How to Make 20 Pizzas in One Hour with a Home Oven
I needed to feed my son's hockey team. Inside an hour. And believe me, you don't want to keep those kids waiting.
So I figured out a system. Two Baking Steels. One home oven. A pizza every two minutes. It's an assembly line, and it works.
Here's exactly how.
The Setup
Place one Baking Steel Original on the top rack, about 7 inches from the broiler. Place the second steel on the bottom rack. That's it. Two steels, two levels, one oven.
The top steel is your hot station, where the pizza launches and gets that blistered, leopard-spotted crust. The bottom steel is your finish station, where it cooks through gently while you're already launching the next one up top.
Want even more horsepower? Use a Baking Steel Pro on the bottom rack. It's thicker, holds more heat, and gives you a crispier bottom crust. My set up is 2 Originals. I've done real-life tests feeding an entire hockey team, and nobody needed to drop the gloves on me.
The Electric Oven Hack
Here's something most people don't know. Modern ovens are smart, too smart. They have heat sensors, and if the oven gets too hot, the broiler won't cycle on. It's a safety feature. But it kills your pizza game.
The trick? Preheat your electric oven to 450°F, not higher. At 450, the sensors stay happy and the broiler will fire when you need it. If you crank it to 500 or 550, those sensors kick in and shut the broiler down right when you need it most.
If you're using a gas oven, preheat to 500°F. Gas ovens handle the broiler differently and you won't run into the same issue.
Either way, give your steels a full hour to preheat. They need to be fully saturated with heat.
The Head Start
Here's my secret for zero wait time: pre-bake 4 pizzas to about 80% earlier in the day. Pull them before they're fully done and set them aside. When it's go time, slide them back on the steel for 2-3 minutes while you fire up the assembly line. Your guests are eating before you even break a sweat — and by the time those first 4 are gone, you've already got fresh ones coming off the line every 2 minutes.
Launch Sequence
Five minutes before you're ready to go, turn on the broiler. Get that top steel ripping hot. Then it's launch time.
Here's the rhythm:
Minute 0: Launch your first pizza on the top steel. Set a timer for 2 minutes. At 90 seconds, rotate the pizza for even color on the top crust.
Minute 2: Move that pizza down to the bottom steel. Immediately launch a new pizza on the top steel. Start the timer again.
Minute 4: Pull the finished pizza off the bottom steel. Move the top pizza down. Launch a new one up top.
Every 2 minutes after that: You're rotating one out, one down, one in. A finished pizza comes off the bottom. The top pizza slides down. A fresh one goes up. Repeat.
Each pizza takes about 4-5 minutes total, 2 minutes on top under the broiler for that beautiful charred crust, then 2-3 minutes on the bottom to cook through. But because you're overlapping, you're finishing a pizza every 2 minutes.
You'll need to work fast. Have your dough balls ready, your toppings prepped, and your peels floured. This is a pizza assembly line, and once it's moving, it doesn't stop.
The Dough
I use 250-gram dough balls for this setup. That gives you a perfect 12-14 inch pizza — big enough to be legit, small enough to manage quickly when you're cranking them out every two minutes.
Our dough packs are exactly this size, 250 grams, portioned from our 72-hour cold ferment recipe. The long ferment means the dough stretches like yoga, no fighting, no tearing, no stress. Exactly what you need when you're running a pizza assembly line.
Electric Oven Tip
One more thing if you're on electric: learn the rhythm of your broiler. Even at 450°F, it may cycle on and off. Watch it during your first few pizzas and you'll start to feel the pattern. Some ovens cycle every 30 seconds, some every minute. Once you know the rhythm, you can time your launches to hit peak broiler heat every time.
The Math
One pizza every 2 minutes. That's 30 pizzas in an hour if you never stop. Realistically, with dough stretching and topping time, you're looking at 20-25 pizzas per hour. More than enough to feed a hockey team, a birthday party, or the entire neighborhood.
All from a regular home oven. Two steels. No outdoor pizza oven required.
