What Temperature Should a Pizza Oven Be? (2026): Every Style's Number

Before any specific number, the principle that makes all of them usable: your pizza is cooked by the stone it sits on, not the air above it. The crust, the crisp base, the structure, the part that makes or breaks the pie, is set by conduction from the floor. The dome and the hot air finish the top, but the base is pure floor heat. So when you ask "what temperature should my oven be?", the honest answer is always "what temperature should the floor be?"

This matters because the temperature a manufacturer advertises is almost never the floor. A four-digit "max temp" on the box is typically the dome, the air, or even the flame tip, the hottest thing they can honestly measure, not the thing that touches your dough. Two ovens both stamped "950°F" can have completely different floor behavior, and only the floor predicts your crust. We unpack this fully in how to choose a pizza oven, but for temperature purposes just hold onto the rule: every number in this guide is a floor target.

Neapolitan is the style that demands the most heat, and it's the reason dedicated pizza ovens exist at all. A true Neapolitan pie, a thin, tender, soft-centered round with a puffed, leopard-spotted rim, is engineered to cook in 60 to 90 seconds on a floor around 850–950°F. The Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana, the body that defines the style, specifies a floor in roughly that band and a bake measured in seconds, not minutes. That speed is the whole point: the dough puffs and chars before it can dry out, leaving the airy, slightly wet crumb that defines the style.

This is also where our signature benchmark lives. The 60-Second-Pizza Club is our shorthand for ovens that can genuinely turn out a leopard-spotted Neapolitan pie in about a minute, and membership requires a floor that reaches and holds roughly 750°F or hotter. Almost no kitchen oven gets there (most top out near 550°F), which is precisely why a gas oven like the Ooni Koda 16 or a heavily insulated one like the Gozney Roccbox is the tool for the job.

New York-style pizza is a different animal and wants a noticeably cooler floor, roughly 600–700°F, with a bake of four to eight minutes. The reason is structural: a New York pie is bigger (a full 16-to-18-inch round, sold by the foldable slice), with a slightly thicker, chewier crust that needs time to dry out and crisp all the way through. Blast it at Neapolitan temperatures and the bottom burns while the interior is still raw and the cheese hasn't properly rendered.

This is the clearest proof that "hotter is better" is wrong. For New York, a 950°F floor is actively counterproductive, you want the moderated heat that lets a larger pizza cook evenly from edge to center. Many dedicated ovens can dial down to this range, and a gentler electric oven like the Ninja Artisan (which tops out around 700°F) sits naturally in New York territory. A home oven with a steel, covered later, is also genuinely capable of a good New York slice.

Thick, pan-baked styles want the lowest temperatures of the lot, generally 500–600°F. Detroit-style (the rectangular, cheese-to-the-edge, focaccia-crumb pie baked in a steel pan), Sicilian, grandma, and most deep or pan pizzas are all about a tall, airy, fully-cooked crumb with a fried-cheese frico edge. That thickness needs real time in the oven, ten to fifteen minutes or more, so the center cooks through before the outside overbakes.

At Neapolitan or even New York temperatures, a pan pizza is hopeless: the exterior carbonizes long before the dense interior is done. This is the style where a standard home oven is not a compromise but the correct tool, a kitchen oven's 450–550°F range is squarely where Detroit and Sicilian want to live, and the metal pan conducts floor heat into the dough exactly the way these styles need. You do not need a 950°F outdoor oven to make excellent Detroit-style pizza; you need a good steel pan and patience.

Several worthwhile styles live in the middle band, roughly 550–650°F. Roman al taglio (the by-the-cut tray pizza with a light, blistered, high-hydration crumb) and Roman tonda (a thin, cracker-crisp round) both want a moderate-to-hot floor with a bake of several minutes, hot enough to crisp, cool enough not to scorch the delicate crumb. Long-fermented sourdough pizzas similarly tend to bake best a touch below Neapolitan temperatures, because the open, wet crumb benefits from a slightly longer, gentler bake that sets the structure without burning the exterior.

The lesson of these in-between styles is that the temperature ladder is continuous, not a set of three boxes. As the crust gets thinner and faster, the floor goes up; as it gets thicker, wetter, or larger, the floor comes down and the bake lengthens. Once you internalize that relationship you can place any new style on the ladder by eye, and dial your oven to it, instead of memorizing a chart.

If you've wondered why you can't just make Neapolitan pizza in your kitchen oven, the answer is a hard ceiling: almost all home ovens max out around 500–550°F, a limit set by safety regulations and the oven's insulation and components. That's fine for Detroit, Sicilian, and most pan pizzas, and it's workable for New York, but it's hundreds of degrees short of the 850–950°F floor a true Neapolitan bake needs, which is the entire reason dedicated outdoor pizza ovens exist.

The best home-oven upgrade isn't a hotter oven, it's a better floor. A thick baking steel (covered in depth in our stone vs. steel guide) preheated for 45–60 minutes at your oven's max stores and conducts far more heat into the dough than the oven's air temperature alone, effectively giving your 550°F oven a much hotter, more aggressive floor. It won't make you a 60-second Neapolitan pie, but it will make a genuinely excellent New York-style slice, the style that's actually designed for that temperature range.

Every number in this guide is useless if you can't see your floor temperature, and the tool that shows it costs about $15–25: a handheld infrared (laser) thermometer. You point it at the center of the stone after a full preheat, pull the trigger, and it reads the surface temperature instantly. This single cheap gadget tells you more about your oven than any spec on the box, because it measures the one number that actually cooks your pizza.

Use it three ways. First, confirm your floor is at the style's target before you launch, don't trust the preheat time or the dial, trust the reading. Second, watch the recovery: take a reading, launch a pizza, then read the floor again right after you pull it to see how far it dropped and how fast it climbs back. That's heat recovery, and it's the difference between a great fourth pizza and a sad one. Third, map your floor's hot and cold spots by reading several points, most ovens are hotter near the flame, which is exactly why you rotate the pizza mid-bake.