Okay, friends - I have a pizza stone and had a horrible time trying to get my pizza from the pan to the stone. What is the trick (other than just corn meal - didn't work for me)? What am I doing wrong?

let the dough rise twenty minutes and use a stone as above. 550 is the highest most ovens go...though on the cleaning cycle it get to 1000. The pizza oven at the restaurant is about 850-900. Thats why people use the grill with a stone.

I sprinkle a liberal amount of cornmeal on the baking tray, and it seems to work very well, I noticed a lot of pizzerias do this.

OP,
How hot's your oven? Pizza stones are terrific.

If you use fresh vegetables (mushrooms, peppers) - cook them first to get the water out of them. Otherwise, the water goes straight into the crust.

Ditto all the other PPs about the pizza stone. It's essential to preheat the stone before placing the pizza on it.

metal pan with holes did the trick for me! I was having the same problem with soggy crust.

Have you tried grilling it? YUM! It's delicious, easy, and out-of-this world good.

-Test a small piece of dough to see if your grill is too hot.
-Once you roll out the dough (we divide a Harris Teeter dough ball into 4), brush one side of it with olive oil. Even easier than brushing, we got a spray bottle of olive oil from HT.
-Place it onto the grill
-Once it is almost ready to flip, spray the up-side of the dough with oil. Flip the dough.
-Quickly put your sauce, cheese and toppings into the pizza. It won't take long.

use a heated cast iron pan w/ a couple tablespoons of oil in the bottom to cook the crust. make sure the oven is really hot and that you are using a recipe with either bread flour or 00.

Pizza stone preheated to highest possible over temp (550 F) for 20 minutes duration. Slide pizzza onto stone using a pizza peel AFTER -- and here's the trick no one else has mentioned in this thread -- brushing the exposed crust with olive oil. Extra crispiness.

I always pre-cook the pizza crust on a cheap metal tray, then flip it over so the crispier side is up and then put the toppings on that side.

The cookie tray will make the bottom cook a little faster, so when you flip it over it gives the crust a little barrier against the sauce.

I have much better luck with my pizza crust when I lower the rack to the bottom third of the oven. I also use an innexpensive metal pan. I bake at 485 degrees until the edges of the crust are golden brown. I've had good luck with these two recipies:

http://smittenkitchen.com/2007/01/pizza-and-the-limits-of-diy/

Note where she says "(I always err on the side of skimpy with toppings so to not weight down the dough too much, or if I have multiple toppings, to keep them very thinly sliced.) "

http://www.101cookbooks.com/archives/001199.html

Anonymous wrote:Pizza stone. Pre-heat your oven at the highest temperature it will go to for like half an hour so the stone is heated through, then adjust temperature to whatever you use for baking. We also had one of those pizza sheets with the holes but found that with the stone, it was less necessary.

Also, the more toppings you put on a pizza, the more moisture there is to seep down into/through the crust. My husband prefers to put every available topping on his, while I pick like 2-3 and stick with them. Mine are almost always crisper than his.

Not the OP, but thanks! I totally didn't understand why everyone raves about pizza stones because whenever I used mine I was not impressed at all. I'll try this next time!

Pizza stone. Pre-heat your oven at the highest temperature it will go to for like half an hour so the stone is heated through, then adjust temperature to whatever you use for baking. We also had one of those pizza sheets with the holes but found that with the stone, it was less necessary.

Also, the more toppings you put on a pizza, the more moisture there is to seep down into/through the crust. My husband prefers to put every available topping on his, while I pick like 2-3 and stick with them. Mine are almost always crisper than his.

We have both a pizza stone and a really cheap metal pizza baking sheet with holes. The pizza comes out crispier on the cheap metal one with holes, so I use it more.

I am trying to make my own pizza and I keep trying different dough methods, but it always ends up doughy on the bottom while the cheese and toppings get burnt. I have tried pre-baking it, but maybe I'm not doing it long enough or at a high enough temp?