Planning a Pizza Meal: How to minimize on-the-spot baking time?
Hello, Everybody!
I love to make pizzas at home. My favorite recipe so far is that of Peter Reinhart (see, for example, here). I make the dough ahead of time (up to 3 days), storing the dough in the fridge. Then, on the day of eating the pizzas, there is need in the following:
- Letting the dough rest in room temperature (2 hours)
- Shaping
- Adding sauce and toppings
- Baking
Until now, I've been doing all the stages from shaping and on immediately before meal-time: Shaping all the pizzas (6 of them), then starting a cycle of putting sauce+toppings and baking for each pizza: I put the shaped dough on the peel, putting sauce and toppings on it, drop it on the baking stone, and while it's being baked I'm making the next one (taking out the ready pizza with a big wooden spoon, so I don't need the peel).
As each pizza is baked for about 6-8 minutes, the whole baking process takes about 45 minutes. Making it for a family pizza meal is fine, as we start eating the pizzas one by one, taking out a fresh one once in a few minutes. That means that during the meal I'm busy with pizza making. Therefore, I was wondering if there's a way of shortening this time for having a pizza meal while hosting other people, letting me to be part of the meal and not keep running from the kitchen to the dining room...
Maybe I can par bake the dough (with or without the sauce+toppings)? Is there any other way of doing it?
Any advice would be much appreciated, as my friends would really like to be hosted for pizza... ;-)
Thanks!
Arnon
My husband and I make pizza every Sunday for our family of five, and we have also had friends of the family over to join us. I am wondering how many people you plan on hosting? We found that three large pizzas were enough when we had another family over, and although we make two pizzas regularly on Sundays for our own family, about half of it is left over (for lunches), so we could get by with just one. Our pizzas are around 14 inches, and the crust is not super thin or overly thick. Recently we bought a second stone so we could make two at once. That makes things go even faster. Before we had the second stone, we sat down to eat the first pizza while the second one was in the oven, so no one was running around cooking while others ate. Would it work for you to make larger pies?
I personally have found that our oven does not get hot enough to cook the dough if I slide it it in raw with the toppings, so I do pre-cook the dough for a brief time before adding the toppings. I know that is not ideal, but it works for us. But if you do that, the assembly is shorter as well.
You can certainly get very good pizza by par-baking the crust a day or three in advance, but that means you are heating up the stove twice. The only reason I'd do that is if I had too much dough -- to save a few minutes of baking time on event day is not worthwhile in my opinion.
I feel for you. My pies are baked in 6 minutes. 3 minutes at 550, then I turn the broiler on high for 3 minutes. Oven beeps, pizza comes out perfect every time for the dough I use. When I had a pizza party for New Year's eve, I decided to make a Sicilian pie since it would feed more people. It was fantastic. I still made the round ones as well though. I recommend moving people into the kitchen while you make the pizza. They'll enjoy watching you and you can still chat.
That is what we do and in the summer we move the whole process outside and everyone including me seems to have a good time.
Gerhard
Thanks, Gertrude, David!
I didn't think of having two pizza stones at the oven. I'll explore this option.
Also, as for the Sicilian pie - it's not baked on the stone, right?
Thanks again,
Arnon
I baked the Sicilian on a cast iron grill that usually sits on my stove's left side.
I make up to 16 pizzas when we have people over. I do have a Pompeii wfo so that does speed up cook times but still I spend a lot of time making pizzas and tending to them while in the oven as they are done in 2 min. I make mine between 12 and 14 " and will normally stop and have a slice or 2 every 2 or 3 pizzas. I always save my favorite for last.
Randy
I've grappled with these logistics quite a bit, and one of the things that helps me turn out pies is having multiple peels, so I can shape one pizza and let it rest on a peel, then shape another and let it rest while I top the first, then it goes into the oven and top the second, shape a third, then pull out the first one with a third peel.
So I use at least two wooden peels and one metal one (best for pulling pies out), but sometimes 3 wooden peels which allows me to shape more pies before starting to bake any of them. To manage space for all this, I set up a tiered cooling rack like this one, where I put the peels loaded with dough:
http://www.amazon.com/Linden-Sweden-Bakers-Adjustable-Cooling/dp/B00076VGQ4/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1450968137&sr=8-2&keywords=collapsible+cooling+rack
A couple of my peels I made out of plywood.
The other thing that helps is the Rofco oven I bought (more for bread) that has multiple stone decks. They sell them here (mine is the B10 which they are not carrying right now):
http://pleasanthillgrain.com/commercial/stone-ovens
These additions are informative and helpful.
That looks like a pretty impressive oven you have there. I did not know such things existed. I have been planning to get a few more wooden peels. I am sure that would speed up the process, and as a side benefit you can let others top there own pizzas and have them ready to cook. I just got my turning peel as a early xmas present. So that will help me try more that one pizza at a time.
Randy
Pizza Dough Recipe
When we do pizza (I am now using Hamelman's Unkneaded six-fold French Bread recipe pg 272 Bread 2nd edition. I use this because it is pretty quick and very easy to make. You just have to be around for the folds).
So we do pizza's one by one. 1) We do them on the gas BBQ just outside our patio door. I fire up the BBQ an hour ahead with the pizza stones. I have also little square tiles that I bought on Amazon and I put 3 of them on the upper rack to radiate heat downwards. 2) we make Italian style pizza in the sense of maximum of 4 ingredients. They cook in 8-10 mins. 3) We have each family member or guest make a pizza. This gets around the time issue as on person does not have to do it all - and it ends up being great fun as each person is usually inspired.
So I don't have an answer as to how to shorten the time but to make the time more of inclusive and fun. It's more social engineering than time saving..
I know exactly how you feel. This can be a super stressful time. My best solution is to par bake the crust an hour or so before guest arrive. Then lay out all of the toppings.
Benefits of par baking. #4 is the most beneficial, IMO.
Danny