Thanks for the interesting replies!
I only use AP flour because I don't like to have various kinds of expensive flour going stale in my cupboard. If I did more baking then I might use specialty flour. I make great pizza with a one hour rise but, I think the taste of a room temperature fermented dough takes it up a notch or two. I don't think it is about a right or wrong way to make a pizza it is just many different ways to make a pizza.
Bread flour won't go stale in my kitchen! I just love focaccia bread and I've got a basic recipe that I add a changing variety of ingredients and enjoy the results often enough that my bread flour never goes bad.
I'm piqued by your comment that you like room temperature fermented dough, an hour. If an hour is good would more time be better? What's the limit? (IMO probably 24 hours is the maximum I'd let bread ferment at room temperature, but I'm no authority on this.)
I'm not saying my way is the only way or best way. Just that it works for me. I like my pizza most of the time.
I like my pizza all the time! Yeah I make good and better, and maybe haven't made excellent yet, but there's just something about home cooked anything that makes me really enjoy it. I like dining in casual situations too. They won't let you take your shoes off in a restaurant!
I just bought a ceramic pizza stone for $50 that includes a material that is advertised to prevent thermal shock and as a result, less likelihood it will crack. It resides on the bottom of my oven.
Right now the top and bottom of my pizza seem to cook at the same rate so I don't feel I have to adjust.
Like the saying goes, "Don't fix what ain't broken!" If it's working for you there is of course no reason to change.
I was intrigued by the pizza I saw on a few of the PBS shows I referred to earlier. I was intrigued by the pizzas that had a really delicious looking browned crust and it looked kind of bubbly in places (in a good way). My own pizzas come out more uniformly flat and I've never paid any particular attention to the edges. That's something I'd like to experiment with.
I always take Cooks Illustrated/Americas Test Kitchen claims that they discovered the absolute best way to make a dish with some skepticism. When you are back in a home with an oven, you should experiment.
Of course I don't believe everything I see on TV or read on the Internet, but I've found some fascinating ideas, tips and recipes on America's Test Kitchen, and everything they've said in areas that I'm good at agrees with my own knowledge. They always have good reasons for all the things I never thought of before.
One thing I liked about ATK's pizza episode was that the recipes for dough and topping were extremely straightforward, and when they were done the crust looked nice and wasn't saggy like some pizza I've even. Maybe the pizza stone on the top shelf wasn't the secret of it but it worked well for them.
Looking at it differently, why not put the pizza stone on the top shelf? I wouldn't put it on the floor of the oven just because there's usually a bit of grime or soot there and I'd rather not get that on the stone, so it looks like the choices are top shelf or bottom shelf.
(And that's not withstanding what was mentioned above, if what you're doing works then obviously there's no reason to change.)
On the issue of flour. I started out with a Tyler Florence recipe for pizza dough made with AP flour. It worked great. Then I switched to bread flour on the theory that the higher protein content would yield a chewier crust.
On the other hand, type 00 flour is lower in protein content (less than 10%) than AP flour so I guess it depends on what you want from your crust.
But did the bread flour yield a chewier crust like you expected? It's been a while since I cooked pizza and mostly what I remember now is that I enjoyed my pizza. I used bread flour. Would there be any reason to expect that AP would work better than bread flour?
That's interesting about the protein content, and of we all know that bread flour is higher. Maybe it's not protein that's important. I've heard bread flour makes better gluten, but maybe that's on account of the protein content.
I'm just asking questions here. The discussion has been interesting and I enjoy hearing the different opinions.