As I sit here, waiting for some pizzas/calzones to bake - I was wondering if we have an pizza aficionatti here? …
full amateur, semi-pro, pro … all welcome to share their thoughts and experiences (and bonus for pix)
https://i.postimg.cc/s2YbKkpM/image.png
My brother has one of those big green egg ovens. The pizza cooked in them come out with a really nice, flaky crust if you cook them just right. The issue is its very easy to cook them wrong and end up with a burnt crust.
Full amateur here. My son really got into cooking before he went off to college, and pizza making was something we were doing together for awhile. He’d make the dough from scratch, I’d make a NY-style sauce similar to the recipe below. Whole milk mozzarella and various toppings- sometimes a simple pizza margarita with basil leaves, sometimes good ol’ pepperoni, mushroooms, Italian sausage, maybe the occasional sprinkle of black olives.
To cook the pizza I didn’t want to spring for a whole pizza oven, and I already have a kettle grill and a smoker, so for around $100 I picked up a kit to turn my kettle grill into a wood-fired pizza oven. It actually worked really well. We made some damn fine pizza for a summer.
ETA: now I want pizza!
It’s been a few years since I’ve done this, but I used to make pizza on my grill. I’d throw the flattened dough on the grill, sauce it up, cheese it up, and then place my toppings on before closing the grill. The pizza usually turned out just fine.
aint that great … not just food, but I’m sure you both made memories for life!!!
that’s the spirit! … I always cringe when I hear the prototypical anal-retentive guy, explaining that you need Caputtto flour, with at least 13% proteins and have it ferment for 4.28 hours at a temp between 19,2 and 19,3°C …
Pizza is one of those typical historic-local “lets throw the week’s leftovers onto something and call it a day” … just like paella, chilli or feijoada …
then, 200 years later some guys in a different country steps up and explains that they did it wrong for all that time 
I only have my regular oven to cook pizza in (500F max…maybe 550F…I forget). My question for those who know…is it worth getting a pizza stone/steel for use in a regular oven? Or are they more a gimmick than useful?
If useful is a stone or steel better?
I hear steels are better. I use unglazed quarry tile that I got from Menard’s for both the home oven and my grill. It does a treat, especially on the grill, which can get quite hotter than 550. The trick there is to cook the crust (about 2 minutes), and then finish the rest of the pizza lifted away from the stone (like on a grate). In the home oven, it’s not as much a problem, but the bottom will still get finished before the top is as finished as I generally like it. You can compensate by turning the oven off and throwing the broiler on.
I’d rather spend high-double digits for those (generic model, there are 100s of those):
buying a stone for your oven is like putting a Ferrari engine into a Ford Taunus … everything around is just too “unfit” for the task, it wouldn’t make sense (too low temp, too high air-volume, that will dry you pizza, which needs to bake too long to be done, etc…).
It’s a fun kind of hobby to get all your ducks lined up (dough, fermentation, oven, ingredients ) , but, again, with less than 100 bucks in hardware you can make a pizza that will leave 95% of all other pizzas in the dust …
(today’s harvest - with this type of el-cheapo oven):
pizza-sticks and a calzone:
bacon and onions
@pulykamell Nice looking pies! Good leopard on the bottom.
I’ve got a steel and a stone. I prefer the steel, but it takes longer to get up to temp. I haven’t put the steel on the grill, but may try that next grilling season.
I usually use an uncooked sauce, just tomatoes, try to get the best canned ones you can find, I go with San Marzano or Cento, with salt and pepper and oregano.
I used to do a thing with sliced roma tomatoes that I’d broil with olive oil and garlic on a sheet tray for like 45 minutes to make the “sauce.”
Do y’all let the dough ferment? I’ve found 2 days is about right.
Yeah…typically I start the dough on Monday or Tuesday night for Friday pizza. It’s a low stress dough, just about 75% hydration thrown together with a quarter to half teaspoon yeast, salt, mixed together to form a cohesive mass, and set on the counter overnight, and into the fridge in the morning. Sometimes I’ll add a little bit of diastatic malt powder, which gives it a little better browning and maybe chew. I can’t really tell that well. Typical flour I use is Ceresota AP flour.
And my sauce is exactly like yours: fresh canned tomatoes, salt, sprinkle of oregano. Sometimes I’ll blitz then with a little garlic and olive oil.
Now I think I may need to make some dough and get some cheese etc.
I’m gonna find where youse guys live and stop by when the grill is hot!
I love my pizza stone but I just cook frozen za on it. Lazy sadly
Bread machine dough is pressed in a large rectangle pan. Then it’s topped and cooked. Homemade. Been awhile.
wow … you guys are long term thinkers … I sometimes do overnight ferments (normally around 24 hrs) … but more often than not do 4-6 hours of ambient fermentation, so I cook up a dough in the morning to be eaten the afternoon/evening …
I went to quite some lenght to have the workflow down to a “T”, which means I only use one bowl (the one of the food processor with kneading hook) in the whole process and a silicone sheet for making the balls and pies - and then I’m off to the races at the oven
My wife has been making pizza for a long time. We went from a stone in a 500 degree oven to a dedicated pizza oven last year and it was well worth it. She makes several types of dough, but tends to use her sourdough since we have plenty of starter at feeding time. I’m in charge of lighting the oven and making sure it’s 900 degrees, then the pizza(s) go in. So good!
I wish we had a more protected outdoor cooking area so we could more easily do pizza year round. Last winter we cooked in the garage when it was too windy/snowy on our patio.
Yeah, but I’m a Detroit style pizza aficionado, since before people knew what Detroit style was.
I’m actually branching out, though, and I literally ordered a pizza steel just a half hour ago because I want to see what else I can do. My goal isn’t one of those shitty New York pizzas, though, but something more traditionally American. Yeah, yeah, American pizza originated in New York, but thank God it spread out from there,
I’m also hopeful that the steel will improve my pita and naan game.
My oven will top out at 550°F, but my Weber will get as hot as its six burners will let it. I’m ready for experimentation, and even have some 00 flour ready to start!
I’m not sure if I’ll do better than a Detroit style, but the old adage about no such thing as bad sex pizza is true. Yeah, even pineapple.
As long as we’re talking about pizza steels, any other good applications? Pizza, naan, pita. Maybe on the stovetop as a comal for homemade tortillas? Not sure if there will be hot spots. Again, ready to experiment.
We know a couple of Italian families here in Luxembourg and have both attended and hosted homemade pizza parties a few times.
The trick to using a pizza stone in a home oven, per our friends, is to (a) preheat the snot out of the stone, then (b) slap on the crust and precook it for a couple minutes, then (c) pull out the crust, keeping top up and bottom down, (d) dress it really fast (keep it simple! thin layer of sauce and 2-3 toppings at most), and then (e) throw it back on the stone for another couple minutes.
This is how you get the crisp-yet-chewy crust while melting but not burning the cheese. The crust isn’t loaded down at the outset, firming up with a dry surface, which is then re-wet by the sauce.
Oh, and their home-oven pizza stones are thicker than the glorified patio tiles you see at, like, Williams Sonoma.
It’s not as good as a dedicated pizza oven, but I can attest firsthand this is how the Italians do it at home.
Oddly enough my favorite crust recipe came from the back of a Kroger flour bag. It makes a thinner crust, I don’t like pizza that is half bread.
if its one of those bubble-shaped weber grills, you could try to cover it for a couple of minutes (just make sure you use the right kind of “cover” → you want to melt the cheese on the pizza and not a polyamide blanket ) … to bump the temp up for a couple of minutes
My grill is differently shaped, but I have no prob putting come old cardboard on it to keep the loss of warmth down …
Again, the problem with “grills” seem to be the large volume of air which tends to dry the pizza rather than cook it in 2-3 mins (i guess the small vol. of pizza-ovens lead to a steamy environment which seems crucial for a great “upperside”) - but as you say - time to experiment
Just had homemade pizza for lunch. Didn’t feel like getting the grill out, so cooked it in the oven.
Made the dough and sauce yesterday. Should’ve stretched out the dough a bit more before baking. Guess I have to do it again soon. Maybe next time I’ll be motivated to get the grill out - it definitely gets hotter than the oven.
always interesting to see what people like/dislike in a pizza … I personally like the thin bottom with a significant “bread” border … I think that’s also the reason why there is not one universally “best” recipe … different people prefer different outcomes