Quest for the Perfect Pizza
Quest for the Perfect Pizza
I began my quest for the perfect home baked pizza in 1990. After several failed attempts that produced burnt crust or gooey centers, I was certain that I would never be able to produce a great pie at home. Fortunately I was set on the right path towards pizza nirvana. While on vacation in a northern California coast town, my wife and I stumbled onto a quaint little family run pizza joint. The pizza was fantastic with great crust and creative toppings. I asked the owner what the trick was to producing such a masterpiece. He answered with the standard "If I tell you I'll have to kill you". After downing another bottle of wine and sharing with him my challenges in pizza making, He invited me back to his kitchen. "Heat" he explained, "was the key to a successful pie". His oven was fired up over 600 degrees. The type of heat was important too. I left his kitchen with a list of things that I needed to get in order to produce a decent pizza in my own kitchen.
When I returned home I purchased a large, thick, rectangular pizza stone for my oven. I also picked up a good wooden pizza piel along with other specialty tools. It wasn't long until I was turning out great pizza in my own kitchen. Pizza partys became a weekly event. I experimented with several different dough and sauce recipes until I was happy with the results. For years I was content with the pizza that I was able to turn out. Friends and family were happy too. However, my passion was about to lead me down a new path.
Several years ago I had introduced a good friend to the art of pizza making. Like me, he was soon on a quest of his own. Growing up in New York, he wanted to recreate the perfect New York style pie that he remembered as a kid. The pizza that I was creating had a definite California flare with a thicker crust while the pie that my friend was striving for was thin and chewy. Achieving the perfect east coast style pizza was not an easy task. The most common factor in producing such a pie was the oven. Again, the heat was the key. Most authentic pizzerias were using a brick oven that was fired by wood or coal. We found that all of our favorite pizzas from all over the country came from a brick oven. We both decided that we would build a brick oven of our own some day. We researched many different styles and oven designs. We even checked out the oven at Lombardi's, Americas first pizzaeria, while traveling to New York together .
My opportunity to build my oven finally came during the construction of our new home in 2004. I designed my back yard to include an outdoor kitchen, equipped with a comercial size wood fired brick oven. My oven is based on an old world Italian design that is shaped like an igloo. The inside of the oven is approximately six feet deep by four feet wide. I have included a pictorial history of the construction process on this site. I finished the oven with decretive stone, hand distressed wooden tembers, travertine tiles and a copper roof. I couldn't be happier with the results.
This oven gets HOT! Well over a thousand degrees. Pizzas are done in less then three minutes. It's like an old world microwave. The oven is not just for cooking pizza. It produces a moist heat that is perfect for baking artisan breads and roasting juicy meats. I baked the most delectable turkey for Thanksgiving this past year. I also use it as a slow smoker too, producing fantastic ribs and brisket. Yes, it also produces the "perfect home baked pizza"!
I'm a wannabe bread maker....I now have all the time in the world, but it would appear that my climate isn't participating. I live on the sea - which is lovely - but I can't get bread to rise - EVER! I love french and belgian breads - rich and dense. And although I have a breadmaker, I don't like the results.
Can anyone provide a recipe and instructions for yummy, homemade bread in a 'rise challenged' environment???
I've enjoyed seeing Dsnyders T-Day Bake and the questions put out for suggestions for this special family celebration. Since I've moved from Connecticut to Oregon 6 years ago, I find we have lots of special family recipe traditions.
My family has a recipe handed down from my Grandfather, who I never had to the chance to know, passing away before I was born. There is always Scalloped (Escalloped) Oysters on our Thanksgiving table. My Oregonian husband and his children have no interest in ever eating this wondrous dish again..ha ha, more for me. Except I can't see the sense in making it just for me. I will just have to wait until we celebrate T-Day in CT again.
On the other hand..my husband makes his Grandmother's dressing or stuffing, your preference for term. White bread, butter, sage sausage, hot sausage and carmelized onions. Our first T-Day together, I asked, where are the herbs, the celery? I'm thinking there is way too much butter!!! After being married for six years, I think it tastes pretty good. Traditions change..although I would love to sneak some herbs and celery in. And cut back on the butter..can't help it..
Would you please share your have to have item on the Thanksgiving menu..
Wishing you and yours all the blessings which we celebrate on this holiday.
Betty
Its a long story how I ended up with gas convection oven for my bakery. Baking almost exclusively bread I have been struggling with the results. There is no switch for the fan and my gas convection oven seems to dry the crust out much more than I like before it is properly browned. After A LOT of experiminetation my best results have come from the following proceedure:
-preheat oven with stones top and bottom to 460
-turn oven off (only way to disenable fan). Mist loaves and oven, load loaves (avrg 16 loaveso between 2 racks), pour cup hot water onto preheated pan in bottom of oven, and close doors quickly. Wait 1 to 3 mins (less for yeasted, more for sourdough).
-Open doors slightly while I turn the oven back on (the fan blasts at this point and the open doors keep the fan from blowing any burt flecks against the doors back up onto the loaves) and immediatley reset the oven to 400 to stop fan. Bake 30 to 40 mins depending on recipe.
This process has give me the best results yet, but nothing like my old conventional electric home oven (no crisp reddish razor edges, and loaves seem to dry out before rising to their maximum rotunity.)
ANY ADVICE? DO I NEED A DIFFERENT OVEN (yikes!) OR ARE THERE ANY OTHER SECRECTS TO SNEAKING A PROPER BAKE OUT OF A GAS CONVECTION? HELP!
I was looking through an older post on sourdough by JMonkey that mentioned a spreadsheet that Floyd developed for downloading. My Firefox browser opened up a small window that indicated it needed Excel for the download. I don't have Excel but I have heard about Open Office and thought that someone here on TFL just might know if this freeware would be able to handle the download and save it in an intelligible manner for me. I have the hard drive space so that problem is resolved but I need to know if that's the answer or should I be looking elsewhere?
If blood will flow when flesh and steel are one
Drying in the color of the evening sun
Tomorrow's rain will wash the stains away
But something in our minds will always stay
Perhaps this final act was meant
To clinch a lifetimes' argument
That nothing comes from violence
And nothing ever could
For all those born beneath an angry star
Lest we forget how fragile we are
On and on the rain will fall
Like tears from a star, like tears from a star
On and on the rain will say
How fragile we are, how fragile we are
By Sting, 1987 (to listen, click here or here)
I rarely listen to the lyrics of a song, too hard for a person whose mother tongue is not the language of the song. The music is far more important to me than the lyrics. I can pick up the faintest instrument playing in the background and the inter-plays of instruments often exhilarate me. Sometimes when I am drunk in a piece of music, it feels like I am in the best medication ever afterwords.
And so it was in one of those blissful moments when, all of a sudden, the words "That nothing comes from violence, And nothing ever could" entered into my consciousness as clear as crystals. The music moved me and I wanted to turn this energy into something. No bread that I could make could match the delicate sensibilities that I felt in this song. But I have to get it out of my system.
This bread was my 6th attempt at this since my last post at TFL.
When I was deciding what style of bread that I wanted for Sting's Fragile, I remembered a picture that I saw nearly 6 months ago that caught my attention in Hamelman's Bread - picture 21: Assorted Rye Bread from Chapter 6 (behind page 224). Hansjoakim, one of the perfectionists of the TFL bakers, did a beautiful job in this bread. He proofed the shaped dough in a brotform with the seam-side down and baked it with the seam-side up to allow the seams to open up in the oven. Something like that but not exactly like that was what I was looking for. I wanted the seams to open up like a flower with deep fissures in even more dramatic ways.
1st attempt: Pain au Levain with black sesame meal and buckwheat flour (overall hydration 68%)
I initially wanted some black color in my bread so I used ground black sesame seeds and buckwheat flour which was the most "blackish" looking flour in my pantry. This was a failed attempt because other than proofing with seam side down and baking with seam side up, I did nothing different to what I normally do. The seams did not open at all.
The bread tasted nice. While the texture looked open, the bread felt heavy because of the black sesame meal. The effect of ground sesame seeds on bread is a bit like that of almond meal on a cake or quick breads.
2nd attempt: Pain au Levain with buckwheat flour and teff flour (overall hydration 63%)
At this second attempt, I thought all that I needed to change was the dough hydration - it had not clicked on me that it is not the dough hydration but the way I shaped the final dough that matters in the final look. By accident, I got a few shallow fissures on the bread to the left in the picture above.
3rd attempt: Pain au Levain with buckwheat flour (overall hydration 68%)
By this time, I knew that shaping was important for what I wanted to achieve. As rice flour can help prevent sticking, I used a mixture of rice and buckwheat flours on the work bench (when I was shaping) as well as on the brotform. This batch was divided into 3 pieces like the previous two batches. The first piece of the proofed dough showed small lines of seams before loading but the seams closed up in the oven. I knew that the other two pieces of dough would be the same; I was so mad that I slashed the other two doughs to bake.
4th attempt: Pain au Levain. The result was still the same. I was too mad to take a photo of this bread. I tried baking without steaming, but the seams still did not open up. I did take a photo (below) of all the breads from the week's baking and I think of the "happy pigs" in San Francisco - the happy recipients of SFBI students' baking. Christmas is coming and I haven't done any festive baking. I have always loved the Italian panforte. I might try making a bread panforte.
5th attempt: Pain au Levain.
I was finally getting somewhere. (1) I shaped loosely with a lot of rice & buckwheat flour mixture on the bench; and (2) I proofed for only 30 minutes in the brotform so the shaped dough with its loose seams did not stay in that position for too long.
6th attempt: a yeasted bread (600 g bread flour, 380 g water, 24 g olive oil, 20 g honey and 3 g instant yeast)
It was very late at night when something dawned on me - for the seams to tear open in the oven, I really shouldn't do a normal shaping. Following is what I have found for this shape of baking:
(a) Shaping: merely gather the edges to the centre without using your hands to tighten the boule against the work bench. In other words, the seams should not be sealed in any way. As well, the seams should be clearly definable after proofing and at time of loading.
(b) Proofing: as short as possible, 30 - 45 minutes, no more than 1 hour. It's best that the proofing basket be covered only loosely with a kitchen towel, not covered tightly in plastic bag. The dough should be able to air.
(b) Retarding: If the dough is to be retarded, retarding in bulk is better than at proofing stage. If the shaped dough goes through a long retardation, its seams may be closed up.
(c) Baking: the oven should be very hot to start with (ie, 250C / 480F). I do not know, however, whether or not steaming makes a difference.
I did take a crumb shot but forgot to download it before my daughter took my camera with her to her schoolie's holiday yesterday. I made her three batards for her schoolie's week to enjoy with her friends. I drove her to Gold Coast yesterday and she said I was an awesome mum. Well, what we do for our daughters! On the way home, I stopped by my most favourite bread shop in Gold Coast, Flour Bakery. I bought the two breads pictured in Jesse Downes' hands: Spelt Sourdough and Seeded Spelt Sourdough. I had the best coffee in Queensland there and ate my way through the bakery's other goodies. I was in heaven.
Shiao-Ping
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