I've been making sourdough bread for the past 2 years and got very good at it. About 9 months ago, I started working out a sourdough pizza dough recipe and began learning how to make my own homemade pizzas.
After much trial and error, and a lot of experimentation, my pizzas started getting much better. Here's my latest.
Details: 100% sourdough pizza dough - 70% hydration. Custom cheese blend: 60% mozzarella, 15% cheddar, 15% sharp provolone, 10% parmesan. Sauce base: made from scratch using canned whole san marzano tomatoes & some seasonings/spices. Toppings: mushroom, green bell pepper, red onion, and hard salami.
The most awesome part is that we no longer order pizza delivery - my pizzas are coming out better than anything we used to get delivered (and it saves a ton of money)!
It's just a regular home oven (electric) and I'm cooking on the biggest thickest pizza stone I could get (placed on the middle rack and preheated for at least 30 minutes). My oven maxes out at 550f, so that's what I cook at. If it went hotter, I'd cook hotter. Takes about 6 or 7 minutes at 550.
I should also point out that because I'm using 70% hydration dough (which is a little wetter than traditional pizza dough) I send just the dough into the oven for 2 minutes to dry it out a little then pull it, dock the crust, dress it with toppings, then send it back in for the final bake. Not sure how common this technique is, but it's something I discovered that works great for my setup.
Not sure if this translates to American (I assume American given the freedom units), but if you turn off the oven function just after you put it in, and turn on the grill (broiler?) it does a great job of charing the top, whilst the stone cooks the base.
I will give this a try. How far away is the pizza from the broiler element when you do this?
Around 10-15cm (4-6"). It's the top shelf of the oven anyway. I saw the tip on a cooking show and it does help to give a more authentic pizza oven style bake. You might have to vary when you time the switch over depending on how powerful your grill is. Hope it works for you.
Great job! Add a wood fired pizza oven (I have a converted pellet grill with Green Mountain pizza insert) and it will change your pizza life.