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Not another pizza thread...

Robert

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Apologies to those bored with pizza stories but i took some pictures last time I made some and set my pizza on fire due to messing about with the phone - so I'm going to post them!

I now use those black sheets for BBQ grills to make pizza handling easy. this is how it goes...

dough balls are slowly stretched out just by hand. once it wants to stop stretching i leave it and start another ball. once rested it will stretch more and so on until it is the right size. trying to do it in one go doesn't work for me.
Pizza-100.jpg


Then they go on the BBQ sheets. The sheets are the same width as the pizza stone which is handy.
Pizza-101.jpg


Toppings added. The pizzas were then left for half an hour while the Ooni got going. The peel goes under the sheet for transfer to the oven.
Pizza-102.jpg


With the stone somewhere over 400C the sheet and pizza goes in the oven.
Pizza-105.jpg


Door on, count to 20 seconds, door off and then pull the BBQ sheet out. in that time the underside has set and it can be cooked normally.
Pizza-106.jpg


400+ degC did nothing to the sheet
Pizza-104.jpg


And thanks to the messing with the camera I let my pizza catch fire
Pizza-107.jpg


tasted OK though. Impulse bought some giant pepperoni as it looked different. Bit bland so back to the German stuff.

I now use the grated mozzarella usually (though not this time) as it is dry. I make the sauce and freeze some for other times. I reduce passata along with finely chopped onion, garlic paste and oregano until it piles up like ketchup not flows like water. Water is the enemy for pizza as far as I'm concerned. The dough is white bread dough made as extra to bread making. I use marriages Canadian very strong bread flour from Costco. Makes great bread and good for pasta too.
 
where do you get the black metal sheets from?
do you oil them or just use flour / semolina?
 
They are not metal - they are PTFE covered glass fibre and about as thick as heavy paper/light card.

They are sold for use on barbecues as a grilling sheet. You put it on the bars and grill on it and nothing can fall through. I only use it for fish cooking on the BBQ.

There are loads on Amazon or ebay. I bought what was on offer at the time - this one

https://amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B072KRVJY3

Seems counter intuitive but they work and seem pretty indestructible and nothing sticks to them.

Pizzas that have stood for a while uncooked the dough relaxes and possibly sweats a bit so a 30 minute old pizza would stick if left on a peel or tabletop and also become softer. On the sheets they don't need to be disturbed until the base is part cooked and firm.
 
Robert":3rqwro7q said:
Dough balls are slowly stretched out just by hand. once it wants to stop stretching I leave it and start another ball. once rested it will stretch more and so on until it is the right size. trying to do it in one go doesn't work for me.

That’s the way I do it, normally in three steps. ;)
 
I think there are a few people getting their F's and C's muddled. :o :o
This has cropped up before about pizzas needing 500c, which I find mind boggling.
Those mats listed are rated for 500F, which is only 260c.
260 C is a goof temp for pizza. 500 C is a flash over temp which cant cook the middle before the outer burns, even on a thin crust.
Remember that any american product will be in F, and any european product will be listed in C.
 
"Remember that any american product will be in F, and any european product will be listed in C."

Maybe not for long in Borisland.
 
I did say "American" and "Europesn" :lol:
I omitted the farcical disaster of the world that used to be Great Britain :eusa-whistle: .
 
No mixing of F and C here. Those mats might be rated 260C (I've not checked) but they are unmarked by short exposure to 400+C. I've used them over BBQ coals where the temperature must be even higher and still unmarked. In fact I've never managed to burn one or even mark the surface.

I wouldn't use them at extreme temperatures every day of the week just in case something comes off them. Don't see a problem for occasional use where they look as new after use.

I have seen amazon reviews on other listings where people say the mat is crumbling etc. maybe there are fake mats sold that are not like the ones I've had so far?
 
I fire up my Ooni and according to the infrared thermometer it’s up to about *430°C in about 10-15 mins. I then turn the oven down a little before I start cooking Pizza’s in it. Cooking Pizza in my Ooni only takes about 90 seconds so I don’t have time to check the temperature but I’m guessing it’s 350°C - 400°C?

* I’m sure Ooni say the Koda goes up to 500°C but mine doesn’t seem to reach that temperature, not that it seems to need it.

Exactly the same recipe Pizza cooked in our electric oven at about 250°C is not as nice as one done in the Ooni. The only real issue with it is it doesn’t like the wind. Luckily our garden is fairly sheltered but if the wind did stop us using the Ooni I’d find another spot in the garden or build some kind of wind break for it. ;)
 
Woodster":3tr7jc4m said:
The only real issue with it is it doesn’t like the wind. Luckily our garden is fairly sheltered ...
That's the issue I found as well. I've sited our pellet burning Ooni somewhere fairly sheltered but it's still prone to misbehave it it's gusty so I look the movement of the trees in the garden to make an assessment of whether or not to fire it up - Rob
 
Robert":2t1c68pr said:
They are not metal - they are PTFE covered glass fibre and about as thick as heavy paper/light card.

They are sold for use on barbecues as a grilling sheet. You put it on the bars and grill on it and nothing can fall through. I only use it for fish cooking on the BBQ.

There are loads on Amazon or ebay. I bought what was on offer at the time - this one

https://amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B072KRVJY3

Seems counter intuitive but they work and seem pretty indestructible and nothing sticks to them.

Pizzas that have stood for a while uncooked the dough relaxes and possibly sweats a bit so a 30 minute old pizza would stick if left on a peel or tabletop and also become softer. On the sheets they don't need to be disturbed until the base is part cooked and firm.
I got an Ooni last week and I love it! One of the difficulties though is the chef not being able to sit and enjoy the food with everyone else as you have to be making the next pizza, so I’ve taken your recommendation and ordered those sheets to see if I can make a batch of pizzas and then just need to cook them. Thanks for the suggestion :eusa-clap:
 
Used them again this evening. Set the wife's pizza on fire this time :)

Wind blew one of the sheets away after I pulled it out and I took too long fetching it back.

Apart from that it worked better than ever this time. It is literally 20 seconds from putting the sheet with pizza on it into the oven to touching the edge of the pizza with the peel and pulling the sheet out.

You can go on to the next pizza too quick after cooking one. Too quick because I've found the stone needs a couple of minutes to regain temperature.

Hope it works as well for you as it does for me.
 
I’ve given in and finally bought a turning peel. Hopefully it improves Pizza manipulation somewhat. If not it will become a £20 ornament. :lol:

01686799-C183-4995-93-CE-8-B535-C490-E79.jpg
 
Woodster":343y3hc1 said:
I’ve given in and finally bought a turning peel. Hopefully it improves Pizza manipulation somewhat. If not it will become a £20 ornament. :lol:

01686799-C183-4995-93-CE-8-B535-C490-E79.jpg
Going to give my Ooni spinner a try out tonight as the weather is set to change to something a bit cooler over the weekend...could possibly be some heavy rain - Rob
 
Todays effort.
F2BD5B9B-D620-476E-B804-D226988D7BC3.jpeg

This is what I’m looking for. I started the Poolish yesterday evening and then finished off the dough this morning in the KitchenAid. Nice and light and Airy, tasty too.
 

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I honestly don't know how I survive without one of these amazing ovens. My pizzas come out like this without one. Ah well, guess I'll just have to suffer on. :D
 

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I'm amazed that we are allowing another thread here that is not about wood....

Oddly enough I was perusing Elizabeth David (1965 edition not the 1954 original, though they are similar) over breakfast in the garden centre yesterday. Her dough recipe is similar to what we have today, likewise toppings for a Neopolitan pizza. But she was suggesting cooking for 25 - 30 minutes. No temperature suggested but that is a long cook.
 
AJB Temple":1rzgfn0z said:
Oddly enough I was perusing Elizabeth David (1965 edition not the 1954 original, though they are similar) over breakfast in the garden centre yesterday. Her dough recipe is similar to what we have today, likewise toppings for a Neopolitan pizza. But she was suggesting cooking for 25 - 30 minutes. No temperature suggested but that is a long cook.
There was a chap on Salisbury market on Wed who was doing pizzas in a wood fired oven and I stopped by to have a look. There was no door on the oven and I guess the pizza took a little over a minute to cook. With the door being off I guess the oven temp wouldn't be quite as fierce...the pizza still looked good though when it came out - Rob
 
Yes. In modern pizza ovens they cook in 45 seconds or a tad more. Makes me wonder about ovens from the 1950s and 60s. Were they very different? Much lower temperature maybe?
 
Adrian - which E. D. book? I have a few. Are you presuming electric ovens were being used for pizzas in the '50s and '60s, or others?
My loved one wants a barbie built and I have agreed ......... as long as I can build it to double as forge (I have a compressor, so it's only building in an air line, basically). I might attempt to incorporate a pizza oven. :lol:
Some of the best cakes I remember eating (I was about thirteen, in 1967) were baked by a 19 y. o. Swedish scout, a trainee baker, on a foreign holiday. Baked in a mud oven, they were superb.
 
Well Phil, we are talking about pizza so it was her "Italian Food". An interesting book to read actually, not least because it reveals a lot about food availability in the 1950s and 1960s, which has changed radically. For example mozzarella was virtually unobtainable in the UK back then. Now there is even talk of a buffalo herd in the Archers :o

Modern cookbooks are all pictures, whereas ED is all words that paint a picture.

I wasn't making an oven assumption, but possibly had in mind my elderly grandfather's oven from when I was a child, which was an ancient gas oven and quite small. I also remember his fridge was covered in ice crystals on the inside and from which he would give me small glasses of ice cold milk that I still remember as being perfect.
 
AJB Temple":126dh8wk said:
I also remember his fridge was covered in ice crystals on the inside and from which he would give me small glasses of ice cold milk that I still remember as being perfect.

When I was at primary school I also remember the small bottles of warm milk served up by the milk monitors on a hot summers day. I drank it (as we all did) but it was horrible; I love milk but it needs to be really cold - Rob
 
Woodbloke":3ors4jd7 said:
AJB Temple":3ors4jd7 said:
I also remember his fridge was covered in ice crystals on the inside and from which he would give me small glasses of ice cold milk that I still remember as being perfect.

When I was at primary school I also remember the small bottles of warm milk served up by the milk monitors on a hot summers day. I drank it (as we all did) but it was horrible; I love milk but it needs to be really cold - Rob

Oh yes. Glass bottles with straws. Always warm. I was never well behaved enough to get the plum job of milk monitor. A certain future PM was responsible for snatching away that daily delight.
 
I made a batch a couple of days ago so I tried it out in the Ooni today. Seemed to work ok but no better or worse than plain dried yeast. It was 5.5°C in the garden today but the Ooni still got up to temperature in about 10 minutes.
 
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