The Pizza Thread

[Silly Car]

Prompted by weekly, thought we could contain a chat about dough, toppings, stones, ovens etc in one place of reference,

Firstly, I use an ooni 3 with the gas attachment and alternate (depending on mood) between a piece of 1/4” steel plate and the original pizza stone. The steel is great for crisping up the bottoms but after a while retains too much heat and burns them

My go to dough recipe is here - https://ooni.com/blogs/recipes/classic-pizza-dough

I use Taste The Difference 00 pasta flour and dried yeast and they turn out great, featured recipe turns out around 8 8” bases.

If I’m making pizzas for mates, I tend to use frozen dough pucks from the local Italian wholesalers, the “sour dough” ones are great baked as bread...

I’ll add sauce and toppings later.

[Wreckless Rat]

Still looking to either build a wood fired pizza oven in the garden or get a portable wood fired one.

So will be interesting who has what....oven.

My go to pizza base, is a 48hr dough recipe, sort of a bastardisation of several recipes and a cross bewteen sough dough and yeast...

[weeksy]

As per the other thread, I've just got a new BBQ and a pizza stone.

I was going to get a pizza oven, but space dictated we have the BBQ or the pizza oven really, we prefer BBQ so bought a new BBQ and a pizza stone



Which should hopefully give us super pizzas nice and easily.

Currently planning this recipe

500gm flour
300ml water
yeast
salt

Mrs Weeksy will be tasked with getting the toppings sorted and for the weekend we'll give it a crack

[Mr. Dazzle]

I've got the full "iglu dome" setup in my garden. I can post some pics later.

Next time I make pizza I'll do a step by step on how I do it. Broad strokes though it's homemade sourdough.

The thing that's really important is having a well proven (as in, proved in the Bread sense, not in the demonstrated to be correct sense!) dough that's balled up properly.

Throwing by hand really does make a difference IME, as does doing the seemingly pretentious "throwing it in the air" thing. It's how you get a 'rim' that puffs up into the bubbly crust.

Other top tip: Less toppings!

[Silly Car]

Cheese...

Mozzarella balls are too wet from the packet so I tend to tear a couple up in the morning, place the pieces on kitchen roll and pop them back in the fridge to dehydrate.

Shop bought grated mozzarella is grate (sic) but IMHO, you can’t beat grating your own block mozzarella if you can get it.

Vegan mozzarella is ok but is a touch sweet for my taste on a pizza but Eli’s you cater for vegan guests.

Sauces:

BBQ sauce, call me a heathen but out of the bottle BBQ sauce is great when doing BBQ Chicken pizzas for the kids (mine are 24 and insist on this every time the oven is lit...

Tomato, I take a jar of passata , strain it in a fine mesh sieve for an hour to get rid of the excess liquid, add grated garlic, onion and herbs, stir and leave.

Garlic oil, off the shelf olive oil, grated garlic, chopped fresh rosemary, great with tinned anchovies and grated cheese for an adult garlic bread.

White sauce, sauce onion and garlic in olive oil slowly until completely translucent, stir in loads of double cream, grated Parmesan and black pepper and leave to cool. Add to pizza base with cooked, diced pancetta and cheese, cook and add rocket on pot when it comes out of the oven.

[Mr. Dazzle]

Pizza Bianca...I.e. pizza without tomatoes and just olive oil is great. Surprises everyone I make it for. Olive oil, lots of garlic, rosemary and very thing potato is always a winner with guests.

Sauces do depend on the oven IMO. I generally do the same as SC if I'm using the indoor oven. The proper wood job is different though cause it gets mad hot...almost twice what the conventional oven can do. In that oven I tend to use canned San Marzano tomatoes straight from the tin, but they'd be too wet for a normal oven.

[Noggin]

I've always failed at pizza! I even have a pizza stone but it hasn't helped me

But - I think it is probably too much topping

Equally I'm apparently a heathen as I like ham and pineapple pizza

When I first had pizza in resort, it totally threw me - it had onion on the tomato base, goats cheese with the mozzarella. And the ham was dried ham from here, not the normal 'wet' ham we put on in the uk

Sadly the chef that used to make those left and no one else makes the same And there is only one place that does pizza with pineapple

But that place I can get what they call honey pizza (Miel Pizza) - ham, goats cheese and honey - and then they add pineapple for me!! LOL


I'll be watching this thread tho and will have a go at making some dough at some point!! I have pretty much everything except the cheese to hand, so just need to get some cheeses and try!


The weirdest thing here is that lots of pizzas have an egg cracked on the middle and cooked on the pizza. And - things like tartiflette or savoyarde pizza, dough, tomato, then potato and loads of other stuff, including the egg!! Oh, and curry pizza Some really weird (to me) flavours!! LOL But then, I put pineapple on pizza

[Mr. Dazzle]

Egg on pizza is amazing....runny yolk and all. I've converted a lot of people to it.

[Noggin]

Egg on pizza is amazing....runny yolk and all. I've converted a lot of people to it.

I can't cope with egg yolk mixing with certain food (Ok with potato, bread or meat, not ok with tomato or beans!) so there is no way I'd try it!! LOL

Was quite shocked the first time I had carbonara here - there was a raw egg in the middle but, no beans or tomatoes so I loved it! LOL

[Mr. Dazzle]

Toppings wise....less really is more. Way less!

The better you get at making the bread the fewer toppings you'll want IME. The base really is (or at least should be) the star. You shouldn't be making flatbreads, but IMO when you've got decent bases you will naturally just find yourself putting less on.

Stronger toppings work better too I find. N'duja sausage, while perhaps a bit hipster, is really punchy and works loads better than a slathering of cheap cheese. Ditto with Anchovies and olives.

The one thing the bases need is time IMO. There's no shortcut to a good dough, it really does take the 48hrs Wratty mentioned.

[Noggin]

Toppings wise....less really is more. Way less!

The better you get at making the bread the fewer toppings you'll want IME. The base really is (or at least should be) the star. You shouldn't be making flatbreads, but IMO when you've got decent bases you will naturally just find yourself putting less on.

Stronger toppings work better too I find. N'duja sausage, while perhaps a bit hipster, is really punchy and works loads better than a slathering of cheap cheese. Ditto with Anchovies and olives.

The one thing the bases need is time IMO. There's no shortcut to a good dough, it really does take the 48hrs Wratty mentioned.

Can you freeze the dough? It'd be tough to make one base and I wouldn't want to eat pizza four nights in a row

Been looking at recipes and was given a mixer for a late Christmas present - it has a dough hook Kneading is something I still can't do very well - combo of dodgy shoulder and worktop being too high!!

[Mr. Dazzle]

Honestly I don't know. The doughballs are about the size of a tennis ball so would be pretty handy for freezing.

Given that each one only has about 5p worth of flour in I'd be temped to give it a try.

[Mr. Dazzle]

BTW with Sourdough pizza there is very very little kneading involved.

Lots of time, but not much kneading.

[Noggin]

BTW with Sourdough pizza there is very very little kneading involved.

Lots of time, but not much kneading.

With that don't you end up keeping a bit for the next one? I'm not good on things taking lots of time (or space!). Now I have a mixer with a dough hook I'm happy to try it out

[Mr. Dazzle]

Yeah you need the starter....the yeast. Rather than using yeast from a packet you keep a live culture of it.

Since I don't make it that regularly I have a kilner jar in my fridge that houses some "bread goo". Its the sourdough starter, you feed it every so often with 50/50 flour and water. It looks pretty much exactly how you'd expect a 50/50 mix of flour and water to look. It is a live colony of bacteria and yeast which live in a symbiotic relationship. It has that yeasty, brewery smell. Not unpleasant, but deffo yeast.

[Noggin]

Yeah you need the starter....the yeast. Rather than using yeast from a packet you keep a live culture of it.

Since I don't make it that regularly I have a kilner jar in my fridge that houses some "bread goo". Its the sourdough starter, you feed it every so often with 50/50 flour and water. It looks pretty much exactly how you'd expect a 50/50 mix of flour and water to look. It is a live colony of bacteria and yeast which live in a symbiotic relationship. It has that yeasty, brewery smell. Not unpleasant, but deffo yeast.

I might look at that. But trying not to have things that 'need' to be in the fridge for ages!! Small fridge!

I was thinking about going to the bakery to see if they'd sell me some fresh yeast - but will try the dry stuff I have first and see if I have better luck with the mixer and the a warmer apartment (or an overnight prove in the fridge!)

(Want to learn to make baguettes and croissants but because of the lack of success with simple yeast stuff in the past, I kinda gave up!!

[Silly Car]

Apparently James Martin is doing pizzas on This Morning this morning.

[Noggin]

Apparently James Martin is doing pizzas on This Morning this morning.

I'd forgotten that!! Just went to tune in and watch - lasted less than two mins!! Have recorded it so I can find his section later and avoid all the rest!!! LOL

[Mr. Dazzle]

The other thing people get wrong about dough IMO....salt. You need a lot more than you think probably.

My standard recipe has 2% 'bakers percentage' salt. So that would mean if you had 1kg of flour you'd be adding 20g of salt. Plus 650g of water in my case, but thats not relevant to the salt point.

So weeksy, you should be adding about 8-10g salt to your recipe as written above.

Oh...a weigh the water, don't do millilitres. Saves washing the jug up if nothing else 300ml would be 300g of water.

[weeksy]

Thanks boss.