Cant seem to get that fat brown crust

[FeCheF]

Ok so ive decided to scratch the weber kettle idea because our lease says no propane or charcoal grills. But since the oven has a clean cycle and there is somewhat easy access to the door latch trigger i can just stick a shim into it. But does anyone know if its safe to leave the shim in the trigger all the time? I mean i would think its normally safe to latch the door during normal cooking aswell. And that would be basicly the same thing. Let me know your thoughts on this. Im picking up a thermometer today to see what temps the oven reaches on clean cycle mode.

Nevermind leaving the shim in. Normal bake/broil mode doesnt work when door is latched.

[denrayr]

Ok so ive decided to scratch the weber kettle idea because our lease says no propane or charcoal grills. But since the oven has a clean cycle and there is somewhat easy access to the door latch trigger i can just stick a shim into it. But does anyone know if its safe to leave the shim in the trigger all the time? I mean i would think its normally safe to latch the door during normal cooking aswell. And that would be basicly the same thing. Let me know your thoughts on this. Im picking up a thermometer today to see what temps the oven reaches on clean cycle mode.

Nevermind leaving the shim in. Normal bake/broil mode doesnt work when door is latched.

Bypassing the self clean latch is more involved than what you are describing. There is a door light switch and switches built into the latch itself that need to be triggered. Modding the oven will give you more precise control with a lot more safety. Here is a thread on how to do so http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,8730.0.html

[c0mpl3x]

here's something i've experimented with.

i'm assuming your oven has two elements, top and bottom.

the trick? next time you preheat your oven, preheat it to 350-400 one day.   time it on a stopwatch.  note the time
repeat this, at max temp.  note the time.    if you feel your timing is off, repeat the experiment a few times, noting the min and max times for preheat at X temperature, against your kitchen temp.    the time between your max bake temp preheat off, and 350-400 preheat off, is when you will put the pizza in the oven.   both burners will be on for that X amount of time, adding an additional temperature boost.   it can shave anywhere from 2-7 minutes off of your baketime, due to the constant element heat.

let's say the following

375 preheat: 7 minutes
500, 550 preheat (assumed max temp range) 12 minutes

this gives you an extra 'full bore' time of 5 minutes at full-on element heat.

[FeCheF]

Bypassing the self clean latch is more involved than what you are describing. There is a door light switch and switches built into the latch itself that need to be triggered. Modding the oven will give you more precise control with a lot more safety. Here is a thread on how to do so http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,8730.0.html

Actually, no its not. All i had to do was lift the hood, and shim a piece of plastic the thickness of a credit card in between the metal bracket and the trigger.Problem solved. Then I just have remove the piece of plastic for normal use.

Although I am a bit surprised normal baking and broiling cant be used when locking the door. I would think that would be good so children cant just open the oven while its on.

[FeCheF]

So getting back to Tom's suggestion of getting a oven thermometer, well i went to pick one up this weekend and every single one only went up to 550F, so i guess im going to wait till next week and get a IR thermometer from harbor freight.

[c0mpl3x]

So getting back to Tom's suggestion of getting a oven thermometer, well i went to pick one up this weekend and every single one only went up to 550F, so i guess im going to wait till next week and get a IR thermometer from harbor freight.

you can get high temp grill thermometers (LBE or BGE) i believe.  there is a recent post about one on here

[FeCheF]

So tonight I tried cooking a pizza with my ovens clean cycle trigger bypassed. I started by preheating my oven to 500F for one hour. I then bypassed the trigger and left it in clean cycle mode for 15 minutes. I then placed the pizza in for 3 minutes and took it out and turned the oven off. Here were the results.

[chickenparm]

Thats fantastic! How did you like the crust? Details please!
 

[FeCheF]

Thats fantastic! How did you like the crust? Details please!
 

Thanks chickenparm, the crust was perfect. It had a nice thin crunchy outer shell and a soft chewy inside. I used a modified version of jerrymac's poolish/dough recipe which has great semi sourdough/french bread flavor. Taste kinda like panera breads french bread. I used dop whole san marzano tomatoes squeezed and pureed, fresh basil, minced garlic, and a local deli thick sliced low moisture mozzarella. It was the best Margherita pizza ive made, might even go as far as the best ive eaten aswell.

I have to say, the local deli cheese has very good flavor, stringy and very low in moisture, but I do prefer to use a saltier cheese like maggio.

I forgot to mention that i wanted to make a 16 inch pie so i used a 16 inch pizza screen ontop of my 15 inch pizza stone. I think the results are even better then without a screen. Heres a better pizza bottom shot i forgot to post.

[chickenparm]

I sometimes make a 16 inch pie baked on a screen first,then about 2-3 minutes,I remove the pizza from the screen,and put the pizza back ontop of the 15 inch stone to finish baking the bottom.I only have a 15 inch stone and when I get something larger,I wont need to launch with the screens.

It works fine,and since the pizza is cooked somewhat,it wont flop over the sides of the smaller stone either.

[FeCheF]

I bought one of those grill thermometers. It goes up to 700F. For a test, I preheated oven to 500F on bake. I then switched to clean cycle mode and waited till thermometer reached 650F which took about 10 minutes. Put the pizza in for 3 minutes and took it out. I forgot to check the thermometer to see what temp it was after the 3 minutes, but i can tell you that 20 minutes later all the red color on the thermometers needle and inside dial is now black. Man these things are junk.

Im thinking i want to cook my pies alittle longer then 3 minutes though. Mainly because if i do a pie with extra cheese and toppings, im pretty sure the middle wont be done before the outer crust.  I thought of preheating to 500F, then clean cycle till 550F then cook pies for 5 minutes, which should put the temp somewhere around 600F - 650F for the 5 minute cook time. But tonight im planing to make 3-4 pies for the UFC fight tonight. So if i do these pies back to back will the oven temp keep going up, or stay the same, or down because of the minute in between where i remove a pie, and put another in? I can deal with it going down in temp, but if it keeps going higher im gonna have problems with taking them out too early.

Also my dough recipe is for two 14 inch pies, i never weighed the dough out, I just eyeball and divided in half, but now that im making 16 inch pies, i really should figure out what the right amount of weight is for a 16 inch NY style with a fat crust rim like you see in my pics i posted. I really wish i weight that dough ball before i stretched it out. Anyone help me out?