36" in Seattle

[BrickStoneOven]

Re: 36" in Seattle

If the 2.2lbs bag you bought was red than its not the same. The one in the red bag has a higher protein content than the blue "pizzeria" bag.

[kebwi]

Re: 36" in Seattle

A tale of pizza disaster.

Fired the oven to full temp only for the second time tonight. Took longer to start clearing the dome than I expected, so the pizzas had sat on the wooden peels for quite a while by the time I was ready to cook. They were consequently virtually glued to the peels. They ended up in unceremonious piles of mush on the oven floor, folded over into pseudo-calzones, but not even good calzones, just casseroles with some crust mixed in.

Oh well, there's always next time.

Cheers!

[ThisOldGarageNJ]

Re: 36" in Seattle

Hey Keb,
I always prepare my pizza's in oiled pizza trays, Great for a few reasons, we prepare up to 8 at a time for parties, I can cook 3 at a time if i have a really good heating, After they firm up I can slap the to the bricks to finish, You have a place to keep the pizza's after they are cooked, you get to eat with your family and friends and its much easier when a guest wants to make a pizza, I give them a piece of dough already prepared in a pan...
Cheers
Mark

[sjmeff]

Re: 36" in Seattle

Keith - I had several (okay, *lots* of...) pizzas stick until I started using this method: I put a generous amount of flour in a small cookie sheet. Using my dough scraper, I drop the proofed dough into the flour and then turn it so both sides have plenty of flour. I then lightly brush off the flour, shape and put it on a peel that has a light dusting of brown rice flour.

I also found that the dough stuck more often on my metal peel, so I stopped using it for putting pies *in* the oven (I use it to carry them back to the table).

Finally, I never put them on the peels until they're ready to go in the oven. I'll make up to three on different peels (though 2 is more manageable) and walk them out to the oven. The time it takes to make one or two more pizzas is the longest they ever sit on the peels.

S

[kebwi]

Re: 36" in Seattle

Hmmm, lots of hard-earned wisdom in those comments. I'll have to study them carefully. A few points: I'm not using metal peels to put them in the oven, only wood. I am currently building the pizzas on the wooden peels b/c I don't know where else to build them and figure they're going on the wooden peels eventually anyway, but maybe this is why...you can't leave them on the peels very long.

Thanks.

BTW, doored up my oven at 370 last night (not as hot as I expected since I had a very long fire and cleared most of the dome except the lowest walls, and it was 270 this morning. I still have some insulation left to install, so that's pretty swell. It's a little biased however in that I doored up a pile of red hot coals, not just an empty oven. It would be colder without that of course.

Cheers!

[sjmeff]

Re: 36" in Seattle

Hey Keith - just to be clear, I build my pizzas on the wood peels, too. I've tried to assemble them on the counter and then drag them onto the peels (like James does in the FB video), but this has always resulted in disaster.

I'd suggest overdoing the rice flour a little until you get the hang of it, then back off until you have it down pat.

Also, once you have the assembled pizzas on the peels, give them a shake now and then to make sure they're not stuck. If they *are* stuck, use your bench scraper or a spatula and blow rice flour underneath (read that trick and it worked the last time I had one stick).

S

[kebwi]

Re: 36" in Seattle

I'm also using ordinary flour, not this rice floor your guys mention. When we cook pizzas on a stone in the oven, we put corn meal on the stone. I thought I read about corn meal serving some purpose in WFO cooking, but I can't remember what it is. When/where is corn meal used in this process.

I'll see if I can find some rice flour.

[Tscarborough]

Re: 36" in Seattle

I bought the small pizza pans at a restaurant supply house, 3 bucks each. I use corn meal on them and the peel, but I am going to try the rice flour.

[kebwi]

Re: 36" in Seattle

Yep, we have some of those too, but so far we have only used them for serving: the comes comes out of the oven directly onto one of those pans. We haven't thought to use them for building the pizza.

[sjmeff]

Re: 36" in Seattle

I used to use corn meal as well, but in the high WFO temps, it burns and adds an unpleasant flavor. Rice flour still burns (or at least it appears to), but it doesn't add any flavor. I used a lot at first, now I just use a light dusting. Once I sprinkle a little on the peel, I smooth it out with my fingers so that it covers the full area where the pizza will be, then plop down my shaped dough.

It's pretty frustrating to lose a pizza, especially when you have company over. I think everyone goes through a phase when they lose pizzas, and then you get more accustomed to the handling and it rarely if ever happens.

Good luck!

[papavino]

Re: 36" in Seattle

+1 to not letting the pizza sit on your peel for too long. I'm still working on my method, but I usually have one person making a pizza while another one is out by the oven cooking one. It works out pretty well and some of my friends have gotten decent at making pizzas. And it reduces the burden on me when we have people over. Every once in a while, the dough will get a hole in it and some tomato or olive oil will leak underneath and cause the dough to stick to the metal peel. Might be time to get a wooden one.

As for finding rice flour, any grocery with a bulk section should have it. Whole Foods, Fred Meyer, Greenwood Market, Central Market, PFI, etc.

[Alter ego]

Re: 36" in Seattle

Hi Keith,

A tale of pizza disaster

Did you throw the resulting mess onto the fire as an offering to the pizza gods?

I had similar results to you when began using my oven. The first time the pies were all OK if a little miss shaped, the second time I lost several on the floor in a mess and I was so disappointed with that I just threw them on the fire.

This offering to the pizza oven gods has seemed to work as now I can slide them in & out without too much problem. The practice certainly helps as I have now made about 40 pizzas and each time it gets better.

The others have all mentioned good ideas but another thing that helped me was that I cut down on my dough ball size (200g) to make smaller pizzas as they are easier to handle.

The good news is that you just have to keep practicing.

Paul

[Neil2]

Re: 36" in Seattle

Another trick to get them to slide off the peel onto the oven floor is to ease the uncooked pizza ahead on the wooden peel until there is about inch or so overhanging the edge of the peel. This inch will "catch" on the hot floor and you can slide the peel back out .

[kebwi]

Re: 36" in Seattle

Last night was my third pizza attempt (two pizzas per night, so this was #5 and #6). I had much better success this time than the previous attempt as described above. Cleared the dome almost down the sides (the bottom six to eight inches hadn't cleared after 90 minutes and I was tired of waiting). I made my pizzas a little thicker this time so they wouldn't disintegrate. They were consequently smaller which made them easier to manipulate in the oven, but in truth, they were probably too thick, so I'll have to work on my technique...but overall a success!

Still working on my temps. The floor wasn't really 700-800 while cooking, it was more like 500-600.

After that I threw in some cheap freezer bread dough. It cooked to a blackened crisp! I thought it might work because the door thermometer was only registering an interior air temperature of 400, so I'm unsure how to use that thermometer to determine baking temps (there's the IR-floor temp, the IR-dome temp, and the door-probe-air temp, how do I use these to gauge bread baking?). Admittedly, I didn't even clean out the coals, so that is not the proper way to cook bread by a long shot.

Then, I doored up the oven (with a very large pile of red-hot coals), and it was about 300F this morning, so I threw in another freezer doughball and made a nice little breakfast bread which my wife was very pleased about.

I need to post pics of the bread, but I didn't even make the dough, so it doesn't really count in my mind.

Cheers!

[Dino_Pizza]

Re: 36" in Seattle

The thing with bread baking and the floor/dome/side temps is that IDEALLY, you've bought the oven to near pizza temps or did pizzas and are through with them. Now you have way too hot an oven for bread, but that's ok since you are going to rake out the ashes (it honestly is only a 1.5 minute process) with your shovel and steel pale then you mop it down (I always use a wet oven mop, even for pizzas to clean off some ash and not burn the bottoms (honestly, I don't care if I do eat a bit of ash but guests can be picky) then put the door back on to let the heat re-organize after cooling it down with the wet mop. At some point, after resting, all 3-4 temp readings are closely equalized at the bread temps you want. Or what you did sounded as successful as anyone gets. It's all fun and you learn as you go.

Also, I'm a big fan of rice flour. White rice takes about an hour to cook 'cuz it really does NOT want to absorb water so it's ideal for sliding dough. I bought a tin salt shaker at the store (the kind mom-pop hamburger joints use to shake salt on their burgers), filled it with rice flour and labeled it, and it sprinkles out just fine. Can't wait to see your bread pics, it's all good!