dcarch is right. The only way you get the temps hot enough in a home oven is to break the lock and turn on auto-clean. Most ovens with an auto-clean feature don't let you open the oven door while that's on because it's very hot and you can be injured. But that's the temp you want. Otherwise you can only go up to 500 degrees F. Why does that matter? Because the proteins in the cheese and in the flour will react differently at 900F for 3 minutes than at 500F for seven minutes. And less water evaporates because you're baking for less time. So your goal is to mimic the hotter temps in a commercial oven. How do you do that? By adjusting the flour, hydration, and time you bake. Putting the pizza on a hot surface instantly dries out the crust and crisps it, while the interior is baking at a more leisurely pace. Cast iron or steel is as good or better for a home oven. The reason some places advertise their coal-fired ovens is that those ovens get hotter than natural gas ovens do. So your crust can crisp and cook before it dries out. In your case, if you have a stone and don't pre-heat it, you may as well not bother with it at all. Brushing with olive oil isn't going to matter. 450 is very cool for pizza. Crank up the heat, make sure the stone is as hot as it can be, and then put the pizza on with a peel. Don't do it slowly. If you have a convection oven, turn on the fan. I've found that the fan makes a huge dif in my oven. I can get the pizza done in like 3 minutes, and the crusts are better than ever. Fresh mozzarella will also break at lower, longer temps, so you end up with a runny pizza. We never use mozzarella and rarely have any kind of tomato sauce - I'm not trying to make someone else's version of what a pizza should be. So we use whatever cheese we have around and if we have tomatoes or sauce, that's nice but not critical. The key is the crust.

Wow, Nancy! You really went all out, homemade bread and everything! Looks fantastic! I like your idea of using the bacon press for a weight. I am making mufulettas for Sunday, as I know many are. I have to drive to a markt 45 minutes away today to get mortadella, tho! Ah well, it will be worth it. Cathy, I do the same as you with the bread. I don't think there is a wrong or right, just personal preference. Linda

I'm sure you can find one, but if you have trouble or just want to look and have something to compare, Thermoworks does ship to Canada. They also often have a few things on sale or some giveaway. They just launched a new alarm, so that may be it for now, but I would expect that the coming month and up to our Thanksgiving will have a number of sales or specials if you are willing to take a chance on waiting. I told DH I was going to probably use this method for the dough from now on -- unless we don't plan ahead, I suppose. My greatest frustration with pizza dough in the past was not being able to predict the rise. Nothing like being really hungry and waiting for that danged dough to rise. Rrrrr Was bad enough the other day for just the two of us while we were busy watching a football game. When the boys are home? You can imagine. Double Rrrrr -- by the time the pizza was ready, they'd filled up on snacks. Having dinner time ay your control is always better, whatever the reason. I'm very happy to know I could adapt your method to my sourdough recipe. I hope to play with some bread loaves soon. In the larger oven though.

Looks like I forgot to post my pizza dough recipe. This recipe is specifically for an Ooni pizza oven, which will get to 950°F. The dough is 67% hydration (I think), which is quite wet, but this is necessary for this type of pizza. I mix the dough in a plastic mixing bowl, and so it does not stick, but it might stick to a glass bowl. To get the precise hydration, ingredients should be weighed. Ooni Neapolitan Pizza two 11-12 inch diameter pizzas 240 ml warm water (67% hydration) 3-1/2 grams IDY (Instant dry yeast) 7 grams VWG (Vital Wheat Gluten, or dough enhancer, or flour) 3-1/2 grams olive oil (can omit if baking at over 800°) 350 grams bread flour (can use AP or 00) 6-1/2 grams salt Semolina flour, for peel Toppings: Olive oil Marinara sauce (should be thick, not watery, and applied very sparingly) Mozzarella (1/4 pound for two 12” pizzas) Fresh basil leaves (Note: Neapolitan pizza does not have to have oil in it and must not have sugar.) In a medium bowl, dissolve yeast into water and add VWG, stirring to combine. Substitute flour if you do not have VWG. Add 2/3 of the flour to the yeast mixture and stir. Add the rest of the flour plus the salt and continue stirring, or mix with your hand. Remove dough from the bowl and knead on a board or counter top with no flour, as you will want to keep the hydration high. Dough will be sticky – use a dough scraper. Form into a ball. Put dough in an ungreased bowl, cover, and allow to rest for 30 minutes for flour to hydrate. Knead dough again and allow to rise for 1-1/2 to 2 hours, or until doubled in size. Divide the dough in half and form into balls (keep one ball covered). Stretch/press one ball into an 11” to 12” circle with hands and fingers – do not use rolling pin. Edges will remain thicker than the center. Flour the board to do this, but keep the flour on the bottom of the crust – do not turn the dough over – top should remain sticky. Crust should slide easily on the working surface that has been floured. Dust peel with semolina flour and place dough on peel with no edges lapping over. Add toppings, minimally, so that pizza will not be too heavy and therefore unwieldy. Make sure that the crust slides easily – if not, add more semolina to the peel. Preheat Ooni oven on high for 30 minutes, to heat the stone. Check temperature of stone with an infrared thermometer – it should be at least 750° - 825° in the center, and above 900° at the back. Turn heat down to medium, and insert pizza. Turn at 15 seconds using a pizza turner and then continue to rotate with pizza spinners every 10 seconds. Check bottom of pizza with turner or peel for doneness after one minute. It might take as much as two minutes to finish cooking. Remove first pizza and serve. In the meantime, check the heat on the stone and raise the heat in the oven to reheat the stone (if necessary) and prepare the second pizza. The second pizza can stay on the peel or on a board while you are eating the first one. Note: We bought a wooden peel for launching the pizza onto the stone, and this works much better than the metal peel, We use the metal peel to remove the pizza. It is necessary, I think, to have both types of peels, and spinners are also necessary, although you can get away with not having a special turner, although it helps. I got the pizza off this time, but this does not always happen so easily with the metal peel.