The same, weird 1% tip that created a championship bicycle racing team can transform your homemade pizza…

Moneyback guarantee: this is the only online pizza screed you’ll ever read that invokes the name of Sir David John Brailsford CBE.
 
Why must we mention a Commander Of The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire in relation to our home-baked discs of cheese and tomato joy?
 
Simple.
 
Truth.
 
You’re witnessing the launch of a new series called “The Free The Pizza Compendium Of Tiny Tips.”

 
And instead of just a not-quite-a-knight CBE (what is with those complicated antique titles in the old country, anyway?), Sir Dave deserves to be the Patron Saint Of Pizza Power.
 
He also doesn’t even know it.
 
Sir Dave (as he seems to be known) is a noted figure in competitive cycling—which has nothing to do with pizza, right?
 
Not so fast, Armstrong.
 
Here’s the topline story you need to know about the simple genius behind his philosophy—an astonishingly banal insight that bred a bunch of breakout world champions.
 
 
As surprising as it may seem, the British Cycling team was really bad.
 
Over a period of 76 years, they had collected exactly one gold medal.
 
They were so bad, equipment manufacturers didn’t want to give them gear. Manufacturers were afraid of having their products associated with a group of organized sports’ most epic losers.
 
Sir Dave came to the team with a simple idea: the philosophy of marginal gains—more popularly known as The 1% Improvement Theory.
 
If he could improve every aspect of the team’s performance by merely one percent, it could become a championship team.
 
During a morning “brekkie” show on the BBC, Sir Dave said, “The whole principle came from the idea that if you broke down everything you could think of that goes into riding a bike, and then improved it by 1%, you will get a significant increase when you put them all together.”
 
So he did that.

And we're talking not just the things you'd expect in training and equipment, but EVERYTHING: from the determining best pillows and mattresses for better sleep to surgical-grade hand-washing techniques for avoiding illness.

 
As a result, British Cycling became an unstoppable force.
 
Across two Olympics, they won a slew of medals the size of small pizzas from a chip shop, and became a powerhouse in the annual Super Bowl of cycling, the Tour de France.
 
And if you know how much the French and the English love each other, British Cycling kicking ass in France is probably reward enough by itself.
 
How’s that for realizing the potential benefits of a one-percent, marginal-gains focus?
 
I was pondering Sir Dave’s philosophy, and suddenly had a realization:

“Holy carp! I’ve been doing something similar with pizza.”
 
 
At the moment this cartoon lightning bolt smacked me atop my head, I was lowering my oven rack two inches.
 
I was trying to determine if it would result in a better tasting pizza.
 
Yes, two inches.
 
Lo and behold, it did.
 
But who is ever going to say something like, “Lower that oven rack two inches and your pizza will be fantastic."
 
Nobody.
 
Until now.
 
 
Let’s call it the infinite and unmarketable boredom in the radical minutiae of pizza process.
 
It got me thinking about how some of the least sexy tweaks in pizza making have led to the sexiest pizzas possible.
 
Some of the biggest frustrations have been mitigated by the most mundane moves imaginable.
 
How in the name of Sir Dave does such pizza magic become manifest?
 
By kicking the devil right in the details.
 
And you’re witnessing it right now.
 
You can say you were here at its first flaming flight like a pizza rocket from the launch pad at…well, wherever they launch flaming pizzas from.
 
 
We’re talking about delivering the biggest, most exciting pizzas possible from your home oven with tips that come at you one gram at a time.
 
Welcome to the first installment of “The Free The Pizza Compendium Of Tiny Tips.”
 
Rolls, right off the tongue, doesn’t it?
 
By the way, I challenge you to come up with a more ridiculous name.
 
In fact, let’s make this a contest: If you can come up with a more delightfully ridiculous name for this one-percent pizza thing, I’ll send you an autographed copy of my soon-to-be-released new book, The Lazy Way To Pizza.
 
It’s only fitting, since I was testing recipes for that book when I experienced this one-percent pizza-piphany.
 
It also seems fitting that today’s tip is the one that got us here in the first place.
 
Got a name? Send it here.
 
And now, the Tiny Tip that starts it all.
 
You’re going to have a hard time getting enough of this, lemme tell ya.
 
 
So. It’s 10pm. Do you know where your children are?
 
And speaking of that, where is your oven rack?
 
Yes, it’s in the oven.
 
But where in the oven?
 
What is the position of your oven rack in your home oven?
 
That position changes the way your pizza bakes.
 
Experimentation is your friend.
 
For a long time, my rack was always just in the middle of the oven.
 
Then, I began raising it into the upper third.
 
Hey! Better pizza!
 
 
Then, I began using the broiler during the second half of the bake.
 
The upper third worked even more brilliantly!
 
That position served me well across two more ovens.
 
Then, I bought a brand new oven.
 
Holy Mother Of Charred Pizza, the rack settings I’d been using were suddenly too high.
 
I had to move the rack back to the middle of the oven.
 
 
Then came test recipes for my new book, which focuses on simple-to-make pan pizzas.
 
I already knew the middle rack was way too high for medium-crust pan pizzas as The Lazy Way prescribes.
 
Moving the rack to the lower third of the oven worked out much better.
 
But the tops of the pizzas were still a touch overdone.
 
So I did something that seemed like madness—madness, I tell you!
 
I lowered the rack the final two inches to the very lowest position available.
 
Amazing!

The balance between a crunchy bottom crust and a perfectly baked top had reached championship levels. 

I suddenly wanted to make pizzas the size of bicycle wheels. 
 
This victory in pan pizza all stems a very simple process known as The Not-So-Scientific Method for Making Pizza.
 
 
I moved the rack. I made a pizza. It was better or it was not.
 
Make a tweak. Bake a pizza. See what happens

Related to rack position is the broiler. In my old oven, the broiler wasn’t as hot as the broiler in the new oven.
 
In the old oven, the upper third was a great place to bake a traditional pizza.
 
A traditional, hand-stretched artisan-style pizza baked directly on the steel in the old oven took about 5 to 6 minutes and was fantastic.
 
With the new oven, that was too much time and too much heat.
 
Lowering the rack, and reducing the amount of time under the broiler made a much better pizza.
 
It also did the job in about four minutes with half the broiler time.
 
 
As for The Lazy Way pan pizzas, they’re so surprisingly good you won’t believe it.
 
While I’m not much of a self-promoting slapper of my own back, these pizzas are a delight. Crunchy, crispy, olive-oily herby. And filling enough that half an 8-inch pizza can be satisfying (depending on your level of discipline and gluttony). 
 
But I digress.
 
I already knew the raw pizza in a pan needed to be closer to the heat source than the traditional, “pan-less“ pizzas.
 
I just didn’t realize how close.
 
It seems that baking at the bottom of the oven is brilliant.
 
And I’m baking those Lazy Way pizzas for as much as 18 minutes.
 
That seems crazy after living in a world of 4-to-6-minute bakes.
 
But trying the lowest oven rack position changed everything about the pizza.
 
Well…maybe not everything. It didn’t fly to the moon or win a bunch of cycling medals from the French.
 
 
But in the case of each pizza style and each oven, each small change made a significant difference.
 
Each pizza looked and tasted better.
 
None of them required a special oven.
 
They didn’t take any extra work.
 
There were no special ingredients required.
 
I didn’t have to buy any new tools.
 
It just took about a one-percent change in the process.
 
 
As you may have heard me say before, pizza is not recipes. Pizza is process.
 
It doesn’t matter what recipe you’re using. If you don’t know how to handle the particular dough with regard to the overall process, it’s a crapshoot. 

Sometimes, it's a win. But not always. 
 
I now know, in my new oven, part of the process for a Lazy Way pan pizza is positioning the oven rack at the bottom position.
 
If you’re a beginner, you might want to experiment with your oven rack position—especially if you were unhappy with your pizza bake.

It could be the 1% solution that changes your command of that pizza. 
 
 
If you’re an expert, have you experimented with your oven rack position?
 
What was the result? Anything surprising? Was there an epiphany?
 
Inquiring minds and all that. Tell me here. I’d love to know.
 
And that’s it.
 
A tiny tip.
 
Does it seem anti-climactic?
 
That’s probably because you haven’t tried it yet.
 
You’re gonna love it.
 
Stay tuned for more tips to come in the one percent pizza process.
 
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