This trick works so well I thought I’d repeat/revise an earlier blog post, this time with pictures.

Our cob oven makes great pizzas. Why? High temperatures. You just can’t make good pizza in a home oven. Or so I used to think.

One evening I invited some friends over for an outdoor pizza party but rain put a wrinkle in those plans. I remembered that Josey Baker had some instructions in his book Josey Baker Bread on how to make pizza in a home oven, so I decided to give it a try. Baker credits this home oven technique to a San Francisco street pizza maverick who goes by the name PizzaHacker. I’m happy to report that it works so well that I wonder why I should bother to spend three hours tending a fire to prep the outdoor oven. Is pizza out of a wood fired oven better? Perhaps, but not by much.

The PizzaHacker’s method is simple. Here’s what you do:

1. Preheat an oven oven safe skillet (I like cast iron) over high heat on a burner. Put a little oil in the pan.

2. Plop your shaped dough into the skillet. Top your pizza while it cooks in the skillet for three minutes.

3. After three minutes stick it under the broiler for another three more minutes or until done. That’s it. This method works much better than trying to bake pizza on a pizza stone.

4. Take the pizza out and let it cool down for a minute. Then slice and enjoy.

I wish I had known about this technique before I bought an expensive pizza stone as this method works much, much better.