Cooking for larger numbers

[jonv]

Hi folks,

I've had my oven working for a while now but never made more than 6 to 8 pizzas at a time. I've got to cook 40 at the weekend so wondered if any of you experienced users have any handy tips for managing larger numbers...

thanks,
JV

[david s]

For big numbers of guests the best thing is to get everyone to share whatever comes out so people have a bit of this and a bit of that. If people have their own individual pizzas you'll have some waiting ages.

[jonv]

Yep, that makes sense. Will prepare just a few of the more popular toppings and have someone slicing and distributing the pizzas as they come out.

[danjmath]

Probably already done your pizza's, but there are a few things that I have learned. I've done about 30 at once and it took about the same amount of effort as the first time I did 8.
As mentioned before, don't let each person make their own, as it inevitably takes longer, and your sister-in-law is gonna put a cup of sauce and half a pound of cheese on a pie that is just going to gunk up your oven.
Mise en place- Get everything set up so you can stretch, sauce, top, and transfer your pizza to the oven efficiently. I usually have all my prepped ingredients in cereal-sized bowls and dough balls set out in pyrex pan with a damp cloth covering it.
I do 2 pizza's at once, but if your good you can do 3. I always burn one when I try 3.
There are also 2 tools I bought that made it a lot easier for me. The first is a bar-height table (6'x3'-ish) I bought used for $40, and use as my prep station(see attached pic)
The second was this a steel "peelino": https://www.fornobravo.com/store/8-r...al-pizza-peel/
I personally use the small peel for everything besides putting the pizza in the oven(use wood for that). The small size makes it much easier to turn or remove pizza's, especially when you have multiple or a small oven. I use mine to move logs and slap out ash as well.

[jonv]

That's pretty much what I did I did have a couple of helpers so I stretched a few bases then had one topping them - after showing what I wanted to see! - and another slicing and plating the cooked pizzas. Found we could knock them out much faster than they could be eaten. The other thing that made a huge difference was heating the oven for longer - 3.5 hours instead of 2 - really saturating it meant I could cook a whole bunch without any noticeable drop in floor temps or cooking time. Think my oven is only just starting to dry out properly too...