36" in Seattle

[kebwi]

Re: 36" in Seattle

As a rule, you only color the finish coat.

Oh, well that simplifies it. Sheesh, thanks.

[ThisOldGarageNJ]

Re: 36" in Seattle

Hey Keb,,
I was worried too that I didnt have enough colorant and SBC, I didnt..... When I mixed the next batch, I used exactly the same amounts as on the bag and bottle info and everything came out fine... Only problem was, I'm sure I said this before but just in case, The quikrete color faded a bunch after a few months,,, and after the winter the color faded tremendously... What kind of colorant are you using ??

Dont worry about it,,, It is just like frosting a cake,,, easy to do and hard to screw up.. Believe me just from seeing what you've done already you are MORE than capable...

Will you be adding the acrylic fortifier.. ??

If it makes you feel better, mix up a small batch of the sbc and practice on that inside wall in the first picture..

Cheers
Mark

[Tscarborough]

Re: 36" in Seattle

As a rule, you only color the finish coat.

[kebwi]

Re: 36" in Seattle

Filled the dry-stacked cores of the support wall for the extended counter.

I desperately want to start stuccoing the main structure but I'm scared of course...plus, I'm afraid of running out of colorant even though I believe I have more than I need. I'm considering doing the first SBC coat uncolored (white) and only coloring the second coat. Hopefully the second coat, at some substantial thickness, will be sufficient to avoid wearing through and exposing the white coat underneath...or maybe I should color the whole thing and not worry about running out. If I have both colorant and SBC left over at the end, I could apply a partial third coat until I run out, might leave some areas at two coats if I run out of course. Basically paralyzed by apprehension. Uuuuugh.

[david s]

Re: 36" in Seattle

I usually shovel a pizza in after removing the coals, but only near the entry otherwise the first one gets a burnt bottom. Usually by the third one it's cooking perfectly and I shovel them into the centre.

[KINGRIUS]

Re: 36" in Seattle

Have you guys been hand kneading the dough or are you using a Kitchenaid mixer with dough hook?
I have found my bread/pizza crust comes out so much lighter and crispier when I let the mixer knead the dough for a minimum of 5 minutes after the dough has reached the right consistency(no dry four @ bottom of bowl, dough not sticking to sides). It reaches a smooth and almost pasty(like drywall mud smooth) consistency. If you are hand mixing the dough, it may require longer and more vigorous kneading until the dough has reached it's smooth density.
I've picked up some other dough tips along the way:

Yeast activation- Start with your luke warm water and activation sugar, leaving out the salt for now. Mix in the yeast (instant dry has worked fine for me). Then add maybe half of your flour for the recipe and partially mix/knead until you have dough "stew". Let it sit for 5 minutes and you should see the bubbles everywhere. Then add the rest of your flour, salt, and oil if any.

Substitution of of dry beer malt(Breiss malt from your local brewer's supply) for activation sugar- Instead of using just sugar to activate my yeast, I've just started using dry beer malt. If a dough recipe calls for a tablespoon of sugar, I would double it when using the beer malt. When you taste the crust, it's too subtle a flavor for someone to be able to pick out the malt. But what I've found it to do is give the crust a more golden brown finish and it gives it a delicious crunch while still being moist and soft inside.

I don't remember if you said you already do this, but you can separate the portions of dough before it rises into tight round balls. This way when you start spreading it into a pizza it's more inclined to keep it's round form and resists tearing more. Working on you dough shaping techniques will help you obtain your perfectly round dough balls.

At the pizzeria I've recently been working, we use high-gluten flour. At home I just use store bought bread flour. And personally, I think the crust comes better with the bread flour. Hope some of these tips help!

Darius

[kebwi]

Re: 36" in Seattle

And with a small fire you are able to keep your floor hot? That seems to me my primary ailment at the moment. Do you start cooking immediately after clean out the coals and push the fire to the side or do you reheat your floor from the side fire before cooking?

[david s]

Re: 36" in Seattle

It seems the preparation of the pizzas is what takes the time, not the cooking. Why then have a huge oven if you only cook one at a time? Actually it is easier to manage multiple pizzas in a smaller oven because They are much closer to the entry and you don't need a peel with a six foot handle. What you do need to do is remove most of the coals then maintain a small fire. I have learned to cook 3x 9" pizzas at the same time in my little 21" oven. But I only do this if cooking for more than 20 people.Mostly like everyone else it's one at a time.We love to share and have a taste of whatever comes out rather than waiting for a personal pizza for each person. The main trick is to have your guests always have a pizza ready to shovel in.

[RTflorida]

Re: 36" in Seattle

Keith,
My thoughts on the floor temp and what I have found works for me:

I can burn my entire oven clean in 45 minutes with a huge blazing fire that encompasses at least 75-80% of the floor, and that is what I usually do. I have had a "cold floor" on a couple of occasions when I rushed the fire to the side as soon as the oven cleared. Problem is, heating the floor to the same temp (or close to it) takes a bit more time...remember, all of your heat is going up and the floor is under the fire, so it takes longer to saturate with heat. Once my dome clears I spread the fire and coals to cover almost every sq. inch of floor space. Over the next 15 minutes or so, I let the fire die down a bit but still keep it going pretty good, just not raging anymore. after that fully spread out 15 minute die down, I push the fire to the side (keep it going with at least 2 nice logs) and within the next 5-10 minutes (depending on how well I have prepped) I am placing my first pizza......To be sure, I ALWAYS shoot the floor with my IR, I'm a stickler for getting the pizza bottoms just right. Usually around 800 - 825 F is what it takes for the pizza I want.
If you want to do multiple pizzas, let your wife help. I know it tough, I HAVE to do everything myself, but I have failed miserably at making & placing every pizza, monitoring the fire and cooking them just right. My wife usually builds 50% of our pizzas now (don't tell her I said this, but she spreads dough better than I do now).

RT

[Raffy]

Re: 36" in Seattle

In my experience, the fire needs to be big enough to curl up the inside of your dome almost reaching the keystone (and the logs should touch the dome to encourage drawing the flame up the dome wall). In my oven, that's critical for keeping the floor temps in the 750-800+ range. As soon as I move the ashes over to one side, I immediately throw on some logs and keep some burning while I'm cooking pizza.

Perhaps what I need to do is push the fire to one side, get it roaring on one side, then wait a few minutes to cook pizza. Maybe then the heat would beat down on the floor and bring it up to temp.

Hi, Keith. If you do it like you said, I think you will have no more problems with cooking floor temp. My rationale is that even if the dome gets to a high of even 1000F the floor still needs to catch up cause flames shoot up to the dome whereas the floor heats up through ambient heat. Add to that the layer of ash between the floor and the flame, the cooking floor will not heat up as fast as the dome.

Our fire in the pizzeria was similar to what sjmeff describes in his reply. Even then we waited a while before we started cooking. Keep in mind that this oven was running everyday and in the morning it was still hot enough to bake bread in, we still waited for the dome and floor temps to come closer to each other. The dome will always be hotter than the floor no matter what but when the flames arch across the interior of the dome almost to the other side, you can be assured that the floor is getting radiated with the flames heat.

I'm not 100% that this is the problem (an infrared reading could help confirm) but I'm 80% sure that if you can get the cooking floor to at LEAST 375 celsius (I prefer to cook pizza in the 400 C to 425 C range but its not a hard and fast rule) or 700F then you and the crust are golden.

Let me know how it turns out.

Raffy

[kebwi]

Re: 36" in Seattle

I admit, I'm torn by a desire to both shape the dough and tend the oven. Doing is kinda difficult. Not sure how it'll play out in a larger setting when I need to do multiple rounds instead of just two initial pizzas.

[Dino_Pizza]

Re: 36" in Seattle

Keith: Tell me how hour your "multiple pizzas at once" goes. Before I started the oven I'd spend hours on cad drawing various pizza 'circles' to verify how many pizza for the diameter will go in and verify the official downloaded ebooks pictures. We'll I've found it's all out the door. (or wfo?). I don't seem have the capacity (physically-mentally ) to keep my eye on more than 2 pizza's in the oven, watching when to turn them, watching when the closest one gets too done, then deciding which of the 2 comes out 1st AND I can't just wait and watch; I have to be getting my next 2 dough's ready. I can't imagine doing more than 2 at a time regardless of oven size.

If you teamed up with your wife or someone to prep the dough (but hey, your the best candidate for that) and have someone else tend the oven pizzas (if you can give up control, your a better man than I ) then it might work. I'll be really embarrassed if this problem is intrinsic to me only . -dino

[kebwi]

Re: 36" in Seattle

Based on the pics you provided, I can only deduce that your cooking floor temp is too low. I cook my pizzas at around 400 - 425 degrees celsius resulting in a thin crunchy layer outside and a nice "bready" (for want of a better term) layer inside. If the bottom side takes too long to cook, it will result in a tough and chewy crust. If you say that you cook in the 600 F, roughly 315 C, I definitely think temperature is the culprit.
Raffy

Ah, I will have to give that some serious thought.

How soon after the firing do you start cooking? The dome gets hot pretty quick but its a matter of getting the cooking floor to "catch up" with the dome's temp. For a commercial oven (running 24/7), we had to wait one hour after firing til we could start cooking in the morning. Even when we could feel the blazing heat from the opening, we knew that the floor still wasn't hot enough til the prescribed waiting time was over.
Raffy

Well, I thought I was following standard FB Pompeii practice in that I fully clear the sought off the dome, then don't wait much longer. Once the dome cleared, I shoved the fire to the side, threw on a few small logs, and threw on the pizzas...but the floor was only 600, even though the dome was over 1000 and even the low walls were 800 or so.

Maybe after pushing the fire to the side and brushing off the floor, thus exposing it, I should roar the fire up again with the intention of shooting heat down into the bare floor...I just hadn't heard of other FBers needing to do that. I thought, once the soot clears, you make pizza.

Lastly, I recommend you wait a while after you have wiped the cooking floor with a wet rag. It may only be seconds but thats enough to reduce the cooking floor temp.

I'm not wet-mopping for pizza at all; only two hours later for bread. For pizza I raked the ash and coals to the back of the oven, brushed the floor vigorously, then went for it...at 600 for some confusing reason.

Food for thought. Thanks.

[kebwi]

Re: 36" in Seattle

Hey papavino, haven't heard from you in a while.

How often do you clean out the ash from your oven? It looks like there is an awful lot in there.

I have yet to clean my oven out at all. I haven't bought or constructed an ash pan or box yet. The total amount of ash isn't going up though. Each fire cooks down to about the same amount of final ash and coal, which goes to the side while cooking, then gets mixed into the next fire.

I was under the impression there was no call to clean the ash and coals out for pizza, only for bread, a topic I discuss later in this post...

And are you able to easily turn the pizza in the back of the oven? I only cook one at a time in my 36"..

I want to practice multiple pizzas at once in prep for larger parties. Those photos were just my wife and I making two pizzas. I didn't need to do them simultaneously. Short answer, yes, I have discovered that I can gingerly manipulate the pizzas around each other. It is quite difficult however. They were pretty small pizzas too, one of four dough balls from the FB ebook recipe (500g if I recall correctly), about 10 or 11 inches across.

And I let the dome go completely white before cooking for best results to tag on to what Raffy was saying about waiting to get the floor temp up.

Oh yeah, absolutely. Look at the photos again, I cleared the oven all the way down the sides in that last session (first time I've managed to clear it all the way to the floor). Literally all the soot burned off by the time I was putting pizzas in there. Are you recommending that even after the dome has fully cleared of all soot I should still continue to roar the fire for a while before cooking pizza? I've only done this four times so far, so I'm open to any and all suggestions. I'm just unsure what the point is of continuing the fire the oven once the dome has cleared. Everything is as hot as it's going to get at that point...right?

I usually just brush the floor well, then toss the pizzas on without mopping.

For pizza, I quickly shove the entire fire to one side of the oven, scrape and brush the exposed floor quickly, and throw on the pizzas, no wet mopping at all. For bread, two hours later, I wet-mopped the floor and threw down the dough (that last session was the first time I had put bread directly on the floor, so it was the first time I wet-mopped the floor). Worked quite well.

Thanks.

[papavino]

Re: 36" in Seattle

How often do you clean out the ash from your oven? It looks like there is an awful lot in there. And are you able to easily turn the pizza in the back of the oven? I only cook one at a time in my 36". And I let the dome go completely white before cooking for best results to tag on to what Raffy was saying about waiting to get the floor temp up. I usually just brush the floor well, then toss the pizzas on without mopping.