How to Achieve High Temperatures in Your Non-Commercial Oven
The difference between restaurant food and homemade food is greatest when extreme heat is required. Commercial ovens are designed to achieve the high temperatures required to bake bubble pizzas and crispy homemade bread; there are simply no home ovens. But even if you have old, weak hire, clever grill placement can trick your oven into getting hotter than it actually is.
Most household ovens have their main heating element at the bottom. This means that your oven is probably hottest near the floor, where heat radiates, and at the very top, where it rises. Installing one grate at the bottom of the oven and one at or near the top creates two heating zones, so you can control how much heat your food is exposed to and when. It’s like setting up a zone grill in an oven, and it’s the easiest way to enhance your hot home baked goods.
First, preheat the oven to high heat – I usually do 475 ° F for pizza and 425-450 ° F for bread – and arrange the grates. My oven is gas, so I can put the grate right on the floor, but if your oven has an open electric heating element, just put the bottom grate as close to it as possible. When the oven is fully heated, place the baking sheet on the lower rack, then move it to the upper rack for the last few minutes to brown the surface. Blowing continuous direct heat over the bottom of the pan gives you the opportunity to toast the bottom of the pan, so you never have to eat a slice of raw homemade pizza again. (Aside from dough and bread, this works wonders for fried vegetables if you like it.)
If you are already baking in a cast iron skillet or in an enamelled Dutch oven to slightly raise the oven’s maximum temperature, this trick will be especially effective. It also works great with plain old aluminum baking sheets and can even help baking stones work best if you’re not trying to move them. (Just leave the hot rocks on the bottom grate.) Your results may not be as good as a 1000ºF wood-burning stove, but they won’t be too far off.