To help prevent future hijackings with pizza oven pictures and all manor of wood-fire cooking related topics (For which I am guilty of) I wanted to start this thread to share ideas for building ovens, recipes, favorite pizza places, etc.
I'll start with the only pictures of a pizza I made from my oven in CT...
The Neopolitan ( pepes "tomato pie"). Simple and perfect.
Pepes uses coal as fuel for the oven..high heat and lots of flavor. Check them out if you are ever in CT. The original is in New Haven..this is where we were that day. There are 3 locations now..we tried the others and its the same.:thumbsup:
Waaaaaaaaaaaaay before I moved down here my family and I used to say you cant get a good pie south of Jersey. There are a few places I have heard about near Charleston that we plan to check out.
Hey, you could always take a drive up when I build mine too!
When I have people over I cook all kinds of pizzas, but the one I get the most compliments on is the one shown twice above and below: cherry tomatoes, cheese, and either basil or cilantro over a basic tomato sauce, with some slivers of white onion if I have lost my mind. No matter what they request and I make for them, they always say they liked that one (filetti) the best.
When I have people over I cook all kinds of pizzas, but the one I get the most compliments on is the one shown twice above: cherry tomatoes, cheese, and either basil or cilantro over a basic tomato sauce, with some slivers of white onion. No matter what they request and I make for them, they always say they liked that one (filetti) the best.
Don't get me wrong, I am the anti-pizza snob. I cook all types of pizza, and use the WFO and the oven often (like a couple hundred pizzas last year, wouldn't you like to be my neighbor), have been making pizza at home since I was about 12, and worked in family pizza joints and even Dominoes as I worked my way through high school and college.
I use the same basic dough recipe my grandmother taught me 30 years ago (she made bread, not pizza), adjusted for how much heat will be used to cook it, and how long I plan to let it ferment. Simple is the key to good pizza (good food for that matter), no matter if it is Neapolitan or Pappa johns.
Quality fresh ingredients, cooked appropriately to the style is the key.
IMO, some reasons that pizza ovens are gaining popularity is that people are realizing the advantages of entertaining at home and the feeling of satisfation from making something delicious for family and friends...and there is fire. Anyone that has cooked in a wood burning oven or even a campfire will tell you the food just seems to taste better.
No, a pizza snob says that you have to, for example, use only Italian tomatoes picked by virgins under a full moon in the South of Italy. I value fresh and local over traditional and expensive.
The way I look at it, the traditional used what was relatively cheap and thus fresh and local, and Snobs demand those same ingredients, even though they are neither fresh nor cheap.
Other than wanting to build an arch using timbrel construction, I was motivated to quit spending 30 bucks a week on Friday night (crap) pizzas for my teenage kids.
My cost for a Carnivore Crunch (fresh Italian sausage, pepperoni (Good pepperoni), ham and bacon) along with good mozzarella plus dough and sauce, is about 4 bucks a pizza for a 16". That is a 15 dollar pie out here in the sticks and probably 25 for you guys in the NE.
Whats great about being down here in SC even though its a pizza black hole, is the fact that I am an agricultural area and only an hour from Charleston. We have a many farmers markets that we get great produce and seafood.
Last year a friend (who has permission) took me to a huge field behind his house that rotates several crops throughout the year. I picked 2.5- 5gallon pails with beautiful roma tomatos and my wife canned 15 quarts (I think)of sauce. Score!!
Hopefully, I'll have my oven ready for this years harvest.
True confession time. I love the cheapy totinos pizzas. I blame my mother for this though as she used to bribe us with them when we were just little tikes back in good 'ol Kansas. Even in exile, here in SC, they are available and I still like em after a little bit of doctoring. They are a "fairly" delicious arrangement of chemicals. Ok, so this is pizza blasphemy, but don't blame pavlov's dog for drooling, blame pavlov. I have been conditioned.
I do admit to being really critical..call it snobbish. But it has absolutely nothing to do with hard to get or expensive ingredients and all to do with quality.:thumbsup:
Just got the new bon appetit and they had this no-knead pizza dough recipe that is pretty easy to make. It is taken from Jim Lahey's book called My Pizza.
We have done other no-knead dough recipes but I havent tried this one yet.... here it is as it appears in the article.
7 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
(1000 grams plus more for shaping dough)
4 tsp. fine sea salt
1/2 tsp. active dry yeast
3 cups water
Wisk flour,salt and yeast in a med bowl. While stirring add 3 cups water stir until well incorporated. Mix dough gently with your hands to bring it together and form ino a rough ball. Transfer into clean bowl.
Cover with plastic wrap and let dough rise at room temp (72*) until surface is covered with tiny bubbles and dough has doubled in size (about 18 hrs depending on temps)
Transfer dough to a floured surface and shape into rough rectangle. Divide into 6 equal portions. One portion at a time, gather 4 corners to center to create 4 folds. Turn seam side down and mold gently into a ball. Dust dough with flour. Let dough rest, covered with plastic wrap or a damp kitchen towel until soft and pliable about 1 hr.
Can be made 3 days ahead. Wrap each dough ball separately in plastic wrap and chill. Unwrap and let rest at room temperature on a lightly floured surface, covered with plastic wrap, for 2-3 hours before shaping.
Some pics of the first pizza oven I built. It is for my oldest and best client. I inherited him from my first boss who got fired for lying about sq footage, shortly after completing the fireplaces and veneer on the house..I quit the day after he got canned. All the stone used on the oven was hand picked by the client and a few guys before his house was built in 1998. This was pretty much The last of it.. we estimated the pile to be around 300 tons when we showed up to do the fire palaces and veneer, one was 1000sqft...
This oven was built in 2005 and the prow roof was built by guys in his employ to mimic the roof on his kids tree house. He wanted a really rustic layup with the stone. For the oven itself, I bought a precast because it was simple and didnt know much about building brick domes at the time...that changed right after this project. I didnt really take good pics but here a a few...
This was taken around 2007 I think. There is some stuff laying around, but you can see the onion light hanging and some rustic cedar doors for the wood storage that are detached. The cedar oven door is removed when firing..it covers the metal oven door when not in use.
This was a neapolitan dome, which has a lower ceiling that the tuscan dome, which is what I built. Since this oven I have built two tuscans and one neapolitan out of brick.
Sure! I made chicken,steaks,roasted veg...even pineapple...along with the other things like bread,calzone,stromboli and faccacia. Techniques vary but when I'm home later I will describe mine.:thumbsup:
I just need to be able to sell my wife on it I love pizza I love pizza buy I use to live in up state ny and she has lived in nc her whole life I miss thr food from up north but I like living in the south
I just need to be able to sell my wife on it I love pizza I love pizza buy I use to live in up state ny and she has lived in nc her whole life I miss thr food from up north but I like living in the south
I make about 80% pizza, but also make bread, roasts, ribs, baked potatoes, etc. I have also used it as a dehydrator, and I get about half a five gallon bucket of charcoal for my grill every time I fire it.
It is an oven, you can cook anything in it that you cook in the kitchen oven, you just have to plan ahead. When I have company spending the weekend, I will do pizza on Friday night, bread and roast/ribs on Saturday, and make breakfast in the oven on Sunday, all from the initial 2 hour firing. The wife likes it because it reduces kitchen mess and I do all the cooking.
But not having a WFO is no excuse for not making pizza though, the kitchen oven works just fine (tonight's dinner, red pepper, green onion, Italian sausage and cilantro):
Right...I gonna start making some on my stone. My WFO project is having trouble getting started.
Good looking pizza BTW.
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Related Threads
?
?
?
?
?
Contractor Talk - Professional Construction and Remodeling Forum
3.5M posts
151.3K members
Since 2003
A forum community dedicated to professional construction and remodeling contractors. Come join the discussion about the industry, trades, safety, projects, finishing, tools, machinery, styles, scales, reviews, accessories, classifieds, and more!