If you make pizza a lot, consider also the middle way of gas-fired "portable" ovens, the likes of Ooni or Roccbox. My experience was very positive.
My Ooni experience has been very bad. I have an IR thermometer, so I can check the temps: at the back it's 900, at the front 600. This is after an hour of warm-up. If I weren't so stubborn I'd have gotten rid of the Ooni already.
Furthermore, the lack of height means you can't use gravity to slide the pizza off the peel, like you can with a kitchen oven when you slide the rack out. So the pizza tends to stick to the peel and not want to go in. (I know: lots of flour on the peel. I do that.)
I've had much better results with the kitchen oven at 500, preheated for an hour, and a steel.
This article also neglects the art of gluten formation, which lets you stretch the dough without tearing it, AFAIK. Which raises a question for y'all: rolling pin, or hand-stretch? The owner of my local pizzeria, which has been there for 50 years, says rolling pin.
One thing to consider trying, heat it up at high heat and then when you put the pizza in, try turning the temperature down to a medium or low.
I am wondering if it is possible that the high temperature reading is directly from the flame and by turning it down during the cook, you'll have a more consistent temperature.
Sorry to hear that, but maybe you can still work at it.
> at the back it's 900, at the front 600. This is after an hour of warm-up.
I think that it will be as hot as it is going to get, after about 30 mins.
I get a touch over 500c at the back corner (maybe 950F) and a bit over 300C (600F) at the front lip. This should be right, with a centre at 350 to 400C
> rolling pin, or hand-stretch?
I hand-stretch, but also autolyse.
> lots of flour on the peel.
Semolina. Put your friend Semolina on the peel. It's a very coarse flour, as opposed to pizza flour, which is very fine. It makes the pie slide like it's little dry ball-bearings. Semolina.
If you can't get Semolina, use coarse cornmeal.
The next time you have pizza in a relatively authentic Italian place, run your finger along the underside of the pizza. You should feel a slightly rough, sandpapery texture that isn't present on top. That's from the semolina.
Just before launch, give the pizza a back-and-forth shake on the peel first, to be sure that it's moving, and get it moving if need be. You should know that it's not sticking to the peel, because you've seen/felt it move a bit.
Do you use the same peel to launch and to extract? Typically this is not recommended as the extraction can make that peel hot and moist, which would affect the next launch. Launch off wood or aluminium. Extract with aluminium or other metal peel.
Look for the "ultra-low zone" trick for turning the flame down very low after launch.
You will get these tips in https://www.reddit.com/r/ooni
You can see techniques demo'd on youtube. e.g. ulttra-low zone: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAGmW4SI4PU and shake https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkD-IrTNpTk&t=27s Don't give up, there are tricks and techniques to learn.
Alternatively, scrub the peel with cornmeal between launch and next pizza.
You would have to make do like that if you only have one peel, but in general you'll be better off with separate Launch, turning and extraction peels. They do different jobs and so have different designs.
The turning peel is typically quite different to the other two, but as mentioned, you'll do better with 2 different ones for launch and extraction. Wood is great for launch, terrible for extraction - you can't keep it in a hot oven for any length of time. And a metal peel that has warmed up during doming and extraction would be worse for the next launch.
Also, the launch peel can be prepped for the next launch by someone else, while the current pizza is cooking.
1) clean launcher (scrub with cornmeal to remove sauce burned cheese etc) (15 seconds)
2) heavily flour the launcher with fresh cornmeal and kneed flat a single pizza dough (1 min)
3) build pizza with toppings (30 seconds)
4) launch, watch for flare ups (pull pizza away from flare ups and let burn out before pushing back forward), turn as cheese browns until all surface cooked (1-2 min)
5) take out pizza and set aside for slicing, use launcher to push forward cornmeal from last launch to force a burn out (15 seconds)
6) go to step 1
3-4 oven minutes / pizza or 15-20 pizzas / hr / oven
Most expensive part is the real mozzarella cheese which is outrageously expensive in the US. In France its 1/4 the price. I think I may make mozzarella in the near future, it looks like the easiest of cheeses.
do you mean the "fresh" stuff they sell in some US stores, in liquid? Or the bufalo?
I actually did a 1/2 and 1/2 test with a friend, half bufalo mozz & half standard shrink-wrapped mozz. He preferred the bufalo, I was meh.
The interesting thing was, the bufalo had so much moisture that it soaked through the crust. At least the shrink-wrapped stuff is dryer so you don't have that problem.
https://www.delightedcooking.com/what-is-buffalo-mozzarella....
I don't think it's very often used in the US.
"Maker's Mark Part Skim Shredded Mozzarella Cheese (5 lbs.)
$14.67 $2.93/lb"
Soooo, a lot less than $10/pound!
What if anything that Maker's Mark cheese has to do with anything from/in Italy, I don't know!
To have the cheese keep without mold, I keep it frozen. When I'm making a pizza and put on the mozzarella, it is still frozen. Right, when the heat for the cooking starts, still frozen! Works fine! The Teflon sheet lets the top of the pizza and the cheese get hot before burning the bottom of the crust.
In the US, pizza, in all its versions, is a big industry, a significant part of the diet of 300+ million people. BIG!
So, we're not talking a grandmother in a rustic kitchen in the hills of a small, rural town in Italy!!!
I omitted but might include: For applying the heat, I put the cast iron frying pan, covered, on one of the large burners of my 4 burner US electric stove. The burners are, as I recall, from GE or some such -- some big US company anyway. And I've seen them from the same source on other electric stoves. Soooo, if you have an electric stove, there's a good chance you have the same burner elements.
Then for the burner there is a dial. Viewing the dial as a clock face, 12 o'clock is OFF. 1 o'clock is the highest power. 6 o'clock is medium power. For cooking pizza, I use about 8 o'clock and 22 minutes. Then the toppings are hot. The cheese is melted. The crust is cooked with the edges puffy. And the bottom of the crust is browned but not burned. 23 minutes can be too long, burn the bottom crust and have the melted cheese running over the sides of the crust. 20 minutes, maybe the cheese is not yet melted. On your stove, likely you should watch carefully until you have the time and temperature about right!
For the cheese: yes, there's the freezer, but I've also found my Zwilling vacuum unit works well. Put the leftover in the special bag, evacuate the air (as much as it'll do, anyway), and I don't get mold on it.
Food processor. Mine is shit so it needs some helping but otherwise comes up nice and stretchy. Ain't nobody got time to knead for 10 minutes like some recipes/YTbers want.
I put a bit of flour, water and yeast in separate cup and leave alone for some time (till it smells yeasty), mix rest of flour with salt and then add the yeast and remaining wated to it. My reasoning is that it's easier to spread yeast around that way but dunno if that's right, seems to work.
Then mix in food mixer till it is nice and uniform uniform, leave for an hour, then mix again. I occasionally manually reposition dough in food processor a bit but again, that's coz mine is a bit shit.
Then cover and leave overnight in fridge
For my ingredients listed above: First, I put the yeast in the water to soak and get soft, sometimes for 1+ hours. Right before combining with the flour, add salt to the water and yeast and mix. There are rumors that if had the salt in the water and yeast for 1+ hours, the salt would kill the yeast. Then add ~2/3rds of the four to the water, yeast, and salt. Mix with a cooking spoon. Add the rest of the flour and mix roughly. Cover and let rise for 1+ hours. Dump onto a floured pastry board and knead: Press and flatten, fold in half, and repeat. Use enough loose flour to keep the outside surface not very sticky -- don't have to have sticky dough on fingers. Knead until dough "springs back". 8 minutes is plenty long enough. Return to the bowl, cover, and let rise again for several hours. This time will get a lot of CO2 and volume. Dump onto pastry board again, stretch into a log and cut into 8 pieces -- or fewer if want larger individual pizzas. Put each piece in its own covered plastic container. Freezing works well -- can thaw in microwave quickly or in refrigerator overnight. For a pizza, just press flat and round with finger tips. Since I press the dough on a round sheet of Teflon, I don't have to think about how to handle the dough once flat, round, and topped with sauce, cheese, etc.
So, no machines, rolling pins, tossing, or hand stretching. Supposedly the kneading does "develop the gluten". The kneading does make the dough very different from the dough for pie crust.
There are rumors that letting the dough rise in a refrigerator generates good, additional yeast flavor. Also, there are many varieties of yeast, and some make more and/or better flavor than others.
> There are rumors that if had the salt in the water and yeast for 1+ hours, the salt would kill the yeast.
As much as I have researched that it's that some level of salt would do that but level below that would just slow the yeast down. I'd be more worried with 1h+ in water it would just not have the "fuel" to multiply.
That's why I start with yeast, water and some flour, basically to get yeast to multiply a bunch before mixing it with rest of the flour, I'm worried that "just" mixing it with flour and water might've created pockets when dough is saltier and kill it or just be non-uniform
> So, no machines, rolling pins, tossing, or hand stretching. Supposedly the kneading does "develop the gluten". The kneading does make the dough very different from the dough for pie crust.
I tried kneading, tossing, rolling pin, and machine and honestly only difference seems to be time. End result is still "The sticky dough is now less sticky" except amount of mess and time to do it is different...
> There are rumors that letting the dough rise in a refrigerator generates good, additional yeast flavor. Also, there are many varieties of yeast, and some make more and/or better flavor than others.
I might have not discerning enough taste but I honestly can't tell between 1 day or 2 day dough. Maybe if I tried it side by side or something...
I do sourdough, so I use a levain not a dry yeast, but I have done many 2-day doughs (48 hours rest in the fridge) and many 1-day doughs (24 hours in the fridge), and yes, I can easily tell the difference, and I prefer the 2-day dough, and will always do that timeline when schedule permits.
Serious eats reached similar conclusions: https://www.seriouseats.com/the-pizza-lab-how-long-should-i-...
NB thier "day 1" is same day: "Each day (including the first before it went in the fridge), I pulled out a 6-ounce chunk of it... and baked it"
So what I call a "two-day dough" with about 48 hours in the fridge, is what they call "day 3", which isn't wrong: Thursday, Friday, Saturday are 3 days; Thursday afternoon to to Saturday afternoon is 2 days. Dough made on Thursday rests for 2 days before Saturday, and Saturday is the third day.
I agree with them on the dough that rested 24 hours or less though - "tight, small-holed structure ... The flavor of the crumb was ... one dimensional". It is spongy and bready. Not bad, just bland.
I've heard claims that the usual US yeast is of strains selected for the US bread industry and where the main objective is a reliable, big, fast rise with little or no flavor!
Sooooo, again, the US goes for some high industrial productivity with little attention to artisan considerations!!!
I omitted some details on this point:
Yes, adding the (active dry) yeast and the salt directly to the dry flour would also have me worry about "non-uniform".
Sooo, I try to have steps that promise to give a nice uniform distribution of the yeast and salt ...:
I don't try to get the yeast to grow or generate CO2 before it is mixed with the flour and is set aside to rise.
Instead, I put the (active dry) yeast in the 650 ml of water just to soften. So, it is plenty wet, starts with plenty of water, when it is mixed in with the flour. I suspect that this step, to soften the yeast, is not necessary, to give it a drink of water, enough to soften it, is useless and pointless.
Then, just before combining the water and yeast in the water with the flour, I add the salt to the water and yeast and mix it in. Sooo, the salt is nicely uniform in the water, and the yeast has a good start on being uniform in the water. Then, in goes the ~2/3rds of the flour. These ingredients can be mixed with a spoon and are still essentially a liquid. And I do that -- use the spoon to mix the mixture into what definitely looks like everything is uniformly distributed. Soooo, this spoon mixing is likely doing a good job achieving uniform distributions of the water, yeast, and salt.
Then I add the remaining ~1/3rd of the flour. Now the mixture is too stiff to mix well with a spoon. Sooo, I just do a little mixing. At this point, the flour is NOT, is no longer, nicely uniformly mixed with the water, salt, and yeast. Just from an accident, I discovered that it can be good, for the final texture, to let this mixture rise some. Actually this rise step is optional.
Then on to the kneading: Coat the outside surface with some flour so that your fingers don't get too sticky with the dough. Then, for the kneading, press the dough out some, enough to be able to fold it in half. Then, fold it in half, and repeat -- press, fold, press, fold .... During this, may have to add a little loose flour to the outside surface to keep too much dough sticking to your fingers.
Here are, with this kneading work, sure, "developing the gluten", etc. But to me what is more important, are achieving a nice uniform distribution of the water, yeast, and salt with the flour. That is, you can pretty well tell that the water is uniformly distributed in the flour.
Soooo, since, from the first efforts with the yeast and salt in the water, the yeast and salt are already uniformly distributed in the water, and now the water is uniformly distributed with the flour, no doubt the water brought along the yeast and salt uniformly and now the salt and yeast are ALSO uniformly distributed with the flour, thus, addressing your concerns!
I omitted all that but include it here!