Pizza oven recipes are nice when you have a pizza oven. Which you do… your home oven! Or your rental home’s oven.
The outdoor pizza ovens that you see on home improvement shows aren’t needed to make scrumptious and beautiful pizzas.
…And that’s good news!
Because like any equipment you’d invest in, special pizza ovens have to be maintained and cleaned for the one food item (pizza) that’s it’s intended for.
That gets time consuming and costly. Plus, a pizza oven needs to be fueled each time. That could be another service call or trip in addition to a grocery run.
…So a purchased pizza oven is not something that’s fun for everyone to mess with.
A pizza oven just isn’t practical for most us peeps. And if you live in the city or an apartment, you likely don’t have the outdoor space required for pizza oven safety.
BUT the good news is you can get a beautiful never-know-it’s-from-your-home oven pizza in minutes using your already existing home oven or apartment kitchen oven.
How cool is that?
And when your oven isn’t cranking out a pizza, it can be whipping up dessert bakes (or low-sugar desserts that’s my way 🍥).
…Or calmly blending in your kitchen space where it already fits and belongs.
It’s exciting that you need no special equipment to make home pizzas! I think anyway… and as quick as it can take to have a pizza delivered sometimes.
And I know all about that…
As a teenager, I worked as a pizza maker in a busy delivery pizza business and shop for 4 years. Actually the busiest pizza chain in the world then where we sometimes made over 200 pizzas an hour on Friday nights. Pizza delivery was pret-ty new and exciting …and sometimes in the rush hour blur, unless you were a pizza ingredient, I had no time to look up. 😊 Don’t even get me started about Game Day pizza.
I still refer to that job as my FUN job.
Then fast forward to 2020, I started my own fun making and testing home pizzas from my apartment oven. …where I didn’t get to choose my oven baking equipment. And toppings to top it off! 🍄🟫
And from there, I was able to make beautiful crusts that look like Neapolitan-style, light and airy crust that also look like they came from a wood-fired ovens or a fancy pizza oven. 🤩
…And yep, baked in my apartment oven that barely got to above 400°F baking temps without the fire alarm sounding.
I took my risk, cracked opened windows, and had my wet towels and step ladder handy. With safety googles on (aka glasses just in case), I went for it! And what I discovered was that I only needed a few minutes of super high heat that my oven could do on the broil setting (525°F). It was peaceful. And this is what I got:
It was pizza handmade with love 💗 and nothing but flour, water, yeast, and salt ingredients (plus mushrooms) I bought from the grocery store.
These days, I’m still making pizzas and coming up with delicious pizza topping combinations. Some tasting pairings that are influenced by my 10 years working in upscale hotels and restaurant event menu planning.
I combined all my years of experiences, lessons from pizza commercial ovens, hospitality kitchens, and 2020 home dessert baking and bread making.
I home learned and practiced my baking skills.
…And Home Pizza, pizza oven making fit right in!
Plus it aligned with my healthy food researching work.
…I’m lovin’ that pizzas are actually very healthy and light, when using healthy cheeses, less cheese, and/or “cheesy” nutritional yeast (and more delicate crusts). Add a ‘lil drizzle of EVOO (olive oil) and you’ve got one complete meal.
And that’s full of protein if you choose. Or loaded with plant-based goodness like cauliflower. Plus spice zhugh. Then you have a tasty explosion in your mouth.
A common question asked is what flour to use for pizza crust.
A “00” flour also known as “pizza flour” will give you a chewier crust or what I call a regular crust. Kinda like the ones I mostly worked with at the pizza shop and you find in frozen pizzas.
But if you want an exciting crust that’s lighter, more airy, and softer when you bite in, then use bread flour – that’s my preference. It’s also versatile and more multi-purpose as you can use bread flour for making most bread and even cakey breads. And bread flour is usually less pricey than pizza flour.
So now that you’re armed with some good pizza making 101 tips.
…Are you ready to fire up your oven and your pizza making skills?
If so, try creating your own pizza or Picasso edible art from easy steps found below on this page… and from your home oven (aka new pizza oven!). Get creative and lean in on your taste preferences. The crust is the painting frame and the toppings are the colorful art.
The best part is you get to enjoy and eat it!
Hopefully you’ll also get some wild topping combo ideas from my pizza photos you’ll see in my blog posts. They range from Margherita pizza to Hawaiian pizzas.
As for baaking equipment, you have options. The one baking equipment you need is a baking pan… a pizza pan, a baking sheet (with a Silpat), OR even your cake pans will work to make regular pizza crusts at around 350°F/180°C.
Which you probably already have some sitting in your kitchen just waiting for you to use. 🎉
For a pizza pan, you can use it for other bakes too. So it’s versatile equipment if you’re a beginner baker or soon-to-be pizza maker. Dark metal pans cook help cook quicker. No need to go out and buy too many pans if you don’t bake often.
(Oh, and always remove the Silpat when broiling, e.g. making Neapolitan-style airy crusts with “wood-fired” charred marks).
…So the only real home pizza making rule to stick by is that you play baking safe. And if you’re making light and airy crusts on partial-much-higher-heat in your indoor oven, make sure you are on watch standby and your pizza is setup to withstand a little 525°F heat before you fire up.
Other than that, have fun!… I bet you’ll impress everyone with your pizza chefette/chef skills. It will be old-hat soon. 🧑🍳
Fall Game Day Pizza – easy to fall for and make a thicker bread crust as comfort food with bread, whole wheat flour, and even a cracker base (we called these thin crust pizzas in my pro-maker days 😊).
How to Make Easy Neapolitan-Style Pizza Crust from your no-frills indoor or apartment kitchen oven that will look like it was made from a fancy outdoor charring or commercial wood-fire pizza oven.
If you want recipes and steps for how to turn your pizza ideas to dream reality, check out my Home Pizza Dough Beginner guide.
Btw, it would mean a lot to me if you would lemme know what you think (comment or questions below) 🧡