, and for how long?
I want to bake a deep pan pizza with toppings of mushrooms, olives and mozzarella and cheddar cheese. I have an electric oven.
I'll make a Chicago-style deep dish (tomato sauce on top) with a somewhat biscuit-like crust using a 385-400 F oven. Par-bake the crust for 8 min, then 35+ min for the final product. Using a higher heat with this dough dries out the outer crust before the cheese can melt.
I usually cook it at 180C (356F) for 20/25 minutes in an ventilated oven. Works for me (I'm 100% italian), even if for best results I agree with @TFD answer above :-)
For genuine Neapolitan pizza (very thin dough, tomatoes, Buffalo mozzarella, olive oil) you would use a wood (oak) fired brick oven at 485°C (900°F)
It should be fully cooked in in less than 90 seconds
If you add other toppings, and use a thicker dough it will take a little longer
Cooking at lower temperatures gives you a nice "pie" or savoury flan, but not a pizza
To make a pizza pie (not a pizza), with a deep pan, with a thick dough layer, you should still use a very hot oven, use the maximum temperature your oven will go to. Some people even override the self clean system to go even hotter. Expect times around 5 to 8 minutes
If your crust starts burning on the edges, either accept it as part of the pizza style, or spread sauce right to the edges. Pre-baking the dough for a minute may reduce soggyness of finished product
Go for traditional pizza's for a generally much nicier experience. And if you have the room build your own wood fired pizza oven (plenty of kits on plans on the net)
The excellent book Cooking for Geeks recommends 750°F to 900°F. Basically, if you want pizzeria-style pizza, your home oven isn't going to get hot enough.
...unless you use their method for overclocking your oven by abusing the cleaning cycle. Warning: this will void your warranty.
My electric oven only goes up to 250C (~480F), but I'm able to consistenly get good results with the following method.
Despite the obvious conflict of interest, my wife claims that this method gives the dough a flavor and consistency only a minor step below what we get at the best Italian pizzerias in town.