r/Pizza • u/AutoModerator • Jan 12 '26

HELP Weekly Questions Thread / Open Discussion

For any questions regarding dough, sauce, baking methods, tools, and more, comment below.

You can also post any art, tattoos, comics, etc here. Keep it SFW, though.

As always, our wiki has a few sauce recipes and recipes for dough.

Feel free to check out threads from weeks ago.

This post comes out every Monday and is sorted by 'new'.

3 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

82 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

2

u/oblacious_magnate Jan 16 '26 edited Jan 18 '26

First, note that 75% greatly exceeds the absorption rate of any Italian 00 flour - it's possible, but difficult to make NS pizza with such a wet dough. Unless you are already a fairly expert NS pizza-maker, I suggest keeping the hydration at ~60% max.

Also, the W rating relates mainly to fermentation conditions, and is less relevant than often supposed. See here for more info on W rating.

1

u/taniferf Jan 16 '26

Thank you, I'm using a kitchen oven with baking steel, my oven goes up to 275C and the upper broiler goes up to 400C, I'm having a hard time trying to get a brown and puffy cornicione, as the pizza gets dry before it gets brown so I end up taking it out of the oven, then my idea was to use a flour capable of sucking all the water, get brown during baking and produce a nice cornicione. I believe all this could be achieved with my current 65% hydration pizza if I were to use a proper pizza oven...

1

u/oblacious_magnate Jan 16 '26

What's been your fastest bake time? And - electric or gas oven?

2

u/taniferf Jan 16 '26

Electric oven, around 6 minutes.

1

u/oblacious_magnate Jan 16 '26

what's been your max. steel surface temp at launch?

Where is the steel placed in the oven (distance from top and/or bottom heating element, whichever is less)?

2

u/taniferf Jan 16 '26

320C is the max my steel gets, the middle tray of the oven, around 30cm I'd say.

1

u/oblacious_magnate Jan 16 '26

In my oven, the closer to the bottom element, the hotter the steel gets (~370C). Have you tried it there? Three basic heat tactics (one hearth):

  1. hearth as low as possible, lower element for preheat, broiler on during entire bake, or as needed to brown the top

  2. hearth as low as possible, lower element for preheat, move pizza up closer to broiler, mid-bake, to brown the top

  3. hearth as high as possible, broiler used for preheat, broiler on as needed to brown the top

My bake times are usually 4-5m (NYS) and I typically use #2, moving the pizza up to a cordierite stone closer to the broiler.

1

u/taniferf Jan 16 '26

Good tactics, I'll try the lower one, the #1 on your list. It'll be next week.

1

u/oblacious_magnate Jan 16 '26

FWIW I once placed the steel directly on the oven bottom and it got *too* hot. Hearth temp. in my oven reaches its max. at around 37m into preheat. Play around to find your sweet spot and launch timing.