It wasn't until I entered high school that I tasted prepared or store bought
pizza.  In fact, the item that my Italian family made and the Italian family
next door made and called pizza didn't even look like what we now call pizza--or
even taste the same.

We would take Italian bread and slice it about 2" thick.  Drizzle some olive
oil
over it, add some Italian seasonings sprinkle with grated goat cheese and
mozzarelli, either bake or broil until cheese melts.  or----

to get a very thick pizza crust that is quite tasty, see if your local
bakery will sell you the dough for their French bread.  1lb. of dough will
make a very nice thick pizza about the size of a large cookie sheet.  And
then cover it with your favorite toppings.  Or make your own dough.  The
following recipe makes about 2 lbs of dough, not quite.  It will make two
small loaves of Italian bread, or two medium sized pizzas--about 12" x15"--
or one cookie sheet size and one pie plate size pizza.

2 cups flour
1 scant tbs salt--I use a little less than a full tablespoon
1 tbs sugar
1 egg
1/4 cup melted butter--or 1/2 cube--can use margerine
2 tbs dry yeast--two packages or two cakes or two heaping tablespoonsful of
  crumbled yeast from the bakery
2 cups very hot water--about 115 degrees

4-5 cups flour

In a glass mixing bowl add the yeast, sugar, salt, water and egg.  Beat until
the yeast is dissolved.   Add the 2 cups flour and beat until the mixture is
smooth.  Add the melted butter and beat again until well mixed.  Add the
remaining flour one cup at a time beating well after each addition until the
dough is satiny and smooth and pulls fairly clean from the bowl.  *All this
can be done using the dough hooks on the mixer if you prefer.*

Remove the dough from the bowl and on a clean board, knead for about 15
minutes.  

Liberally butter a clean bowl--I usually use a stainless steel or glass bowl--
and place the dough in the bowl twirling it around to get butter over all.

Cover and let rise in a warm, cozy place until the dough is doubled in height.
Punch down and gently knead to remove the air bubbles.  To make the two medium
pizzas, divide the dough generally in half and using a rolling pin roll it out
to fit your pan.  Pinch the dough up the sides of the pan if you need to.
Since I use a cookie sheet with sides this is what I generally do.  Poke the
dough in several places with a fork.  Set in a warm spot to let rise about
1/2 hour to 45 minutes--not longer as it will rise too much.  Sprinkle with
olive oil and then cover with your favorite topping.  Bake in a moderate oven
about 375-400 degrees for about 1/2 hour.  The sides will really rise and turn
golden brown and also sound hollow when tapped and the bottom will be brown.
Let sit for about 5-10 minutes before slicing.  This usually gives us a really
nice tasty and thick crust.  If you want it thicker, just divide the dough
differently.  enjoy

Realistically, if both agreed to within something reasonable, I'd
choose one and use it with an approriate fudge factor.  You might
consider one dial-type and one bulb-type, except you'll need to get a
bulb-type that can handle the heat, and you'll probably end up with a
lab thermometer in which case I'd just throw out the cheapo dial
jobbie and use it for the calibration.

I had a Sears guy in to fix my range once, and he used some Tom Swift
Electric Stove Measuring Device to check the oven (it used a
thermocouple and I think the rest was to impress the rubes).  He said
that everyone thinks their oven is mis-calibrated and most of them are
wrong.  His advice was to prepare a box cake mix, following the
package instructions precisely.  Only if it fails should you worry
about the oven being ``out of tune.''

Another consideration is the pan you use -- as pans age, they tend to
blacken, and this alters cooking times (shortening them).

This isn't to imply that any of the folks in this thread are wrong
about their ovens -- I just thought it interesting to get a
``professional's '' slant on it.

        Mike

I have a question, too.  Why do gas ovens suck so bad?  Mine have had
terrible hot spots compared to electric ovens.

And on another note, why are electric ovens vented so much?  Is it so
they'll cool rapidly when you turn them down, or is to so steam can
escape?

        Mike

Probably needs more work.  How about a multiple, stepwise regression with temperature
as the dependent variable and setting (presumably in radians), time of day, people in
the kitchen, work being done on the gas lines...:->  Need to take into account the
nonlinear relationships involved due to degree of scuzz on the walls as well, plus all
the nonlinear relationships with heat transfer and such at different temperatures.

But seriously...

Generally, when my oven breaks, I call somebody who repairs ovens, and they fix it.
Not being technically inclined, of course.  I remember I moved into an apartment in
Boston (Boston being filled with apartments with pre-revoluationary gas ovens) where
the oven seemed a little hot.  You turn it on, preheat it, put food in, and the food
burns within minutes.  So I called a repair guy, courtesy of the landlord, who pulled
out a professional oven calibration tool (a screwdriver) and a professional thermometer
(a probably-not-THAT-expensive probe box thermometer).  He stuck the probe in the
oven, turned the oven dial to 300, pulled off the dial, let it heat to about 300, then
stuck the screwdriver into a special screw inside the oven and turned it until the gas
went off.  And that was it, for free too since the landlord paid for it.

Of course, there was the time I called a similar person to fix a broken door cable.  He took
four hours and charged me $20/hr to install a couple of cables bought from a hardware
store.  Oh well...

True fact, but you have to let ovens /stabilize/ at a temperature before you
can trust that temperature.  An oven that's just <foof>ed because it reached
(say) 300 degrees on the first pass isn't a safe place to cook in, if the
item you're cooking has a critical temperature requirement.  The oven walls
are still cold and will drag the temperature down very rapidly, and you know
for a fact that the oven just reached its upper /limit/, not the intended
temperature.  After ten minutes (or less, or more, depending on insulation,
heat output, door condition), you've got a temperature that isn't oscillating
quite so wildly, and it's much more likely to produce a truer readout
 -- or cake.

True fact, but you have to let ovens /stabilize/ at a temperature before you
can trust that temperature.  An oven that's just <foof>ed because it reached
(say) 300 degrees on the first pass isn't a safe place to cook in, if the
item you're cooking has a critical temperature requirement.  The oven walls
are still cold and will drag the temperature down very rapidly, and you know
for a fact that the oven just reached its upper /limit/, not the intended
temperature.  After ten minutes (or less, or more, depending on insulation,
heat output, door condition), you've got a temperature that isn't oscillating
quite so wildly, and it's much more likely to produce a truer readout
 -- or cake.

True fact, but you have to let ovens /stabilize/ at a temperature before you
can trust that temperature.  An oven that's just <foof>ed because it reached
(say) 300 degrees on the first pass isn't a safe place to cook in, if the
item you're cooking has a critical temperature requirement.  The oven walls
are still cold and will drag the temperature down very rapidly, and you know
for a fact that the oven just reached its upper /limit/, not the intended
temperature.  After ten minutes (or less, or more, depending on insulation,
heat output, door condition), you've got a temperature that isn't oscillating
quite so wildly, and it's much more likely to produce a truer readout
 -- or cake.

It's not enough that we had an NBS-traceable oven. You want us to have a
meaningfully traceable oven?

Anyway, you are right, of course. And it seems to me that the implication
is that even a well-behaved oven will show more variation than most people
think, and so modest misbehaviour matters less than most of us fear.

Recipes which specify time and temperature are all very well, but they
almost certainly need some experimentation. Fortunately, cooking is not a
high-precision discipline, contrary to the mysticism. Some things do call
for careful work, but most do not.