Oven Temperature 750 Newbie Forum Discuss Oven Temperature 750 in the Good Background Information forums; Another newbie question. When you say the perfect temperature to cook a pizza is 700-750, so when i use my ...

[coolpizza]

Another newbie question. When you say the perfect temperature to cook a pizza is 700-750, so when i use my infrared thermometer do i point it at the fire itself? the walls? the base of the oven? not sure which one should be reading 700.

Thanks!!

[Neil2]

I measure on the floor at the center of the oven where the pizza will go. I find that about 800 degrees works best for me. The top inside of the dome will be hotter.

[RTflorida]

I will side with Neil on this, 800-825 works for me, and I always take my temp reading from the side of the hearth that I will place the pizza. Center dome temp is usually 900+.

RT

[SteveP]

I found that the best temp for me is when the floor is between 650 and 750. I have tried different dough recipes and found that some hold up better to higher temps while other cook better at lower temps. I am still fairly new and still experimenting.

[texassourdough]

The ideal temp is a function of several variables. The official Neopolitan validators shoot for 800 on the top of the dome but that is pretty consistently viewed as too cool on this listserve. Somewhere between about 750 and 800 for the hearth and roughly 1000 for the dome seems to be preferred by most of us.

The way I measure the hearth temp is simply to throw some semolina on the hearth and count to 3 appx. one per second. The semolina will be yellow, yellow, black on the three counts. If so the hearth is about right. If faster, it is too hot, if much slower (say five seconds) it is too cool IMO.

Good Luck!
Jay

[Neil2]

SteveP and texasourdough are exactly right. You have to experiment - there are lots of variables.