This is a fascinating article that reviewed a recent preprint uploaded to an e-print arXiv. The manuscript studied the physics of baking pizza, and explained, among other things, why baking thin-crust pizza in a brick oven is better than in a steel oven.
Chewing this over, the physicists realized the key difference lies in how much more slowly brick transfers heat to the dough compared with steel — a measure known as the material's thermal conductivity. A brick oven heated to 626 degrees will heat the crust to roughly 392 degrees, while the pizza top receives indirect heat from the oven and stays at 212 degrees as water boils off from the cheese and tomato sauce. Glatz says that after about two minutes, both the pizza top and crust reach perfection.
But pizza crust in contact with a steel oven at the same temperature will hit 572 degrees because the metal transfers heat far more rapidly than brick. That's much too high for dough, Glatz says, "so it simply burns." Unfortunately, because the top of the pizza must cook as well, simply lowering the oven temperature to 450 degrees doesn't work. While that will heat the crust to 392 degrees, the rest of the pizza won't receive enough heat to boil by the time the crust has cooked — resulting in cooked dough but undercooked toppings.
I think Elton Brown one time had an ingenious idea, which is to put a baking stone in one of those Weber dome grilling kettle and bake the pizza in there. This is where you can get the baking stone to be very hot, hotter than what one can get in a conventional home oven. I haven't tried this yet, but now, after reading this paper, maybe I will.
Zz.
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