My Wood Fired Pizza Oven
I took the plunge a month or so ago and bought a pizza oven for our patio. I am still "dialing it in", as it were, but I was able to make some outstanding pizza with it this weekend.
The photos are on my phone and I've never had much success posting from my phone to my fresh loaf blog, so you'll have to just take my word for it. Or, if you are so inclined, you can read a review and see some photos on my word press blog.
The neighbors truly raved about the pizza. But more important than what they thought, I thought it came out great. I am already looking forward to next weekend's guests. I made the pies with sourdough; some 30% whole wheat, some 100% Caputo 00 flour. Next week I will likely make the 30% whole wheat again, as I cannot, in good conscience, make 100% refined white flour pizza.
If you're thinking of getting a Pizza Party wood-fired oven, despite its cheesy name, I can say that it is a very worthy oven for making pizzas.
Comments
Now that is some kind of pizza. Had to be a big hit ! Well done and
happy pizza making
And here's a photo of one of the pies for those who don't like to click on links. :)
I am gearing up for my soon to be two-year old's birthday party. The plan is to make pizza, and to avoid having to make many small pizzas, I am working on making larger pizzas that will feed more people. They still bake up in under two minutes, but present another problem, which is that they are a bit more challenging to leave the peel. That means, I will make extra pizzas just in case I have an accidental calzone. This one was delicious.
cure the sticky peel blues when it comes to pizza. When only 1 out of 10 large pizzas sticks, that is still one too many.
I agree that sacrificing a pizza to the pizza gods is too many, even if I sometimes make a decent calzone.
But parchment papers is not intended for high temperatures and I am pretty sure it would burn and ruin the dough.
Looks superb and thanks for the post. I thought I would just share this, in case someone would like to make a good working oven for approximately $135. Even if you rent, this is low-cost enough that you could probably sell it or even leave it without feeling TOO badly. (This is not mine, I just found it while researching. I hope to build one soon.)
I wound up making more than a few extra doughs -- seven or eight pies went unmade. Kind of tragic, really. I don't know if that is because I underestimated the number of guests or overestimated how much they would eat. I could easily have made more pizzas than anybody could eat, but I tried spacing them out so none of the pies would go cold.
They are in the fridge now. Maybe I will try to make some breadsticks with them...I tried cinnamon rolls with two of them this weekend but I think the oven was running cool. They came out "okay" but not fantastic.
Anyway, it was fun making all of the pizza and it is good to know I can feed a crowd with a couple balls of mozzarella, a few cans of tomatoes and a lot of flour.
The last time I made pizza, I had an extra 350g ball of dough. It sat in the fridge in a Ziploc sandwich bag with a Tb of olive oil for 3 days. Rather than toss it, I made one 8" round foccacia. It was better than the pizza! I blogged on it here. The important trick was to leave it at room temperature, in the bag, until it was really puffy. It was probably over-fermented for pizza but made outstanding foccacia. Then, I shaped it to a cake pan greased with more olive oil and let it proof for an hour or more, then more olive oil, salt and rosemary, dimpled it and baked at 500dF. Yum!
David
Sounds delicious. The only thin that has me wondering is the "skin" I let develop on the dough. I suppose if that is kept on the bottom in an oiled pan, it should be fine. I was silly in leaving it exposed to air for as long as I did.