I use 425, but I preheat the pizza pan as well as the oven. That way the crust starts cooking from the bottom right away, while the cheese is cooking from the top.
I’ve tried a few homemade pizza recipes, but have yet to find a good sauce. Most of them call for store-bought pizza sauce, I’d rather make one from scratch. The from-scratch recipes I’ve tried ranged from “blah” to awful.
Lotsa’ Motsa’ is pretty good. Bellatorio ultra thin crust is good. Some Digiornos are OK. I eat about two per year.
We always preheat to high temperature, my kids have been really like Kroger brand frozen pizza lately. They are not great but not Freshetta bad either.
Try my sauce recipe:
You will need:
1 large onion, minced
3 cloves garlic, minced
6 oz can tomato paste
28 oz can crushed tomato sauce
¼ cup Merlot wine
1 tsp salt
¼ tsp pepper
½ tsp marjoram
½ tsp thyme
½ tsp oregano
1-1/2 tsp basil
¼ tsp sage
½ teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 very small pinch of cinnamon
1 TBS Concord grape jelly
1 carrot, peeled
White sugar to taste
Olive oil for cooking garlic and onions
Method:
1. Chop the carrot and put in with half of the tomato sauce, in a food processor or blender, and puree until smooth.
2. Mince onion and cook in olive oil until golden brown in a sauce pan. Do this on a low enough heat to keep this browning process under control to keep from burning. Add minced garlic and cook briefly before adding the other half of the tomato sauce. The tomato sauce can be used to stop the browning process of the onion at the perfect stage of browning. Note: never cook garlic until it turns brown. This causes the garlic to get bitter.
3. Add the tomato paste, the rest of the tomato sauce from the food processor, and all of the ingredients. Simmer on low, stirring `every ten minutes. Be careful not to cause the sauce to splatter due to excessive heat. When sauce is thick, add sugar to taste. Let cool, then put in a storage container for the refrigerator. This sauce can be stored in the freezer for six months.