Ditch The Oven Rack: Here's Where To Bake Pizza For Peak Crispiness

Next time you're making homemade pizza and you don't have time to heat up a pizza stone, there's another way to get an even, super hot heat to give your pizza a nice char. Instead of placing the pizza on a rack, just place it on the floor of your oven. If your oven shows signs it needs cleaning, you can still place baking paper with a Teflon sheet underneath or set a sheet pan on the oven floor. Before you do this, however, you should make sure your oven floor can handle a pizza. If the floor isn't strong enough or it has exposed heating coils, this trick won't work.

You'll also want to make sure you don't have soggy pizza that will spill over the bottom of your oven. If you're using fresh mozzarella, prep it first by patting it dry. Precook any vegetables you're using that are high in water so the liquid doesn't get released into your pizza and therefore your oven. If you follow these rules, the pizza will come out like it was in a wood-fired stove!

Your home oven will never get as hot as a pizza oven, but that doesn't mean you can't pull a satisfying pie from it. For the best results, you'll want to read our handy guide on the sign that your oven needs to be recalibrated. Baking your pizza on the floor of your home oven is just the start to getting the most out of it without an expensive specialty oven. If the pizza doesn't have the char, bubbles of crust, and gooey cheese that stretches when you pull out a slice, you can move it to just below the broiler at the end. Just turn on the broiler and put the pizza under it for anywhere from 30 seconds to 5 minutes. You'll want to watch it closely at this stage so it doesn't burn!

And there you have it. A perfectly crispy, bubbly pizza ready to impress whoever you have at your dining table that night. This cooking method is great for a New York-style pie with a crispy bottom that won't flop.