Before cooking
Ingredients are different and, therefore, they will react in diverse ways to heat. Cheese and meat need different cooking times than pepper or courgette. So, before you cook your pizza, you can cook a bit some of the ingredients in a pan to control the cooking process later.
Also, before putting the pizza in the oven, preheat it to 220 °C. If you are going to use a pizza stone, this is the right moment to put it in the oven. If you do it when the oven is already hot, you can break it.
Cooking
Temperature is very important here. A wood-fired oven can reach 500 °C, so don’t be afraid of using all the power of your oven. Use the fan to move heat and air inside the oven to bake the pizza evenly. Now you can find ovens that reach 340 °C, like MaestroPizza, with a specific pizza function and the right accessories.
In professional pizza ovens, the pizza is made over the stone. Whether you use a pizza stone or not, the pizza needs to be at the bottom of the oven. You can use the grill if you need it, but the heat inside the oven should be enough.
Time
Several factors are significant when thinking about baking time for the pizza. First: dough and ingredients moisture. The more moist your pizza is, the longer it will take to cook it.
You can control moisture by doing things like pre-cooking the dough to dry it a little. Another thing to do is to add a thicker tomato sauce and, if you plan to use fresh ingredients, like pineapple, lamb’s lettuce, or anchovies, do it at the end of the cooking process.
Therefore, cooking time will be a matter of ingredients and also it depends on how you want your pizza. The perfect cooking time will be a mixture between the moist touch of the vegetables and the crunchy point of the baked dough. In about 8 to 10 minutes, you will have your pizza ready. It can take 12 or 16 minutes with some ingredients too. If you have an oven with a pizza function, you can reach the perfect result in just three minutes, believe it or not.
Bonus track: how to reheat pizza
We show you a shortcut for those pizza leftovers if there are any. And it is not a microwave, though it could be if it is a good one, cause the microwave is a very versatile appliance we don’t use as we should, by the way. The point here: you can heat the pizza in a pan.
Use a dash of oil to avoid the pizza sticking to the bottom, place the pan over high heat and put the pizza, and a lid on it. In three minutes, you should have a crunchy and tasty pizza again, not fresh from the oven but enough to honour the taste of the day before.