Homebrew PCBs

You mean the metal square on the bottom of some surface mount ICs. Yes, that can be difficult without a soldering oven.

Are you making your own PCBs? If not, you should have a lot of solder vias (plated through holes) under the exposed pad. I find I can solder these with a temperature controlled iron and a lot of liquid flux. If you only add solder to one hole, you can see when the solder flows and coats by looking in the other holes.

Of course, solder this after soldering the leads down.

Steve Greenfield AE7HD