You Don't Need A Pizza Oven For A Perfectly Cooked Pie With This Hack

Making pizza at home is fun, but it can be a challenge if you don't have specialized equipment such as a pizza oven or a pizza stone. It's nearly impossible to replicate that delicious pizza with a crispy crust and caramelized toppings you enjoy at a restaurant. Your traditional oven doesn't usually get hot enough and therefore, takes too long to cook. The extended baking time usually results in a sad pizza with a hard, unchewable crust and dried-out toppings, wasting both ingredients and effort.

You can combat the above issues with a few extra steps. First, preheat your home oven to the max (400 degrees Fahrenheit or higher) with your steel cookware of choice inside. This can be a baking pan (which is not the same thing as a baking dish) or even an oven tray. The process can take anywhere from over 10 to 20 minutes depending on your oven. Next, dust your pizza and preheated cookware with a generous amount of flour to avoid sticking. This is also a good way to safely test the oven temperature. Use a pizza peel to make transferring the pie easier. And finally, let us spill the beans: The oven rack position matters a great deal. You'll get the best results by starting in the lowest oven position for the crust to crisp up, then finishing under the broiler so the toppings become all nicely caramelized.

If you've been researching ways to bake pizza in a conventional oven, you may have come across this interesting Reddit thread showing quick and easy pizza tips. The original poster has many good ideas, though we would make a few tweaks. For example, the video recommends placing the baking pan upside down, possibly to make it easier to remove after baking. However, this not only limits the pizza size but also the working surface area for yourself. As such, you can simply place the baking pan the normal way up, similar to when you're preparing a Sicilian pizza.

The video also suggests placing the pizza on parchment paper to avoid sticking. The problem is parchment paper is only designed to withstand temperatures no higher than 450 degrees Fahrenheit. As a result, it's safer to dust the cookware with flour instead. Baking a pizza generally takes around 8 minutes as suggested in the clip, but leaving it in the middle position of the oven may not result in the crispiest crust and most melty cheesy toppings.