I've been cooking DiGiorno "supreme" rising crust pizza for years. We've got a 50 year old electric oven with an only approximate thermostat. I've got a shallow pan of ceramic oven tiles on the bottom rack to try to even out the temperature (less direct IR from the heating element).
I usually cooked it on a cookie sheet on the top rack (sometimes in a pizza pan with holes) until about 5 minutes before the maximum recommended time, pull it out, add a layer of pepperoni and mozzarella, and then put it back in the oven to finish.
Even with all that I was never happy with the way it cooked - the edges were usually over-done and crunchy before the center was hot and fully cooked.
So, for a while I was putting aluminum foil on the edge (like on a pie crust) to slow the browning. That worked much better, but the center still cooked very slowly and it wasn't always easy to pull off the foil before it got welded to the cheese on the edge.
The last year or so, I've been using a pizza stone. But that makes it nearly impossible to use Al foil on the edge. Pre-Heating the stone to ~50F above the baking temperature seemed to cook the center crust better, but it seemed to cook the bottom too quickly (crunchy bottom and still kinda uncooked above). And the stone is nearly black with burnt cheese and stuff, and it smokes, so J hates it. Maybe there's some magic temperature window that works better.
I just found this. I'll probably try it on my next attempt. It apparently risks smoking too, but it's worth a shot.
What are your frozen pizza tricks, or do you just say, "Screw it, I'm calling Luigi's"? :-)
Cheers,
Scott.
I usually cooked it on a cookie sheet on the top rack (sometimes in a pizza pan with holes) until about 5 minutes before the maximum recommended time, pull it out, add a layer of pepperoni and mozzarella, and then put it back in the oven to finish.
Even with all that I was never happy with the way it cooked - the edges were usually over-done and crunchy before the center was hot and fully cooked.
So, for a while I was putting aluminum foil on the edge (like on a pie crust) to slow the browning. That worked much better, but the center still cooked very slowly and it wasn't always easy to pull off the foil before it got welded to the cheese on the edge.
The last year or so, I've been using a pizza stone. But that makes it nearly impossible to use Al foil on the edge. Pre-Heating the stone to ~50F above the baking temperature seemed to cook the center crust better, but it seemed to cook the bottom too quickly (crunchy bottom and still kinda uncooked above). And the stone is nearly black with burnt cheese and stuff, and it smokes, so J hates it. Maybe there's some magic temperature window that works better.
I just found this. I'll probably try it on my next attempt. It apparently risks smoking too, but it's worth a shot.
What are your frozen pizza tricks, or do you just say, "Screw it, I'm calling Luigi's"? :-)
Cheers,
Scott.