Maximum, always - and then the more useful question, which is what your oven is actually doing when it says maximum.
By Scooter M./Published September 1, 2026
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As hot as your oven goes, which for a domestic oven is 500 to 550 F, with the surface given enough time to actually get there. There is no domestic pizza style that benefits from a lower setting.
| Style | Surface temperature | Bake time | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| New York, thin | 500-550 F | 6-9 min | The domestic sweet spot |
| Neapolitan-style at home | 550 F plus broiler | 4-6 min | A true Neapolitan needs 800 F plus; this is an approximation |
| Pan, Detroit, Sicilian | 450-500 F | 12-18 min | Lower and longer, because the dough is thick |
| Deep dish | 425-450 F | 25-35 min | Needs time for the middle, not heat for the base |
| Frozen pizza on a preheated surface | Box temperature, plus a hot surface | Per the box, minus 2-3 min | A preheated surface cooks it faster than the box assumes |
500-550 F
Surface temperature, not dial setting
Those are different numbers, and during a preheat they can be 150 F apart. The dial is a setpoint for the air; the surface is what bakes the base.
Most domestic ovens stop at 500 or 550 F. That is genuinely limiting compared with a pizzeria deck at 700 F or a Neapolitan oven at 900. Four things get you closer:
A higher-effusivity surface. A steel at 500 F puts more heat into the base in the first thirty seconds than a stone at 550 does. This is the biggest single lever and it is covered in stone versus steel.
The broiler, after the launch. Bake on the surface for three or four minutes, then switch to broil for the last 60 to 90 seconds to finish the top. This is the standard workaround for the top-versus-base mismatch a fast base creates.
Rack position. Higher is hotter on top, lower is hotter underneath. If your base is done before the cheese, move up. If the reverse, move down.
A longer preheat. Free, and the thing most people are actually missing.
Domestic thermostats drift, and an oven running 50 to 100 F below its dial is common. It is also the cheapest possible explanation for a disappointing pizza, so rule it out first.
Put a thermometer in the middle of the cabinet, set 450 F, wait 20 minutes and read it. More than 25 F off and your oven is miscalibrated - many can be corrected in the control panel settings, and the manual will say how.
A convection fan moves air, which speeds up everything that is cooked by air - the top, the cheese, the cornicione. It does nothing for the base, which is cooked by conduction from the surface.
Which makes it useful when your base is running ahead of your top, and unhelpful when it is the other way around. Many ovens also drop the setpoint by 25 F automatically in convection mode, and for pizza you do not want that - set it back up.
A self-clean cycle reaches 800 to 900 F, and there is a well-known technique that involves starting a clean cycle, letting the oven reach temperature, then defeating the door lock to bake in it.
It does produce a genuinely better pizza. It also defeats a safety interlock on an appliance at 900 F, will void any warranty, and can damage the oven's controls. We are not going to recommend it, and we would rather say why than pretend it does not work.
ThermoWorks
The adjustable emissivity is the reason to buy this rather than a cheap gun. Fixed-emissivity instruments read a seasoned steel 40 to 80 F low, and that is the difference between a good bake and a pale one.
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CDN
The best of a category whose published accuracy is plus or minus 25 F. That is not a criticism of this unit - it is the honest ceiling of a bimetallic dial, and it is why we would spend the money on infrared instead.
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Baking Steel
A quarter inch is the thickness where a steel stops being a novelty and stays a thing you can still lift. Its advantage over a stone is not preheat speed - it is what happens one second after the base lands.
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Every number on this page came from one of these, or from arithmetic on one of these that we showed in full.