My old apartment has a similarly old oven that barely gets up past 500 degrees. While fine for Tombstone, it doesn’t quite cut it for really good, crispy thin crust pizza.

Last weekend, I went up the Michigan for Fourth of July, and brought the pizza stuff with me. Since the oven isn’t exactly summer/Independence Day friendly (really, who bakes stuff on 4th of July? It’s un-American), I went for the grill to cook the pizza.

My first attempt was pretty badly burnt. Not quite inedible, but the bottom was a very, very advanced stage of golden brown. Golden black? Regardless, the top was cooked almost perfectly — bubbly and crispy — so I was encouraged.

The second round I dialed down the burners to try to get the bottom in sync with the top. Better, but still not quite what I was looking for. Still as good or a bit better than the oven. The main problem is still getting the top and bottom to be done at the same time — if you get the heat needed to do the top perfectly, the bottom is probably going to get burned.

Next time, I’m going to try putting the stone in only a few minutes before the pizza. The not-entirely-hot stone will hopefully buffer the bottom for a while as the top gets blasted by the heat. I’ll report back.