— Larry Shearer

I'm gonna talk a little bit about pizza in general, and so you can make it however you want. Um, I'm gonna tell you the way that I have our home, uh, style oven set up. And, uh, and I recommend this approach. Uh, we have a steel plate that is a quarter inch thick, although if I were to do it again, um, I might consider three eighths of an inch, but a quarter inch works, uh, works, works fine. Uh, and I went down to the steel yard and, uh, took the measurements of our oven rack and had them cut a piece of steel to fit the oven rack. And I, I cleaned it off. It was, you know, just something that was sitting out and, um, it needed some cleaning up and, uh, smoothing out the edges in the corners. And then I seasoned it, you know, oiled it, put it in the, um, uh, the oven to let it bake for a couple of rounds, uh, to create, uh, you know, a a seasoned surface. And, uh, then when pizza time comes along, I position the rack at the very top. So it's just a little bit beneath the broiler, and the steel plate goes onto that rack in the top position, and I will preheat the oven for, uh, at the highest temperature. So in our case, it's about 550 degrees Fahrenheit, and the preheating time is about 45 minutes. You know, you might be able to get away with a little bit less and a little bit more, of course, is fine. And once it's that plate is sufficiently preheated, you'll assemble your pizzas. And they should be ideally a thin crust pizza, okay? For this method. And, uh, so again, they can be any sort of toppings that you want, uh, as long as it does, it remains a, a, a thin crust pizza. And, uh, you put the pizza in, and then, uh, uh, at that, I guess it could be a moment before you put the pizza in, turn the oven off and turn the broiler on high. Okay? So when the pizza goes in, you get lots of heat from the bottom and the top, and you're going to cook that pizza in somewhere between 90 seconds and 120 seconds. Uh, we find that to be sufficient. Okay? And so, uh, you know, let's say you're doing a, a batch of dough, and depending on, you know, how big you, you roll 'em out, you know, you, you're going to get multiple, probably right pizza, uh, uh, disks. Uh, out of that, you know, we often get about eight pieces or so out of the piece of dough that we prepare. So as you're baking through these, just maintain that same setting, um, of a hot pan that you had preheated and the broiler on high. And you're gonna get lots of heat from the top and bottom, you know, in these minute and a half to two minute cycles. And, you know, adjust it as you need to, to get the, uh, the browning of the crust that you like, you know, the crispiness. And, uh, I find the results to be great. Um, we've been doing this for several years now, and when I started doing this, I visited, uh, pizzerias that, um, focused on this Neapolitan style thin crust pizza. And, uh, went down to, I, I'm in the Portland, Oregon area. I traveled to Seattle, down to San Francisco, uh, visited a handful of restaurants that had the Italian government designation of making authentic Neapolitan style pizzas. And what we were producing at home was equivalent to what, um, I was paying lots of money for in those restaurants. So I'm confident that you, too, Larry and others, um, that are listening to, to this discussion can prepare pizzas that are delightful and satisfying. But it, uh, you know, it will take a little bit of experimentation to dial that process in for you.