Fooling the oven thermostat

[Steve]

Last night I tricked my oven thermostat and got my oven up to 650 °F  

I was making my usual NY style pizza when a thought occurred to me. If I were to plunge the oven thermostat probe into some water, the water would remain at 212 °F until it all boiled off. So, here's what I did. I took one of my aluminum cigar tubes (Romeo y Julieta   ) and filled it with water. I then unclipped the oven thermostat probe from the upper side of the oven and bent it down vertically. I then immersed the probe into the water and kept a very watchful eye over the whole thing.  

My NY sytle pizza cooked in 4 minutes and 30 seconds flat!  

The pizza turned out wonderful and the crust was amazing. Perfectly browned (charred) on the outside, nice, moist and fluffy on the inside.

I believe the intense heat cooks the crust faster which allows the crust to lose less moisture. The charred skin of the crust was much thinner than usual which was very nice.

I wish I had some photos to show, but the pizza didn't last long enough for that!

This is one trick that I'm going to start using on a regular basis.  

[Foccaciaman]

Steve, all I can say is  

[Pete-zza]

Steve,

I tried searching the site to see if I could find your particular recipe for the New York style pizza that you made when you fooled your oven thermostat, without success.  Is it the recipe at the homepage for the forum?

I also wondered whether fooling the thermostat and getting the higher temperature had any effect on the lightbulb in the oven, which most likely isn't rated for the temperature you achieved.  The little glass cover for the bulb in my oven broke some time ago, and I haven't yet been able to find a replacement cover because it has been discontinued due to the age of the oven.  I could remove the lightbulb I suppose were I to try what you did.

As for the thermostat, I looked in my oven (Whirlpool) and saw that the thermostat is secured to one wall of the oven by a small clip.  I assume that I would just unsecure it and immerse the tip of the thermostat into a tube or whatever with water in it.   Does that sound right?  Finally, will I have to take up cigar smoking to try your new trick ?

Peter

[Steve]

No problem with my light bulb.  

And yes, I have a Whirlpool oven too. I simply unclipped the probe, gently bent it straight down and into the tube filled with water. The probe held the tube upright.

I used a removable oven thermometer and my IR non-contact thermometer gun to measure the temperature and I manually turned off the burner to keep it below 700 degrees.

[Foccaciaman]

In regards to the lightbulb topic, I do not believe there is much chance of any damage to it if your oven has a self cleaning cylcle. In which it reaches much higher temperatures.

Fortunately for me, unlike Pete I will not have to take up cigars, as I am sure that with very little effort I can find one of my empty cigar tubes from last weekend to try this experiment. As long as my boys have not taken them to use for torpedos or missles in some game.

[Steve]

As a side note, after baking two pizzas the water evaporated out of the tube. Near the end of the second pizza, the thermostat started behaving normally again with most of the water gone. Fortunately I was done!