Baking multiple pizzas in a row – keeping the floor hot
The floor temperature drops with every pizza. How much recovery time to give the steel or stone, and how to order your bakes for a whole evening.
Quick answer: The floor temperature drops with every pizza you bake – compensate by giving the steel or stone a few minutes’ recovery between each bake, and keep the oven on its highest setting all evening, not just during preheating.
Why the temperature drops with every pizza
Every dough placed on a hot steel or stone draws heat out of the surface (see baking steel and pizza stone), and the oven door opening to load and unload the pizza also lets out some of the stored heat. Without a pause between pizzas, the floor temperature drops step by step through the evening, which usually shows up as ever-longer baking times and an increasingly pale base the more pizzas you bake.
How much recovery you need
There’s no exact figure that applies to every oven and material – a thicker steel (see baking steel) recovers faster than a thin one, and stone generally recovers more slowly than steel. Instead, measure with an infrared thermometer between pizzas and leave the oven with the door closed for an extra minute or so if the temperature has dropped noticeably, rather than relying on a fixed time on the clock.
Keep the oven running between pizzas
Never turn the oven off between your guests’ pizzas – leave it on its highest setting the whole evening. Prepare all the toppings in advance so that the time between bakes goes towards recovery for the steel or stone, not towards chopping vegetables while the floor temperature drops unnecessarily.
The order that works for a whole evening
Bake the simplest pizzas first – marinara or margherita, for example – while you’re still getting a feel for the evening’s oven rhythm, and save more complex recipes with more toppings for later, once you’ve got a handle on how fast the floor recovers between each round.
Set up an ”assembly line” before the first pizza
Have the balls at room temperature, sauce and toppings divided into bowls, and a clean surface to build each pizza on before it’s launched (see topping order). That way you don’t have to rush the next pizza while the steel or stone waits and loses heat unnecessarily – that’s usually the real bottleneck, not the baking time itself.
If the base starts getting worse after a few pizzas
If you notice the base getting paler and doughier the more pizzas you bake, it’s usually a sign that the floor temperature has dropped too much – see soggy bottom and raw in the middle. The fix is to pause, close the door and let the steel or stone charge back up before you carry on.
Frequently asked questions
Does it help to have two steels or stones at once? In theory yes – you could then finish baking one pizza while the other recovers – but it’s an unusual setup for most home kitchens and requires both to fit in the oven at the same time.
Should I always wait the same length of time between each pizza? No, it’s better to measure the temperature with an infrared thermometer and let that decide the length of the pause, rather than following a fixed time that doesn’t account for how much heat your particular oven and surface have actually lost.
Read more about the choice of equipment in baking steel and pizza stone, measure your oven correctly with the infrared thermometer, and see the whole basic protocol in pizza in a home oven.
