Hello! Been lurking here for a while, jealous of all the great pies people have been sharing. This is my first pizza attempt with a poolish recipe (https://juliansisofo.com/blog/poolishpizza). I used a baking steel, middle rack, 500 degree 1h preheat.
I baked for 8 minutes and I saw the cheese was bubbling so I pulled it, but the crust didn't get dark enough. Should I have left it in? Is the dough recipe I used not realistic without a pizza oven @ 800+ degrees? I welcome all criticsm. Thank you.
by Terruhcutta
5 Comments
You did a great job. Looks great!
00 flour doesn’t work well in home ovens. Move to a high protein bread flour.
I had the exact same thing when I started making pizzas, everyone recommends 00 but it doesn’t brown well in low temps.
This calculator worked amazing for me in my home oven. https://doughguy.co/pages/dough
You can also try par baking it, for like 4 mins with just sauce then add the cheese and bake for another 5-6
You may want to look at recipes designed for home ovens that incorporate sugar and oil (to encourage browning).
If your oven has a broiler, you can use that to add colour as well.
I love that recipe, but it’s really a Neapolitan recipe, which will always do better at much higher temperatures.
Is 500F the most your oven will do?
If you are using 00 flour at 500, you’re gonna have a hard time getting color. You might want to try bread flour or AP. You can try moving the steel to a much higher rack to get radiant heat from the top of the oven. You can try switching the oven to broil partway through. There are a few tricks, but this might not be the best recipe for your setup.
Eight minutes is an *eternity* for that style of pizza.
All that said, that’s a solid first pie!
Adding olive oil to the crust before baking helps with browning also