Cooking

So you can check my posts for more details on my bake, but after a few years of practice, and now running an, albeit small, pop up pizza business, I've got a few tips I can offer.

First, and foremost: the dough. I didn't see you include any details about your dough in your post. Whats your hydration? What is your protein percent? Have you fermented it? If so, how many days? If this all sounds foreign to you, start here with Charlie Anderson's recipe. Use the spread sheet calculator and figure out both your hydration and protein content before moving forward. I do a 65% hydration, 3 day ferment with 220 grams of the King Arthur high protein baking flower, 10 grams of sifted rye flour (per dough ball; I make 4 at a time, each is stretched to a 16 inch pizza). The hydration and protein content are the two most critical aspects of getting a good crust; imagine baking your pizza as a rapid dehydration: the protein content determines stretchiness and the "bubbliness", and how thin you can get it, each of which contributes to how "golden brown" you can get it. There are some kneeding/ throwing techniques that can be used to augment this and get a more reliable, better "bubbliness", but there is no substituting the recipe. Hydration is critical because water is going to begin to evaporate long before things begin to "bake" properly; both the mallard reaction and carmelization happen at much higher temperatures than the temperature at which water boils: the hydration of the dough mitigates both of these reactions. A great pizza is all about timing: the time it takes for water to leave the crust, with carmelization and the mallard reactions being able to happen on the exterior, but not the interior; how much moisture your ingredients are contributing; the temperature of the oven; the humidity of the air in your oven once you add the pie. Great pizza is about managing water.

What I can see in this image is that your hydration is too low. I can tell because of the outer crust has almost no browning, indicating that you both a) don't have enough protein and b) haven't been able to get the dough thin enough. Hydration will increase as the dough ferments and sugars are converted from c6h12o8 to co2 and h2o: as the yeast grows it breaks down sugar and adds bubbles and water. Also, you aren't thinking about the relationship between the added moisture your ingredients are contributing to the bake. You've overloaded it with wet ingredients like fresh mottz, tomatoes, and ham (which can be fine, but you need to adjust your process to accommodate). The added moisture is going to cool off the air temperature in the locality of your dough; your dough needs to be able to accommodate for that. My bet is that this pizza has a 'bread like' or 'cake like' texture.

There is a recommendation here about a pizza steel or a stone, but honestly, I don't think thats your issue, and those can cause more difficulty in a home oven than they solve. If you are going that route, I recommend a steel, not a stone. Stones take too long to give off their heat, and do almost nothing to transfer heat once they've given off whatever they have stored. A 3/8ths steel is far superior for a home pizza kitchen.

There is another comment about pre-cooking some ingredients. The only real point in this would be to drive off moisture before putting them on the pizza or to try and get some specific flavor profile. Its missing the point of the primary problem you are experiencing: your dough. Adding or brushing with oil is just masking the issue.

Overall, get a handle on your hydration and protein content. Shoot for >12% protein and >60% hydration to get into the range of "good" when considering only the crust. Don't overload the pie with wet ingredients if your oven isn't hot enough to drive that moisture off the pizza rapidly. You need to match the timing between how much/ how cooked you want the toppings and how much time the dough takes, relative to how hot your oven can get.

You can absolutely get better than restaurant pizza in an oven which only goes to 500-550 degrees, and you really don't need to make many changes from what one might do in an oven capable of getting to 700-1100. But good pizza all starts and ends with the dough. And there is no short cutting it.