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Correct Pizza Oven Temperature

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antheon

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Hello, I have a commercial pizza oven with stone on the bottom and a heating element on the top. There is also individual temp controls for the top and bottom. My question is: what is the correct temperature to cook the pizzas? do i need both the top and bottom heating elemnets on or just the bottom? FYI, i will be using pizza screens and my pizza is american style like papa johns and dominos.

Thanks, Mike
 
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Antheon;
If you can bake right on that bottom, stone deck, and if the crown height of the oven isn’t too high, you might be able to get away with using just bottom heat and baking at about 260C/500F, but if the shelf they talk about is centrally located in the oven, then you’re looking at baking in a “hot box”, and you will probably find it difficult to get the desired bottom heat and resulting bottom bake on your pizzas. Keep in mind that the best pizzas are baked from the bottom, and the top heat is used only to help dry the top surface as well as bake some of the toppings, which can also include browning the cheese if desired.
George, have you had a chance to look at the oven specs? Please feel free to shoot me down, or add more to this response.
Tom Lehmann/the Dough Doctor
 
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Hi antheon & Tom:

This is the first deck oven I have encountered that has upper heat control. I would go with Toms recommendation and start with the 250 c bottom heat and no top heat adjust the bottom heat until you have the bottom you want. If top heat is required to get the bake desired add that in small increments until you get the bake desired. It may be that as top heat is added the bottom heat may need to be reduced.

Sorry but this the best I can suggest as I have never seen this type oven in operation.

Apparently antheon is not in the USA

George Mills
 
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Tom and George should agree on this, the pizza cooks from the bottom up. “Sealing” the top of the pizza before the moisture is released will only stop or hinder the pizza from cooking inside. The result a “gummy” inside.

The process of cooking in basic:
  1. <140F Spring-Yeast eating the sugars to cause gas and give the dough its spring/rise, before the yeast dies.
  2. 140F Bake -Allowing the moisture to be released and allowing the dough to firm. The fibers are formed and strengthened.
    Click to expand...
  3. Code: 
         Glaze - Evaporating the moisture from the top of the pizza and browning the top of the pizza; cheese frying.
If you have some way of limiting the top heating elements, this will help with the cook.
Standard thought is:

Heat is the coloring on the bottom of the pizza
Time is the coloring on the top of the pizza

Since the major of the heat is processing from the bottom of the pizza upward, If you seal the top too soon you will experience the same raw/up cooked results as that of when you don’t cook a hamburger patty improperly and it is raw inside even-though it is black/burnt outside.

The diagrams are from courses I gave abroad(mainly in Asia) in pizza production and theories; why you see Chinese, 抱歉

My $0.02
 
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我认为那个是你的两个分钱。Pizza instruction in mandarin, f’n rad. Somehow made my day.
 
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