Oven Temperature by Pizza Style Chart

A pizza style is a package of dough thickness, hydration, flour and bake temperature that only works as a set. Change the temperature without changing the rest and you do not get a faster or slower version of the same pizza, you get a different and usually worse one. This chart pairs every style with the floor temperature it wants, and the bake times come from the same anchor set that drives the bake temperature and time calculator.

Working temperatures on this page will burn you. A 900F stone ignites a wooden peel left resting on it and scars skin on contact. Use long handled tools and EN407 rated heat gloves , burn fuel outdoors only with clearance from anything combustible, keep children and pets well back, and never pour water on a hot stone: the steam scalds and the thermal shock cracks it.

What temperature does each pizza style need?

Read this table across rather than down. Floor temperature and bake time move together, and the hydration and ball weight columns exist because a style baked at the right temperature with the wrong dough fails just as reliably as the reverse.

Two entries need a footnote. Chicago deep dish is the one style the standard model understates at both ends: a two inch deep pan can want 35 minutes rather than 30, and its 560 g of dough for a 12 inch pan works out at roughly 5.0 g per square inch, well beyond the 3.8 that tops the usual pan range, because the dough has to climb a two inch wall as well as cover the floor. Roman al taglio also runs longer than a straight pan multiplier suggests, because the trays are large and are often par baked before topping. Both are baking rather than firing, and neither is helped by a hotter oven.

Why is floor temperature the number that matters?

Because the base of a pizza cooks by conduction from the stone while everything else cooks by radiation and convection from the dome and the flame. Those are two separate heat paths, and almost every problem people describe is a symptom of the two being out of balance rather than of a wrong dial setting.

The built in gauge on most ovens does not measure the floor. Depending on the model it reads the air in the chamber, the shell, or the space under the roof, and it can differ from the stone by 200F in either direction. An infrared thermometer points at the exact spot the pizza will sit and tells you the truth about it, which is why it is the single most useful accessory a pizza oven owner can buy. Aim at the centre of the stone and take a second reading near the mouth: portable ovens routinely run 50 to 150F cooler at the opening than at the back.

The dome gap column explains the single biggest difference between outdoor and indoor pizza. A live flame throws 150F or more of extra heat at the top of the pizza, which is what sets the cheese and blisters the rim in the seconds available. A domestic oven has nothing equivalent, which is why the broiler has to run during the bake and why the pizza belongs in the upper third of the oven rather than the middle. Compare what different ovens can actually hold in the pizza oven roundup.

What happens if I bake a style at the wrong temperature?

Each mismatch has a signature, and recognising it is faster than changing the recipe. The table below is the diagnostic version of the chart above.

The New York row is the one that catches the most people. Somebody buys a fast outdoor oven, fires it to 900F, and bakes the New York dough they have been making for years. At that temperature the base is charcoal in 90 seconds while a 400 g dough ball is still raw in the middle. The dough is not wrong and the oven is not faulty. The pairing is. Drop the floor to 650F and the same dough works, which is exactly what the New York dough guide assumes.

How do I hold a lower temperature in a fast oven?

This is the practical problem for anyone who owns a 950F portable and wants to make anything other than Neapolitan. Three things work, in order of usefulness.

• Turn the burner down and wait 10 to 15 minutes. The flame responds instantly, the stone does not. Turning the dial down and launching two minutes later gives you a hot floor under a cool dome, which is the worst of both.
• Bake something else first. Each pizza pulls heat out of the floor, so the second and third pizzas sit naturally lower. In a light portable oven the floor can fall 100F across three bakes, which is a free New York setting if you plan for it.
• Use a screen or a pan. Lifting the dough off the stone breaks the conduction path entirely, which is how a pan pizza survives in a chamber whose floor is far too hot for it.

What does not work is launching a thick base onto a very hot floor and hoping to compensate with a shorter bake. There is no bake time at 900F that cooks the centre of a 400 g New York base before the bottom carbonises, because the two are on completely different clocks. Every bake time in the main chart, in 25 degree steps, is on the bake time and temperature chart.

How do the pan styles differ from the rest?

They are baked rather than fired, and everything follows from that. The dough is 70 to 80 percent hydration and is pressed into an oiled steel pan rather than stretched, so it never touches a stone and never has to survive a launch. Heat reaches it through the pan, which means the pan material and thickness matter more than the stone underneath, and the target is an evenly set crumb rather than a flash cooked base.

That is why every pan style sits at 425 to 550F in the chart and takes 12 to 30 minutes. Firing them hotter does not speed them up in any useful way, it simply burns the exterior while the centre is still raw. Detroit in particular depends on cheese caramelising against the hot pan wall, which needs time at a moderate temperature rather than seconds at a high one. The method is in the Detroit style dough guide, and the correct dough weight for any pan size is on the dough ball size chart.