First Pizza was a disaster

[Mexman]

Today was the first time I baked a Pizza in my new FB Oven ( see my other thread " used whole bricks instead of half" in this section.
The pizza tasted like a day old pizza left out door in the sun all day.
It was tough like shoe leather and dried out. I kept waiting for the side edges to brown and when they did, the rest was dried out.
My oven inside dome was 750 degrees and floor around 650-700. The fire had been burning for about 3 hours . I'm hoping it will get to a steady 800 degrees when the oven gets completely dried out.
I was excited today when the oven got to 600 degrees in about 45 min. The next two hours, it only increased a little over 100 degrees.
One good thing, the inside dome went white in 2 hours 45 min.
The outside of the dome was 90 degrees, so I wasn't loosing heat thru the dome.

[Laurentius]

Re: First Pizza was a disaster

It wasn`t the oven`s fault. What was your pizza recipe?

[Mexman]

Re: First Pizza was a disaster

No, I don't blame the oven and not even the recipe. I've used the recipe many times in the home oven. Taste great
I need to learn when to remove the pizza from the WFO. I was looking for the crust to be brown around the outside edges. The bottom got hard and tough before the edges brown.

[Les]

Re: First Pizza was a disaster

Mex - get your hearth to 750 - 800 deg. You should see a well cooked pizza in 90 to 180 seconds max. You mentioned the floor was 650 - 700, that should have worked. Do you have a live fire? It's easy to "scoot" the pie closer to the flame and get the brown you want, very easy to get the black you don't. Always have a live fire for pizza, then its just a matter of learning the ways of your oven.

[Toomulla]

Re: First Pizza was a disaster

Don't feel too bad my first pizza burst into smoke and flame instantaneously resulting in a black crisp flat disk guess it was way too hot

[Mexman]

Re: First Pizza was a disaster

Mex - get your hearth to 750 - 800 deg. You should see a well cooked pizza in 90 to 180 seconds max. You mentioned the floor was 650 - 700, that should have worked. Do you have a live fire? It's easy to "scoot" the pie closer to the flame and get the brown you want, very easy to get the black you don't. Always have a live fire for pizza, then its just a matter of learning the ways of your oven.

Right now, I'm having a hard time getting my oven that hot. After three hours, I saw around 700

Read a good tip on another site tonight about when to tell if crust was done.
Lift half the pizza up with the peel and see how much the other side droops. As the crust gets done, won't sag that much

[nissanneill]

Re: First Pizza was a disaster

Don't know your problem as my oven is well and truly up to temp in 1 1/2 hours, my infra red thermometer max's out at 500˚C and the pizzas are done in 1 minute!

[Mexman]

Re: First Pizza was a disaster

I think part of my heating problem is my chimney. The temp. On the outside of my chimney bricks is 350 degrees and I notice a lot of heat going up in the air.. I'm having a metal extension duct being built to extend my chimney another 4 feet in the air and a damper is being installed. Hope this helps.
My friends WFO has no chimney and his oven gets to 900 degrees in under two hours

[Greenman]

Re: First Pizza was a disaster

I hope you get it sorted. If it is built to specs then looking for technical remedies is the caper. One positive is that it is all up from here. We all had a few scarey pizzas, truth be known.

[jeeppiper]

Re: First Pizza was a disaster

My first pizza (attempt) ended up with my dough stuck on the peel and all my toppings and sauce in the ashes in the back of the oven. I have since improved my process.

[Mexman]

Re: First Pizza was a disaster

I hope you get it sorted. If it is built to specs then looking for technical remedies is the caper. One positive is that it is all up from here. We all had a few scarey pizzas, truth be known.

Steve
Looked at your Pics and looks like you are doing a great job with your oven.
As I said before, my problem is not with my oven. I know it's me .
When I first started using a microwave oven 45 years ago, I remember the cooking instructor saying, " If it's not done, you can always put it back in for more minutes. If it's over done and tough, you throw it away". That's what I'm going to start doing with my WFO.
I have 8 people coming over Sunday afternoon for my first Pizza party and I'm just trying to sort it out so they won't go home hungry and laughing.

All my guest that are coming, have heard me talk about "Planning on building a great WFO" for the past year.

[Greenman]

Re: First Pizza was a disaster

My first pizza (attempt) ended up with my dough stuck on the peel and all my toppings and sauce in the ashes in the back of the oven. I have since improved my process.

Bravo for the honesty. Truth be known most of us have had our share of experiences like that, to one degree or another.

[GianniFocaccia]

Re: First Pizza was a disaster

Bravo for the honesty. Truth be known most of us have had our share of experiences like that, to one degree or another.

How true.

After my first 40 or so pizzas, I attempted TXCraig's sourdough pizza recipe from pizzamaking.com, only my sourdough starter, while strong and vibrant, wasn't enough to overcome my lack of gluten-building skills during my stretch and folds. Therefore the opened ball, once loaded with toppings, was weak and stuck to the cutting board (despite volumes of flour).

My brother offered to pull the pizza onto the table-side wood peel I was holding, and when he yanked the pie free, the force of his elbow hit my arm, knocked me and the peel back a foot and the entire pizza ended up on the floor. I've never seen a sorrier sight in my life...

[pikemonkey]

Re: First Pizza was a disaster

All my guest that are coming, have heard me talk about "Planning on building a great WFO" for the past year.[/QUOTE]


From what I've read Mexman, you have indeed built a great WFO.
Temperatures are getting there. Insulation looks like it's doing it's job.
Might take a bit longer and a bit more wood to heat it up, because you are trying to saturate twice the usual thickness with heat.
Had my first pizza parties last weekend (Sat and Sun - all pizza'd out now!).
Saturday the floor got to about 350degC (roughly 700degF) and pizzas cooked ok when i got the hang of it.
Sunday it got to about 450degC, and I was knocking pizzas out in about 60seconds (seemed like it anyway), which to be honest, was a little too fast and too hot for my new peel skills, so "Stone Baked" became "Baked Stone" in some cases, Especially when some bright spark suggested a Calzone!!!!After ramming it into the embers and dragging it back out with a garden rake, they were presented with something described as a blackened conch!!
We all gotta learn.
So doing thin bases, I shake mine off the peel, watch it puff up slightly round the edges, and JUST start to change colour. Then I try to lift it with the peel. If it sags a lot, or is still soft leave it a few more seconds to firm up a bit.
Get the peel under it, bring it out, turn it round on the peel, you might see the other side has gone brown. Then put it back in for another short while, 10, 20 30, seconds - you'll get the idea after a few tries. Some pizzas I turned once, others more, depends how they cook. No expert so this might not be THE WAY. But got me through a pizza party.
And another thing - have your guests roll some dough and cook some pizzas.
It's part of the fun and if they mess it up, the fingers will not all be pointing at you. Maybe have some extra dough handy though. and beer.