I use a standard oven with a pair of pizza stones, and find it replicates the industrial kitchen equipment with a few hacks.
I used to work in a number of different pizza restaurants, and have since found a number of tricks to getting better crusts at home in a standard oven.
First off, I worked with 3 different styles of industrial ovens:
- Standard stone + gas - The oven base and walls are stone, and the oven is fired with natural gas. Temperatures (if I recall) were ~600F, and these oven fit 10-12 pans at a time. Cooking time was in the range of 15-20 minutes, depending on the thickness of the pizza toppings.
- Forced air, stone + gas - This is a similar style of oven, but with fans forcing airflow. These ovens roughly halved cooking times, and produced a different style of browning on the top surfaces.
- Conveyor + gas - These ovens have a conveyor that moves slowly over flames. I've seen units that can bake a thin pizza in 5-7 minutes.
In all of the industrial units, temperature and oil was the key to getting perfect crusts.
I've been able to reproduce the basic effect with a home oven. Note that this isn't the New-York style wood oven crust (bordering on burnt), rather it's the medium-thickness crust with a good crunch to it.
My method is simple:
- Preheat the oven to its highest temperature, including a pizza stone on both racks if can
- Start with a sticky dough, but make sure that the bottom side of it is well oiled before placing it on the stone
- Keep the dough thin, and prebake it for 3-4 minutes on each side (the goal is to get the crust started before adding toppings)
- After prebaking, drop the oven temperature to ~400F, add toppings, and bake for an additional 10-15 minutes
- Before removing, turn on the broiler for 3-4 minutes. Do not walk away (it inevitably burns the moment you step away)
The key is the oiled/prebaked crust, and preheated oven. The end broil helps brown the cheese (and adding some dry cheese to the top improves this).