My Friday-Night Pizza Hack (that’ll likely change your life, too)

Every Friday, I risk burning down my house, but it is totally worth it.

Let me explain with a question.

Do you know the secret to the best pizza ever?

A really hot oven.

As in, broil-from-all-directions-and-say-a-quick-prayer hot oven.

It takes a bit of nerve to really go for it. So far, I’ve gotten up to 525 °F. Once the oven has preheated, I slide my precious homemade pizza into the inferno and stare nervously at it for 15 minutes.

Kicking up that oven’s heat is the working mom’s equivalent to a teenage boy driving 85 mph down the highway. It takes brass, but you will be rewarded. Even the toughest food critics (also known as children) will rave about it. This week, I might even try 530°F.

Cat's Cove's Sasha loves to make flatbread pizza with her family on Friday nights!

And it’s all thanks to a realtor in California.

I follow a real estate agent from Long Beach on Instagram (a girl can dream, right?) and a few weeks ago, she used Instagram stories to entertain her followers with the tale of her oven.

When she was a young newlywed, she was famous amongst her friends for her pizza. No one knew why or how she did it, nor could anyone replicate it, but they all accepted her magic pizza-baking powers. Being a renter, she had an old janky oven and it started causing some problems. When the electrician came to look at it, they turned it on and put a thermometer in the oven. It turned out her oven dial was off by 350°F. In other words, when she thought she was cooking her pizza at the standard 350°F, her oven temperature was actually 700°F. 700°F!

That’s how she accidentally discovered that a high-heat gets good pizza results.

She has spread the hot news far and wide and elevated substandard homemade pizzas from cardboard health food to gooey, delicious, professional pizzas.

Now every Friday, whilst I stare lovingly into my scorching oven, I think of “Rachel Lillard, Realtor.” She is in my head, and for allllll the right reasons.

And, as an added bonus, in the event that I actually do damage my house baking amazing pizza, guess where I’m moving?

California.

P.S. That’s actually a photo of MY pizza.

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