Pizza timer

How to use the online timer

Twelve minutes suits a home oven at a high domestic temperature, which is nowhere near the ferocious heat of a wood-fired oven that cooks a pizza in ninety seconds — most kitchen ovens simply can't get there, so a longer bake at the highest setting your oven offers is the realistic substitute. Preheating properly matters more here than with almost anything else: give the oven, and especially a pizza stone or steel if you're using one, a full twenty minutes to come up to temperature before the pizza goes anywhere near it.

Position inside the oven changes the outcome more than people expect. A rack near the bottom third gets more direct heat to the base, which helps if your crust usually comes out pale, while a higher rack favours the toppings and cheese browning before the base has caught up.

Look for a deeply golden, blistered crust with dark leopard-spotting rather than an evenly pale one, and cheese that's fully melted with a few browned spots rather than just soft. If the top is done before the base has crisped, dropping the pizza directly onto the oven floor or a preheated stone for the last minute usually closes that gap.