If you ask Doctor Dough, which, let’s face it, is probably the reason you’re here, the answer is YES! In fact, the Doctor recommends making pizza in the comfort of your home, for breakfast, lunch or dinner. Homemade pizza is a fantastic way to not only feed yourself and those you may (or may not) love, but also involve those same people in the pizza making process. Doctor Dough has developed what we can proudly call the best pizza dough for your home kitchen oven. That’s right! The home kitchen oven that is currently storing all your sheet pans and funky baking dishes will make you a pizza with a puffy, light and airy crust like it would in a wood fired oven.
The Home Kitchen Oven: The Pizza Making Machine You Never Knew You Had
Yes, you can make pizza without a pizza oven. How? Why? Huh? Let’s take a look at your awesome home oven and the pros and cons of homemade pizza.
The Pros:
Convenience... It’s already there and it’s easily accessible. There is no need to invest in a specialized pizza oven when your home kitchen oven is begging to be used. Without the need for a separate pizza oven, you’re saving more than just the cost of the oven. You’re saving space by not having that extra oven. You’re saving time and effort because you don’t have to move your pizza oven from the garage to the cooking area, and back again when you’re done. Plus, your kitchen oven is located in your kitchen, which is probably where all your delicious pizza toppings are waiting.
Cost Effective... Your home oven is already setup and ready to use in your kitchen. There is no need to invest in a separate pizza oven and all the equipment associated with that. Your home oven already has a fuel/power source. A separate backyard pizza oven will require its own source of fuel, such as wood or propane. Both of those add additional expense to your separate pizza oven. Doctor Dough believes in pizza for all. Making the best pizza at home should be creative and fun. It should not punch a hole in your wallet.
Highly Versatile... As you probably know, a home kitchen oven can cook an endless variety of food. It is one of the most useful tools in any home kitchen. There is really no limit to what you can make in your kitchen oven. While pizza might be one of the most important things to make in your kitchen oven, it is by no means the only thing.
Year Round Pizza... The astute reader may have noticed that their own home kitchen oven is located in their kitchen. That kitchen is always indoors. Being indoors means that Mother Nature, as much as we love her, will never ruin another of your pizza adventures. Rain, sleet, snow? No problem, we’ll be in the kitchen making pizza with the best pizza dough. Excessive heat, heat dome, El Nino, La Nina? Bring it! We’ll be in the kitchen concentrating on our toppings instead of melting.
Doctor Dough Gives Consistent Results... Doctor Dough was designed specifically to work in your home kitchen oven. We tested our dough in a lot of different ovens. We tested gas ovens, electric ovens, new ovens, old ovens, high end super duper kitchen ovens and low end sketchy ovens. That is why we feel confident that our hand crafted, small batch, NY style pizza dough is the best pizza dough for your home kitchen oven.
The Cons:
None. If your oven mostly works and you have a few inexpensive kitchen items, Doctor Dough will be the best prescription for all your pizza kneads.
The Right Temperature for Your Home Kitchen Oven
Riddle me this? **
What is the highest temperature you can set your home kitchen oven? Will the temperature in your electric oven reach 500° F? Do you think the temperature in your gas oven will hit 525° F? Are you able to push your hybrid gas electric oven temperature all the way to an eyebrow searing 550° F?
Most of us have no idea how high the temperature can go in our home kitchen oven. How does one find out? If you have an older style dial, that kind of answers the question on it’s own. If you can’t read the numbers anymore, buy an inexpensive oven thermometer and find out.
For those who have a digital screen, if it operates by up and down arrows, press that up arrow until it says “STOP”. If you have digits that you can punch in, a safe place to begin is 550° F. If you type that in and get an error, reduce your desired temperature by 5° degrees and repeat until something sticks. If you have some kind of franken-oven that goes above 550° F, maybe don’t flex your thermostat beyond that.
No matter if you are using a gas oven or electric oven in your kitchen, the process above is the same. How that oven gets hot, however, will determine the placement of your cooking surface.
** Doctor Dough has never said, and probably never will say, “Riddle me this.” It’s kind of one of those things that I’ll never have the opportunity to use again, so, I threw it out there. It’s also a shameless way to keep your precious eyeballs glued to this article so that I don’t feel like it was written in vain. Goals? Maybe. Issues? Probably. You still here? Ha ha ha.
Iron, Steel, Stone, Oh My!
The one necessary item to make a great pizza in your home kitchen oven is some kind of cooking surface. In order to achieve that wood-fired, puffy, airy crust, Doctor Dough’s pizza dough needs a surface that can provide a lot of heat all at once. One of the qualities of good pizza dough is it’s ability to hold onto the gases that have been created by all those happy little yeasties.**
Doctor Dough pizza dough, with its perfectly balanced extensibility and elasticity, gives you that puffy crust and leopard spotted underside using an iron, steel or stone cooking surface for your home kitchen oven.
** Humanizing yeast by calling them cute names like “yeasties” has some necessary effect on this whole paragraph. If you can’t see that for yourself, then it’s clearly not worth my time to explain the whole thing to you. Moving on...
There are three main types of “pizza stones” for your oven.
The first is actually stone. These cooking surfaces are relatively light weight and come in all shapes and sizes. They are also very brittle. One drop from a not-too-high-off-the-ground distance and they will most likely split in half.
The next type of pizza stone is cast iron. Cast iron is heavy, comes in different shapes and sizes, and will probably last longer on this planet than you.
The third type of pizza stone is a baking steel, which is stainless steel or carbon steel. They are usually a minimum of a quarter inch think and weigh about 25 lbs or more. They are beastly and awesome.
All three of these cooking surfaces will make a great pizza while using Doctor Dough. We knough, because we tested them all, and continue to do so. For heat retention, stone will provide the least heat retention, then cast iron in the middle, and baking steel as the number one for holding onto heat like it’s the golden ticket. Again, all three will make a great pizza.
The key, no matter what pizza stone you have, is to properly preheat your home oven. This means that an hour before you want to make your first pizza, turn on your oven to full blast, with your pizza stone inside and on the proper rack. Do not open the oven to check on it. Not even a teensie weensie bit. Don’t! Allow your pizza stone to absorb as much of that heat energy as it possibly can. That way, any dough to hit the surface will rise to the puffy occasion it was always meant to.
Rack It Up
Depending on your individual home kitchen oven, it will behave in ways that affect your pizza. The temperature in your home oven varies inside the oven cavity. Depending on whether it’s gas or electric, if it heats from the bottom, top, both or the back, if it’s older than dirt, or so new you can barely operate it. That inequity in your oven will affect the placement of the rack in your oven, and also the pizza stone upon it. Some experimentation will be required to find the best rack placement to get that perfect pizza that is cooked evenly on top and bottom.
Other Oven Bits
Convection or other specialized oven settings can all be used in order to get your pizza just right. Some ovens have a “pizza” setting built right in. While this may seem like the only setting you need to know for your perfect pizza, it’s not necessarily the best.
For example, the Doctor Dough Institute for the Advancement of the Best Pizza in Your Home Oven has an oven with the “pizza” setting. This alternates the convection fan off and on, and supposedly does something else that probably isn’t important. I obviously forget and can’t be bothered to check. So suffice it to say, I don’t use it. Instead, I found that using the convection roast setting, along with my rack on the second notch down from the top, gives me a perfect pizza each and every time.
Another method to pizza perfection is using your home oven’s broiler. Preheat your home oven as you usually do. Once you’ve achieved nuclear hot, launch the pizza onto your pizza stone. Immediately turn on your oven’s broiler and char that dough like you were put on this earth to do nothing more. This will not work with every oven. Will it work on your home oven? I have no idea because I don’t know you or your oven. If I did know you and your oven, first, weird. Second, I’d just send you a text or call. I wouldn’t communicate with you via a blog post on the best pizza dough at home. I digress...
Yo Doc! What’s the TL/DR for Great Pizza in My Home Oven?
If you want Doctor Dough Pizza Dough to perform like the best pizza dough that we all know it to be, do this:
Give you dough time to grough! Take it out of the refrigerator or freezer in enough time that it comes close to room temperature.
Set your home kitchen oven to nuclear hot and give it 45 minutes to an hour to preheat. Your pizza stone/cast iron/steel/meteorite should be inside the oven during the preheat.
Handle your dough with some love. Bad day at the office? Take it out on the pepperoni. All that traffic driving you mad? I’m sure a hunk of mozzarella could use your evil eye. But Doctor Dough pizza dough? Be kind. Don’t squeeze out every last bit of air. Don’t load on as many toppings as what came in the warehouse size bag you purchased.
Read our other posts. We’re smart, entertaining and totally worth your time.
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