If I may be permitted a bit of a rant here about baking in the kitchen oven...
Unless we are fortunate enough to own an oven specifically designed to produce perfectly-baked pizzas, we are forced into some degree of cheating. When baking in my WFO, I often cheat by doming the pie to make sure the top is properly cooked at the same time the bottom is done. When baking bread, I use a steam cleaning contraption to inject steam into the oven. We use stones, steel plates, broilers, disabling the self-cleaning interlock, all manner of things to compensate for the shortcomings of our ovens.
I'm willing to do whatever it takes to achieve the pizzas I love. Heck, look at what Pizza Napoletana has done to his lowly kitchen oven to produce world-class pizzas. Maybe you don't like the word "cheat". I don't use it here in the pejorative. Call it whatever you like: adjustment, accommodation, creative modification, etc.
I find it amazing that people don't use more cheats. In particular, I see how much effort we put into getting a great looking pizza. Great looking doesn't equate to great tasting. The nature of pizza, its non-uniform, irregular shape makes it so challenging to get just right the heat distribution to get all parts of the pizza done at the same time. So often I see that by the time the top of the pizza looks perfectly baked, the bottom is burnt and interior of the crust is overcooked to a dry texture devoid of life.
My cheat to solve this problem is something I have never seen discussed here; perhaps I have missed it. The hardest part of the unbalanced heat dilemma is getting the interior of the crust done just right. So that is where I focus my attention. I prefer high hydration dough that likes an immediate blast of heat. Stone -good. Steel plate - better. Both - best? Maybe. The moment I sense the interior is done, the pizza comes out of the oven - maybe even a bit before since it will continue baking. If there are toppings that are not cooked or cheese not melted or the outside of the rim could use more color, I simply hit those spots with a butane torch. Takes a few seconds and I have complete control over exactly what gets get hit - unlike a broiler which covers the whole pizza.
So how do we know when the inside is perfectly baked? There are too many variables to make time an accurate measure. If it were a hunk of meat, we could use a meat thermometer. If it were a cake, we could we could use a toothpick. In baking this pizza, I used a cheat that I am not ready to discuss. Not sure how consistent it will be. Stay tuned.
End of rant.
