I don't know about it going higher than 500, but my pizza does fine at 500. I make homemade pizza all the time in my NXR stove. A sixteen inch pizza is a bit tighter fit than in my old oven, but other than that, it's great. I don't use the convection switch, I am afraid it would dry it out.

500F is only the max marked setting for the dial.

You can run the NXR's oven above that marked 500F setting just as you can run it below the minimum marked setting of 150F. I can (and just have) run the oven in my NXR DRGB3001 at 130F for hours simply by turning the dial down below the 150F mark. (I was experimenting with drying smoked peppers to make my own paprika.)

I'm not sure how accurate or inaccurate my oven thermometers are at the high end of the range, but my NXR oven has pegged both a Cooper Atkins and a True-Temp dial-type oven thermometer both of which have scales that go above 550F.

Maybe more to the point, like Back40jen, I've had no trouble with pizzas. I do recommend baking them on a preheated stone, unglazed quarry tile or a baking steel (the latter tried per recommendation at the Modernist Cuisine site.)

" Posted by JWVideo
(I was experimenting with drying smoked peppers to make my own paprika.) "

I like reading about how people use their appliances. That sounds interesting. Just to hijack a little, how did it come out?

I've been doing this with ripe red bell-peppers because I haven't yet been able to find or grow any any of the paprika peppers. Seemed like a great way to use up a sudden influx of end-of-summer peppers. So far, I've done two batches.

Split each pepper into five slices and put them in a smoker for about 3 hours with the first batch and 5 hours for the second. Temp setting was around 180F both times.. First time, I used applewood for smoke; the latest batch used alder.

That process gave the smoky aroma and taste while starting the dehydration. Dehydration was fnished in the NXR oven at 130F with the convection fan running for about 11 hours, Put them in a blender with a store-bought dried chile (a guajillo) for some heat. Ground them using a blender on medium-low speed. In my case, it was the "3" setting on a VitaMix. (Any higher and the powder turns to dust and coats everything when you open the lid.) Poured the powder through a medium seive/strainer to remove the remaining ungrindable flakes of pepper skins.

Second batch was made with a lot more peppers and wound up being a lot darker in color (which I expected from the longer smoking and the use of alder smoke). Both batches are very good seasoning for cooked things. Close to Spanish-style smokey paprikas but fresher and somewhat sweeter to my taste. Not as zingy as the Hungarian versions.

That sounds wonderful. Thanks for posting.

thx for the info!

Other tips. comments.

First, in the smoker (I've got a Bradley Digital model from Costco). put the peppers skin-sde up. That way, you get more smoke in the flesh of the peppers. Probably, 3 hours is fine. Skip this step if you don't care about smoky paprika.

A friend is cranking up to do another batch in about two weeks with a Smokehollow unit, but we're going to dehydrate in my stove's oven. Which brings me to my second point. I'm not sure that you need to dehydrate at 130F. I just used that temperature because, several decades ago when I was in graduate school and had access to some sophisticated lab equipment, that at was the temp we measured when sun-drying tomatoes and pepper in our racks in the sun. So that is what i used because I could do it with the NXR. I don't know why you could not do this with other stoves at higher temps. (There may be reasons; I just do not know.)

Third, when you go to the other end of the temp scale in an NXR, I really do not know how hot the oven gets, but it is plenty hot enough to make what I think of as decent pizza,. The thing to be cautious with in using an NXR oven for pizza baking is finding the point at which the (lower) baking element shuts off and the the broiling elements kicks on. (They can't run together in an NXR).

If you think of the the oven markings like a compass rose, the 500F mark will be at 90 degrees, which would be due east on a compass. The broil setting is around 15 degress (or, in compass terms for you sailors out there, north-northeast.) My west coast friends who have a 36" NRG tell me that that the baking element on their stove s shuts down at a dial setting of around 45 degrees and the broiler element kicks on at around 20 degrees on their stove. (Roughly north-east and north-north-east on a compass). On my 30" DRG model, the baking element seems to shut off around 35 degrees and the broiler kicks in around 20 degrees where the oven is pdh (pdh = pretty damn hot).. I can tell your from experience that pdh is fine for pizza but, if you pass the point where the baking element shuts off and the broiler fires up, you will quickly burn your pizza in an NXR unless your baking stone (or whatever) is the bottom of the oven. (Don't recommend that because the pizza will be pretty soggy.) Better to turn the oven dial to about 30-35 degrees and preheat a stone or steel with an NXR.

This post was edited by JWVideo on Sat, Sep 14, 13 at 21:31

thx for the info!