Interesting phenomenon using a New York Style Pizza dough

[alcapone]

Re: Interesting phenomenon using a New York Style Pizza dough

forget what everyone is sayin, you can go as thick as you want just use the olive oil and it will help to cook thru 450 for 15 to 20

[alcapone]

Re: Interesting phenomenon using a New York Style Pizza dough

ya you use olive oil and lightly spread it all around including edges. especially in the middle this helps it to cook thru

[Acoma]

Re: Interesting phenomenon using a New York Style Pizza dough

Thanks Alfredo.

[Alfredo]

Re: Interesting phenomenon using a New York Style Pizza dough

John Fahle,

I believe this is what Acoma was referring to: The 1-Hour Brick Oven

[gjbingham]

Re: Interesting phenomenon using a New York Style Pizza dough

I used a pizza stone for a few years. A big heavy one from King Arthur Flour, I believe. I think I occasionally had similar problems, but it always seemed to be a mystery to me as well. I'm pretty sure I used 550 degrees F as a cooking temp. Sometimes they were perfect, sometimes a bit underdone. I'm guessing that since I used the same toppings over and over again, it may have been the quality of the dough that contributes to the problem - a big guess!

[RTflorida]

Re: Interesting phenomenon using a New York Style Pizza dough

I regularly cook pizza around 900 degrees...and YES, keep it light and keep it moving (I rotate every 30 seconds for the 90 seconds or so it takes).
took me a while to get my wife to "lighten up" her pizzas, she likes it thin but loaded with sauce and fixens, after a few stinkers, she got the message. Now we saute some of our toppings in advance and save the heavy sauced pizza for last and go a bit thicker at 700 - 750...works for us.

RT

[asudavew]

Re: Interesting phenomenon using a New York Style Pizza dough

Oven too hot... pizza too thick... = undone

the thicker the pizza, the slower the cook time, and lower temps are required.

A 900 degree pizza is very light!

[John Fahle]

Re: Interesting phenomenon using a New York Style Pizza dough

Acoma, can you point me to that thread? I searched for it but couldn't find it.

Thanks

[Acoma]

Re: Interesting phenomenon using a New York Style Pizza dough

NGD, if you are using a pizza stone and oven for pizzas, why not attempt the one hour pizza oven. There has been discussions and a thread on it. Quite simple actually. You can have your successful pizza outside, and set up takes an hour to build. Do this until you get the true oven build should you decide to go that route.

[ngd1029]

Re: Interesting phenomenon using a New York Style Pizza dough

Since I had time after exams I decided to see if I could revisit this problem and experiment to see if I could solve the problem. I reduced the sauce and was baking with simply cheese. The gas convection oven was set to 550 degrees and I was experimenting with position. I was moving the pizza from 2nd rack from the bottom (bottom rack is too high) and the top rack preheating the stone for at least one hour. The pizzas were baked at roughly 2-3 minutes and while the bottom cooks beautifully, the tops are still somewhat raw (cheese barely melted and the top of the crust kinda doughy). I've been trying to complete this pizza recipe because if it would cook perfectly (top and bottom) it would be perfect. I was hoping that someone out there with more pizza experience could provide advice and insights on how to fix this.

[james]

Re: Interesting phenomenon using a New York Style Pizza dough

They say you should be able to see the pizza base through the tomato sauce. That might lighten things up a little -- and get you more even baking in the middle.

You should be able to get everything baked evenly with a hot, pre-heated, 550ºF stone. Definitely.
James

[Richard]

Re: Interesting phenomenon using a New York Style Pizza dough

Since you did pre-heating, would try your sister's recommendation and then adjust from there. Next step, use baking versus convection cooking, try stone on bottome shelf. change one thing at a time to control variables.
View less toppings - perhaps slightly thinner crust.

How thick is the pizza dough you are now cooking ?

[ngd1029]

Re: Interesting phenomenon using a New York Style Pizza dough

i tried pre-baking the oven at 550F for one hour on a convection oven, and when baking on the second top rack position in the oven, I had one stone one that top rack and another stone that i used for baking. the pizzas cooked faster, about 6 minutes, but this time even though the cheese on the top was browner, when I flipped the cheese off the pizza, the top half of the pizza dough was still raw. my sister suggests that i'm overloading the pizza's toppings (to why it's half raw under the cheese), but I don't think it's that topping heavy.
I have to admit that the pizza tasted better, but it's still not perfect. Does anyone have any suggestion how to solve the half cooked pizza top?

[Ken524]

Re: Interesting phenomenon using a New York Style Pizza dough

I only let the prebake about 5 minutes which could be the problem.

Bingo! That's definitely part of the problem. We have a Pizza stone that's about a 1/2" thick. We preheat 550 for an hour before cooking on it. Does a pretty good job.

Ken

[ngd1029]

Re: Interesting phenomenon using a New York Style Pizza dough

Thank you everyone for your suggestions. I'll try out a longer prebaking time for the stones. I only let the prebake about 5 minutes which could be the problem. I'll bake the stones on the middle rack for one hour at 500 degrees fahrenheit and try the recipe again to see if it works. If it does, I'll let everyone know.