Passionate About Pizza: Making Great Homemade Pizza (50 page)

Professional bakers and pizza chefs typically
weigh
their
dough balls
. They weighed the ingredients when they made the dough so its formula is consistent and repeatable. Controlling the weight of the dough balls adjusts the size of each pizza, as well. In addition, rolling/shaping to a certain fixed size for a given weight of dough ball controls the thickness of the pizza. This systematic and repeatable actions result in consistency between pizzas. You can do this at home by weighing the dough before you make it into a dough ball to let the dough rest and by shaping the dough to the same size, each time you make pizza.

Specialty Pizza Ovens

You can make excellent pizza with home ovens. Using the techniques described in this book, a home pizza maker can be very successful using baking stones, pizza screens, or pizza pans in their home oven. Neapolitan Pizza and the Neapolitan-style Dough are the only recipes you cannot make using an unmodified home pizza oven.

There are ovens specifically designed for making pizza. These ovens provide the optimal temperature and baking environment for baking pizza. For the serious pizza maker the lure of professional or specialty pizza ovens can be strong. I know I want one!

Deck Ovens

Deck ovens are the ovens found in most pizzerias in the United States. These ovens have a short, wide door that folds down revealing a large deck that allows six to ten full-sized pizzas to bake at the same time. Deck ovens frequently have ceramic decks on which the pizza directly bakes, hence the name. Either the pizza slides directly onto the deck from a pizza peel or the pizza on a pizza screen sits on the oven deck. Deck ovens typically operate in the range of 500 to 650 degrees Fahrenheit. They typically use gas flames to provide the heat and require a commercial vent hood to remove the combustion fumes. Alas, they are not particularly practical for home use.

Conveyor Ovens

Conveyor ovens have a moving conveyor for the assembled pizza, usually on a pan or pizza screen. The conveyor moves the pizzas through an oven chamber where the speed of the conveyor works with the oven temperature to provide just the right baking heat transfer. These ovens provide consistent baking of consistently made pizzas; the system used by a pizzeria guarantees this. Conveyor ovens are very expensive, take up a large amount of space, are mechanically complicated, and as a result are not practical for home use.

Wood-Fired Dome Ovens

Wood-fired ovens come in a wide variety of shapes and styles but the ones most suited for making pizza usually have a flat floor, a rounded igloo-shaped dome, and a single door; the shape led to the name “dome oven”. The Italians designed this shape oven hundreds of years ago and it remains the dominant shape for pizza ovens. To this day, the exact shape of the dome, the inside height of the oven, the thickness and materials used in construction, and the size and configuration of the door vary with the preference of the builder.

Dome ovens are actually a type of black oven meaning that the baker builds the fire inside the cooking chamber. The opening of the oven has several uses. It allows you to place the wood inside the oven, it allows combustion air to enter the oven, and it allows the smoke to leave the oven. Typically, there is some type of arch over the opening that allows the smoke to leave and exit through a chimney so the smoke does not bother the baker. Finally, the opening allows you to place the pizza in the oven to bake it and later remove the baked pizza from the oven when it finishes cooking.

Wood-fired dome ovens have been used for centuries. In days past, builders frequently used clay and sand. Bricks of fire-resistant material and high heat mortar result in longer-lasting ovens. Modern ovens cast from custom-designed ceramic material hold heat in just the right manner for baking. You

can build a dome oven by hand from simple materials, you can purchase one in kit form, or you can purchase one fully constructed. Wide ranges of vendors supply such pizza ovens. Many of these companies import components or the entire oven from Italy or France.

To use a wood-fired dome oven, you build a very large fire inside the oven and then allow it to burn very vigorously for one or more hours. This long, hot burning fire heats the dome and floor of the oven to proper baking temperature, usually 700 to 800 degrees Fahrenheit. Once the oven is up to temperature, you push the burning wood and embers to the back or side of the oven and allow it continue burning with flames licking up and across the dome. You can tell the oven is up to temperature because the soot deposited on the dome by the starting fire burns off the dome such that the surface of the dome turns white; this may be the origin of the term “white hot”. You then swab the oven floor clean of ashes and place the pizzas to cook directly onto the floor of the oven using a pizza peel.

In a dome oven at 650 – 800 degrees Fahrenheit, pizzas will cook in 90 seconds to four minutes, depending on the specific temperature of the oven. As you can see this is much faster than baking a pizza in your home oven. Typically, the baker will rotate or move the pizzas to allow them to cook evenly to make up for the variability of the temperature at various points within the oven.

Pizza baked in wood-fired ovens has a distinct taste due to the high temperature and the characteristics of the wood heating fire. Because the temperature of the oven is so high, you must use special dough formulations like the Neapolitan-style Dough recipe provided in this book. Wood-fired pizza ovens are big, heavy, and take special knowledge and experience to master. Once you have mastered their specific techniques, they can turn out excellent pizzas continuously for hours. As a result, the best of the best pizzerias use them. Wood-fired oven pizza is the holy grail of pizza making by many pizza aficionados and such an oven is worth considering for the very serious pizza maker. I will have one someday!

After the pizzas bake, the oven will retain a large amount of heat. You can bake other items in the oven using the stored heat. Wood-fired oven bakers typically measure the temperatures of the oven and the rate at which the oven cools down. Because this cooling is slow and predictable, they can bake items in the oven at a temperature for which they are suited. For example, once the oven reaches 400 degrees you might cook a roast. Once the oven reaches 350 degrees, you can bake a loaf of bread. You can cook a whole stream of items in the oven after one firing if you are creative about recipe choices that you place in the oven at the right temperatures and for the proper durations of cooking.

Troubleshooting Guide

The
Passionate About Pizza System

You will make great homemade pizza every time you try if you ignite your passion and follow a systematic approach to making pizza. Plan your pizza-making activities, use the same equipment and high-quality ingredients each time, use proven preparation techniques, rely on your recipes, and work to make CONTINUAL IMPROVEMENTS.

Continual Improvement

Be prepared to make mistakes when you are learning to make pizza. Here are some tips to help you figure out what went wrong. They can also help you avoid problems in the first place. This is not just a repetition of all the advice from the other chapters of the book although you will see some restatement of similar ideas. In addition to looking for ideas here, you might want to re-read the section of the book that covers the area in which you are experiencing a problem.

Equipment Suggestions

What to Buy
– Do not buy cheap equipment if you are going to use it a lot. On the other hand, when you are not certain that you will own it a long time or that you will use it frequently, why spend the money on better quality?

Do not Have A Pizza Cutter
– Use what you have. My mom used a pair of kitchen scissors to cut pizza when I was a kid. I am sure that you can find some kind of cutting utensil that will do the job. Please do be careful, though, so that you do not cut yourself or anyone else!

Cannot Find My Pizza Stone
– Relax and use a pan. You can use just about any pan, as long as it is ovenproof.

Poor Planning

Forgot To Make The Dough And Do not Have Time
– Start it as soon as you can, use quick rise yeast, and use the quick-rise method. You can shorten the rise time to fifteen to twenty minutes and still make a good pizza. Shape the kneaded dough into a flat disk shape while letting it rising and do not punch it down. You will want to handle the risen dough as little as possible, or the pizza will be dense.

Forgot To Remove The Dough From The Freezer
– Use the microwave to defrost the dough. Place the dough in the microwave and heat it on the lowest power setting for 90 seconds. Wait a few minutes and heat it again for 90 seconds on the lowest power setting. Repeat the cycle of waiting and heating on the lowest setting until the dough is at or near room temperature.

Mixed-up Mixing

Forgot The Salt
– Do not worry; try to remember the salt next time. Your pizza might taste a little bland, because the little bit of salt really does make a difference. Try to use at least half a teaspoon of salt for a three-cup flour recipe. Of course, if you have dietary restrictions limiting your salt intake, obey them!

Forgot The Oil
– Do not worry; try to remember the oil next time. The crunch and crumb of the dough will not be quite the same, but it will most likely turn out just fine. You might even like it that way so much that you will plan not to use oil the next time.

Dough Is Too Sticky
– Try adding a quarter cup of flour at a time until the consistency is like play dough. As you knead the dough, it will become less sticky, so do not go overboard adding flour. You can add flour while kneading, so you will get another chance to work it out.

Dough Is Dry and Crumbly
– Try adding a Tablespoon of water at a time until the consistency is like play dough. Dry dough is harder to knead because it stays stiff. It is also somewhat harder to shape, too. However, it will taste just fine if you persevere and knead it thoroughly. Dry dough may take longer to rest and become pliable for shaping.

Used Too Much Salt
– If you used around two teaspoons for a three-cup flour recipe, you might notice a salty taste. If you used more than a Tablespoon for each three cups of flour in the recipe, I recommend that you start over.

Ran Out Of Yeast
– It is hard to make pizza dough without yeast. Call a friend or a neighbor and ask to borrow some. Alternatively, you get out your box of biscuit mix and follow the directions on the box to make biscuit dough. You can roll it out into a pizza shape and cook it on a pan. It will not be normal pizza, but it will probably taste fine!

Kinky Kneading

Kneading Takes Forever
– Make sure to mix the dough well before starting to knead. This way, you incorporate the ingredients before kneading and you can focus on kneading to develop the gluten. Alternatively, if the dough is very stiff, see the next tip. If you have used high gluten flour or bread flour, it will generally require longer kneading to develop the gluten.

Dough Is So Stiff Kneading Is Difficult
– Try using slightly less (a quarter cup or so) flour next time so that the dough is less dry and softer. You can add a little water, a Tablespoon at a time, while kneading to soften the dough a bit. Make sure that you knead the dough enough after adding the water to make it uniform in texture.