Yes, You Can Make Excellent Pizza Without a Pizza Oven

You’ve got the best pizza dough for your home kitchen oven (Doctor Dough). Now what? It’s time to get familiar with your oven. Not intimate, but like, second date familiar. Remember, we have the word Doctor in our name, so we’re totally qualified to responsibly deal with these sometimes sensitive subjects. Ok, PIZZA! 

In this post, the Doctor will provide you with a prescription for how to get the most out of your home kitchen oven, turning your Doctor Dough pizza dough into a wood-fired, puffy, airy crust. 

Gas Ovens Vs. Electric Ovens Vs. Hybrid Oven Vs. Propane Ovens 

Yes, it sounds like the Oven Battle Royale. You may be thinking you need to find the manual that totally wasn’t tossed in the trash ages ago. The good news is, the differences between the following home kitchen ovens is essentially the source of the heat. For the purpose of making a Doughtastic pizza, they can all work well, once you discover your home oven sweet spot, that is. 

Gas Home Kitchen Ovens (excluding propane):

These ovens are powered by natural gas, piped into your home from the local utility company. Gas home ovens are heated with an actual flame. Depending on the make and model of your home gas oven, sometimes you can see the flame, otherwise it’s hidden. Gas ovens, like all others, come as standalone or as part of a stovetop. Some gas home kitchen ovens have convection which helps circulate the heat for a more even cook. Many gas home ovens, however, do have some type of exhaust fan to help vent any stray gas that has not combusted. Finally, gas home ovens usually have a broiler. That broiler, however, can be powered by gas, usually as an open flame, or by and electric heating element. 

Electric Home Kitchen Ovens

These ovens use electricity to power the heating element, some using 120 volts and others 240 volts. As long as the oven can reach nuclear hot degrees, the voltage shouldn't matter to you.  Even more important, it wont impact your ability to make a Doughtastic pizza.  

Depending on the make and model of your home electric oven, the heating elements may be visible. Electric home kitchen ovens, like all others, come as standalone or as part of a stovetop. Some electric home kitchen ovens have convection, which again, helps circulate the heat. Some newer electric ovens have a built-in, always-on exhaust fan aside from a convection function. This is similar to gas ovens. Most all electric home kitchen ovens have a broiler, which is usually an exposed heating element.  

Hybrid Home Kitchen Ovens

These ovens are powered by both gas and electricity, depending on which functions you are using. The hybrid home oven is almost always paired as a single unit, which includes a stove top (a.k.a. range top, cook top). These ovens are really interesting because they seem to combine the best of both worlds (according to Doctor Dough). The stove top is usually gas, which offers greater versatility. The oven is usually electric, which offers better efficiency. Some hybrid home kitchen ovens have convection. Newer hybrid ovens have a built-in, always-on exhaust fan, aside from a convection function. This is similar to gas ovens. Most all hybrid home kitchen ovens have a broiler, which is usually an exposed heating element.  

Propane Home Kitchen Ovens

Powered by propane gas, these ovens are popular in areas where natural gas is not an option. Instead, an on-site propane storage tank is the only gas option available. These home kitchen ovens are essentially the same as gas home kitchen ovens. The one key difference that the Doctor Dough Institute for Knead Satisfaction has discovered is that propane home ovens do not reach the same temperatures as gas or electric kitchen ovens. The temperature setting on the oven display reads one thing, but the oven interior says something else. We were eventually able to get some great results, but, propane was a ProPain!  

Ultimately, whether your kitchen oven is gas, electric, nuclear or alien, you’re going to read the rest of this post and follow the same guidelines to turn the best pizza dough into the perfect pizza pie. Unless specifically noted (and the Doctor loves a good specific note), we’re probably talking about your home kitchen oven, in case you were wondering. 

Preheating: The Self-Explanatory Section Title That Does Not Need These Extra Words 

In order for the best pizza dough to become the best pizza pie, it needs heat. Hot, hot heat. Nuclear hot heat. This means both temperature AND time. About an hour before you want to make your first pizza, get that oven going. 

1. First, set up your oven racks according to the best position for your home kitchen oven pizza. 

2. Second, insert your pizza stone onto your preferred rack. 

3. Third, please make sure nothing else is inside your oven except the proper oven racks, pizza stone, and optionally, an OVEN SAFE thermometer.  Side note: Do NOT put the oven safe thermometer on top of your pizza stone.  Those things need ambient air, not direct contact with a cooking surface. 

4. Fourth, close your oven door and turn on your oven to its highest heat setting.  This does not mean broil!  For a majority of ovens, that means set it bake and turn it up to it’s highest temperature setting. Whether you use convection or not is up to you, and your home kitchen oven testing. At Doctor Dough World HQ, our home kitchen oven makes the best pizzas with the rack set on the second rung from the top, oven mode set to convection roast, at the maximum of 550° F.  This mode in our home, ahem, World HQ oven, favors the upper heating element (not the broiler), over the bottom element, with convection running the whole time. This is one specific example of many different configurations that a home kitchen oven can accommodate. 

After your oven begins to preheat, you don’t need to touch it for an hour.  If the best pizza dough for your home kitchen oven must be in your tummy sooner than later, you can cut down the preheat time to 45 minutes, but only if you find yourself in this pizza predicament.  

Oven Thermometers: The Home Cook’s Second Opinion  

Ovens are machines. Like any machine, they sometimes degrade over time. Temperatures start to drift away from what you set the dial to, either higher or lower. Due to time and use, the convection fan just doesn’t get that air circulating as well as the younger version of itself once did. One action you take to help correct this eventual decline is use an oven-safe thermometer. This type of thermometer is heat-resistant to a stated value on the package, and is meant to rest inside your oven. This is a great way to check the expected temperature against the actual temperature.

An inexpensive dial type thermometer that hangs from an oven rack costs about $10.00. You can go crazy with a WiFi enabled internet-connected thermometer that will set you back about as much as the oven itself, if that’s your thing. Just get some kind of reliable oven safe thermometer and start there. That alone could help you adjust your temperature to get more accuracy across all your home oven uses.  

Baking Surface: The Thing Your Pizza Booty Touches 

The Doctor is talking about pizza stones, cast iron pizza pans and baking steels. Let’s get this out of the way: NO, you may not use a baking sheet/cookie sheet. "But Doctor Dough, my baking sheet is really sturdy." NO! "Oh Doctor Dough, I know my baking sheet can do the job because my grandma..." NO!  "Doctor Dough, I saw this ad on Instagram for these cookie sheets that double as underground bunkers..." NO, but cool! 

There's a reason Doctor Dough is adamant about not using a cookie sheet as a baking surface. It does not have the ability to hold onto heat from your mighty home kitchen oven. The Doctor could go on and on about thermodynamics, but that's another blog post. The cookie sheet that Grandma Auntie Nona gave you won’t make a good pizza because it just can’t hold onto that much heat.  

There are three main types of pizza stonery that one can use in order to achieve that perfect pizza booty. "What booty is that Doctor Dough," hopefully somebody asked? The leopard spotting, spread evenly across the underside of the pizza. The pizza stone is the single piece of equipment that is key to making great pizza at home, without a pizza oven.  Luckily, they vary in price and effectiveness, so that there is something for every budget. 

Pizza Stone:

This is the one stone that is actual stone. (Doctor Dough usually refers to all cooking surfaces as “pizza stones”.  We’re pizza positive and love them all.) They come in all shapes, sizes, colors and finishes. Pizza stones are as inexpensive as $20, and go up well past $100. If you already have a pizza stone that has been languishing in the dark regions of your home, and it’s at least 12 inches square, you should use that. If not, and you see something online that looks half decent, go for it. Doctor Dough has tested a range of pizza stones from cheap to insanely expensive, and found them all to make a great pizza in your home kitchen oven. Two notes of caution: One, cast iron pieces are heavy. Two: Pizza stones are fragile.  There’s no need to tip toe around it, but definitely don’t drop it. 

Cast Iron:

As a pizza cooking surface, cast iron provides excellent heat retention. They come in all shapes, sizes, colors and finishes. They are as inexpensive as $20 and go up well past $100. The price is largely determined on size and thickness. More iron equals more money. A flat cast iron surface that is at least 12 inches square and about 3/16 inches thick will be a beast of an item. This will also make you a great pizza in your home kitchen oven. Even some of the newer, “light” cast iron pieces will get the job done well. Thicker, in the case of a cast iron pizza pan, is better. 

Two notes of caution: One, cast iron surfaces are heavy. Dropping one of these items can easily crush your foot or destroy your floor. The second word of caution is maintenance. Cast iron needs some love, like any item you use in your home kitchen. It needs to be washed, with soap! It needs to be fully dried, immediately. And depending on the level of seasoning, you may need to deal with that as well. This does not have to happen immediately after pizza night is over. But eventually, it does. The good news is that it sounds way more time intensive than it actually is. After a few good pizza nights of cooking on cast iron, it gets even easier to maintain. 

Pro Tip: We've all been there. You AirBnB your dream house on your dream island and life is dreamy. Since you’re there for a while, you need to make pizza. Pizza night arrives, you look for a pizza stone and NUTHIN! Nada. You panic! You freak! You curse! You remember that 30 seconds ago, you saw a large cast iron pan thoughtfully placed for easy access. You decide to be your own hero and, being the brave individual that you are, you flip that large cast iron pan over, take note of the beautiful flat (mostly) bottom, and decide to go bold. You place that iron pan, upside down, on a rack in the oven.  The angels sing. The lawn gnomes dance (why not) and your vacation has been saved by MacGyvering a cast iron pan, upside down. 

Baking Steel:

This pizza cooking surface is going to produce a fantastic pizza in your home kitchen oven. Baking steels come in different shapes, sizes, thickness, and even steel itself. Baking steels generally have a higher price than the previous two surface options. They begin around $50 and can easily reach $200. Their size and thickness often determine the price. Like cast iron, more metal means more cost. Doctor Dough routinely uses two different brands of baking steels, each 14 inches by 16 inches by ¼ inch thick. Both steels produce the best pizzas in home kitchen ovens.

This one piece of equipment is truly why you can make excellent pizza without a pizza oven. Their heat retention is the best out of all three options listed here. Like cast iron, baking steels need love in the form of maintenance. They do need to be cleaned from time to time. They also need seasoning from time to time. Like cast iron, the more you use a baking steel, the better the surface becomes and the easier it is to maintain. Baking steels are by far the heaviest option of the three. That is a lot of the reason for their superior cooking abilities.   

Rack it Up (or Down) 

At last count, Doctor Dough has identified over 1160 kagillion different configurations for a home kitchen oven to make the best pizza. The placement of the rack within the oven is one of the more critical parts of this whole adventure. Basically, experiment with rack placement based on how your pizza looks post cook.  If the top and bottom of your pizza are not cooking evenly, a move up or down can make a world of difference. 

Doctor Dough World HQ has it’s oven rack on the second rung from the top. The top rung burnt the top while anything past the second rung would undercook the top of the pizza. This exact placement of the rack plus the convection roast setting, plus the baking steel, give the Dough family a perfect pizza every time. 

Oven Broiler  

Here’s another way you can get that wood-fired, puffy, airy crust, look and taste in your home kitchen oven. During the final moments of your pizza-baking, switch on the broiler. You may need to remove your pizza with a pizza peel and hold it up to the broiler. If your rack is already set high enough, your broiler might do the trick all on it’s own. Either way, with a careful eye, the broiler can provide that awesome caramelization and char that a wood-fired oven provides. Again, practice can make this a seamless process, even after a few fails.  Make more pizza! 

Pro Tip: If you have a broiler that gets hot... eventually, that can be problematic to the whole operation. If you also have a kitchen torch, that’s a very efficient way to get fire directly on your finished pizza. Using even strokes, wave your faux Olympic torch back and forth over your pizza that you just pulled from the oven. This is a great party trick, just in case you need one. 

Time 

The length of time that your pizza remains inside your home kitchen oven all depends on your specific setup. Begin with a 5 minute cook time and take it from there. Ovens that reach 550° F should be able to fully cook a perfect pizza in 5 – 7 minutes. An oven that reaches a maximum temperature of 500° F might cook a perfect pizza in 6 – 8 minutes. You’ll need to keep a close eye on those first few pizzas to get a feel for the performance of your setup. 

Finally, But Really First 

After you have started preheating your home kitchen oven, but before you want to make your first pizza, get yourself setup and organized. Have all of your toppings prepared and easily accessible from your pizza making area. Have your flours out and ready to use. Make sure your dough has had enough time to come up to temperature. Your peels should be ready to grab, post-bake landing station should be all set up, and pizza slicer ready to do its job. 

How to Make Pizza in Your Home Kitchen Oven, Step by Step 

Once you have your home kitchen oven setup, it’s time to see how easy it is to make the perfect pizza at home. 

Makin’ It   

• Get Out: Remove the dough from the freezer 4 – 5 hours, or from the refrigerator 2 -3 hours, before it’s time to start making pizza.  

• Get Hot: About an hour before it’s pizza making time, turn on your oven to its hottest setting with the pizza stone inside.  

• Get Ready: Setup your pizza making area with everything ready to go, including your tools and toppings.  

• Get it Done: After your oven has preheated and your area is setup, make your pizza a reality. Shape it, top it and get it ready for launch onto that nuclear hot pizza stone.  

Bakin’ It  

• Take your pizza peel with your raw masterpiece on top over to the oven.  

• Open the door all the way, and gently launch that pie on to the pizza stone.  

• Close the oven door and set a timer (start with 5 minutes if this is your first time). Check both on top and under the pizza to see if it is done. If your oven has a light, use that. Try to avoid opening the oven door as that releases the heat you have tried so hard to build up.

• When the pizza is cooked to perfection, carefully remove it from the oven. Let it cool for a few minutes.  

Tastin’ It  

• After 2 – 5 minutes, slice your pizza and enjoy. (If you can’t wait, it’s DoughK. Your pizza will be very hot so don’t incinerate your mouth.)