but my best results so far involve greasing the crust with olive oil and dunking four tablespoons of garlic powder for flavour - and even then the pizza tastes only slightly above mid.
The fact that the garlic powder wasn't burned to shit and horrendously bitter tells me you're not baking it hot or long enough. I've experimented quite a bit with making pizza in a regular home oven, and I get pretty decent results these days.
Dough:
If you want a flavorful crust, fermenting it in the fridge is mandatory. The cheapest, shittiest grocery store flour fermented for two or three days will make a tastier crust than the fanciest flour from Italy, and it's not going to be close. Make the dough with far less yeast, put it in an oiled Ziploc bag and just leave it in the fridge. Baking the pizza in a home oven requires a slightly wetter dough. Stickier and more difficult to work with, but it can bake for longer without getting too dry or too dark. As a rough starting point: 500 grams of flour, 310-320 grams of water, two teaspoons of salt, 1 gram (1/5 teaspoon) of active dry yeast. Knead for 10 minutes, put it in a Ziploc bag, let it ferment in the fridge for two to three days. Take it out of the fridge, let it come up to room temp (1-2 hours) divide into three portions, shape those portions into a ball (with a nice amount of surface tension), put said balls into oiled bowls and let them rest for 90 minutes so the gluten can relax, otherwise they're going to be impossible to stretch out. Once you're more comfortable handling wet doughs, you will probably want to increase the water to 340-350 grams to make the crust more airy, but 310-320 is a good compromise to start with.
Toppings/sauce:
When you use a home oven, you really need to be mindful of how much moisture you're putting on top of the crust, because there's not going to be any browning until the water is gone. For that reason I make my sauce with a mix of concentrated tomato puree and passata rather than just straight up passata. And I only use maybe two table spoons for the entire pie. Over-season the sauce because you only use so little of it. I use like three times as much salt and pepper as I would normally use for a pasta sauce.
As far as toppings go, less really is more. The more you put on, the less browning/flavor there's going to be. That's especially true for toppings like cheese, onions, tomatoes that have lots of moisture. For the cheese, use a blend of Mozzarella and something more flavorful. 2/3 mozzarella (low-moisture, not the water-packed balls) and 1/3 Provolone, Cheddar, Edam or Gouda, depending on where you live and what's easy to get.
Baking:
Assuming your oven is electric, bake your pizza on the bottom. I don't mean the bottom rack, but the bottom of the oven. If your baking sheet/tray can handle high temps, that's the best way to get enough heat from the bottom without using a stone or steel. Using a sheet is fine. Even baking paper can be fine if you don't go for too long. The moisture inside the dough will limit the temperature as long as it's still present. If your oven has a max temp of say 250°C, you would preheat it to 200°C, put in the pizza and then set it to 250°C once the pizza is in. The idea is to make sure that the bottom heating element is active for several minutes after you put in the pizza, so that's why you're preheating to a lower temp and then bumping it up. If your oven has a fan, turn it on after the pizza goes in so it gets enough heat from the top as well. If it doesn't have a fan, you may have to move the pizza higher after 5 minutes. If you use a stone/steel, you would preheat it to 250°C of course.
Random tips:
-If you knead the dough by hand, do it inside a non-stick skillet to avoid messing up your counters. You can also use it (very lightly oiled or with a layer of flour on the bottom) to shape the dough into balls.
-If you use a stone or steel, use plenty of semolina flour, work fast once the pizza is on the peel, practice transferring the pizza to the stone/steel without topping first (but have it sit on the peel for a realistic amount of time). If it sticks to the peel, ABORT, start over or maybe turn the pizza into a Calzone and add more Semolina. Don't force it. Dropping a pizza topped with cheese onto the bottom of a hot oven is an absolute nightmare. It will fill your kitchen with smoke, your entire place will smell like burnt cheese for a long time and you will spend hours cleaning that oven. Avoid at all costs.
