Brewed a Hobgoblin clone this AM and played with the Pizza Oven this afternoon while watchin some good football on the boob tube and drinkin homebrew. It’s gonna be a good day Tater.
Looks great, the pizza and the beer !
Looks and sounds like the perfect day.
Firing up the oven for pizza myself today.
Try provel cheese, it will be a life changing experience 8)
Looks great! Gotta good crust recipe to share?
I use Lahey’s no knead recipe with ‘00’ Flour
Pete B. Did you build your own brick oven? That is a project I’ve always wanted to do.
Yes. Its actually an earth oven as opposed to a brick oven. Its mainly made of clay and sand. I built a fieldstone base, the floor of the oven (where pizza , bread etc. get cooked) is made of fire bricks, and regular bricks are used to make the arched opening. It is very thick and heavily insulated, the middle layers that provide the insulation are made of clay mixed with perlite. It gets at least 700F after a couple hours then the fire is removed and the oven floor is cleaned with a wet cloth on a stick. The first couple pizzas cook in about 90 seconds. Its so well insulated that it is 200F the next day.
One can always spot a fellow St. Louisan. ;D
That’s a good one, definitely.
But whatever dough recipe you use, the real key to great pizza (in taste and texture) is to make the dough at least a day or two ahead of time and allow for a very slow rise/fermentation in the fridge. It really makes all the difference.
+1 I also use ice water when making the dough to retard fermentation. It then goes in the fridge for at least a day. It not only sours a little bit but it makes for more air pockets and crispy goodness.
Damn - I want one of these brick ovens now :
Well they are practically free if you don’t mind a lot of hard work.
Seems like I’ve heard that before on this forum. Healthy yeast and controlled temperature for fermentation. Pizza dough/bread making is really the same as brewing.
On our annual NYC trip, to which I always look forward to the pizza here. Went great with Brooklyn Lager.
Looks tasty!
Yeah I look forward to this pizza every year Frank. And Brooklyn Lager is really tasty- The classify it as American Amber style , Hallertauer Mittelfrueh, Cascade and dry hopped.
If you like to cook you would want to check out Eataly while there. It’s an entire block of Italian food including both ingredients that are hard to find and restaurant. There is a massive brick oven where they cook pizza. Its Mario Batal’s place. I brought home lots of great stiff.
Decided on pizza for an early dinner today. Put together a four hour poolish at 0800 which should be ready to go make the rest of the dough around noon. I’ll shape and proof 2-3 hours.
The poolish approach results in a great texture for thin crust and the double ferment in record time.
Poolish for this recipe:
90g bread flour
90g h20
0.4g dry active yeast
Incorporate and let ferment for 4 hours @ 78-80F.
The dough:
The poolish
225g bread flour
108g tepid h2o
7.2g salt
4.5g active dry yeast
Shape into ball and let rise for 1-3 hours depending on ambient temp.
It’ll be a NY style thin 16" smoked sausage and BBQ chicken pizza with a spicy tomato sauce. Perhaps some olives or capers and caramelized onion. Don’t like overloading my pizzas.