Different pizza shops do their pizza differently and this is due to a variety of reasons, such as the dough used, how much sauce is used to layer the base of the pizza, how hot the oven is, how thin the dough of the pizza has been kneaded and tossed, and so on, so suffice to say it’s hard to create the “perfect” pizza.
However according to a bunch of researchers, they think that they might have been able to create the perfect pizza using math. According to Andrey Varlamov, one of the authors of the study, the secret to the perfect pizza involves finding that perfect balance of heat that flows into the base of the pizza from the bricks in the oven, and also to the heat that comes from the top and onto the toppings of the pizza.
The study also found that brick ovens are generally better suited for pizza as the material tends to heat up slower compared to metal, such as steel, which can be found in more commercial pizza parlors and in the home. By using brick, the pizza is only exposed to radiant heat and not conducted heat, which helps prevent the base from burning before the toppings does.
However this does not mean that your regular metal/steel oven at home can’t achieve a similar effect. According to Andrey, baking your pizza in the oven for a few minutes followed by turning on the broiler at max temperature should allow for similar results. It won’t be completely the same as a brick oven, but it could be better than allowing it to bake completely.
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