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After drawing inspiration from a recent visit to Da Michele in Naples I turned my attention to duplicating that light crust style, leoparding, the minimalist topping and non-traditional oil that characterises their age old style of pizza making. The only difference was that I wanted to achieve this duplication using only locally available ingredients - including flour.
Interestingly, Da Michele are non-VPN (and have no desire to conform to that standard I understand) giving them an additional "rebellious" dimension which adds to their appeal. My research encompassed observations, tasting, gathering snippets of information on their methods, ingredients and preparation process and was quite exhaustive. This process took me offline as I didn't want any distractions and diversions that regularly occurred during my earlier posts.
I am pleased to report that I have achieved this objective - and have been able to duplicate it several times successfully so believe I have developed consistency in producing the recipe. Not wishing to begin a discussion on the recipe itself, something else that I discovered involved the wood that I used, and I thought that a discussion on that topic may be of interest to those here.
There have of course been some discussions here on the "types" of wood used but not so much on the gathering and preparation of the wood itself - which had a significant impact on the end result, particularly leoparding, of the pizza. I will however start with the types of wood (WA specific) that I have found to work well.
Listed in order of hottest to coolest burning: Mallee roots, White Gum, Jarrah and Peppermint. I first build a good fire with White Gum and mallee and let that burn for a few hours, then introduce finely split Peppermint and White Gum for the flare to keep the fire running optimally for pizzas. Sounds simple enough but where do you get these products you may well wonder...
After a recent trip to the woodyard to get some White Gum (at $15 /small bag) I decided to find another source for this great burning wood. On looking around I noticed that there is tons of it growing everywhere! We are surrounded by it - growing like weeds. For those that have bulk rubbish collections in your area - keep a lookout for sawn branches/logs. I found heaps just waiting to be collected. Also (pics in an earlier post), a neighbour did some severe tree pruning of a White Gum tree and I grabbed all the good bits from him - enough for about 8 - 10 fires.
Now, what you will need is a good chainsaw and a log splitter to process the wood. Sounds expensive? No, not really - reasonable 50cc chainsaw plus 2 blades delivered to your door - $135. Hydraulic log splitter costs a bit more = $300 - $420 (7 Ton capacity). With those two items you will be able to process all your wood for future WFO needs very cheaply. If you don't want to spend the money on the hydraulic splitter - just go to Bunnings and buy an axe type log splitter for $30. It will have the same effect, only slower, but will be hard on your back!
I also bought a pole mounted chainsaw during my buying spree. I tried it on my neighbours White Gum that was hanging over the back fence. The trunk was almost 30cm thick and the small blade struggled a bit but soon it came crashing down. I took the chainsaw to it and after a while had split the logs into oven size bits - both larger for coals and thinner ones for flare. That made about 8 fires worth and there is another branch awaiting surgery too for when I get the next urge.
Logs will of course take a while to dry completely but I load my next firing of wet wood in the warm oven (after a cook) and it should be perfectly ready for use when I next fire up the oven.
I will post pics of the log splitting machine activities shortly. This piece of equipment has turned out to be one of the most useful items in my pizza making arsenal and it ensures that I have perfectly sized and very cheap wood available at all times. Definitely worth exploring if you are a serious pizzaiolo.
Interestingly, Da Michele are non-VPN (and have no desire to conform to that standard I understand) giving them an additional "rebellious" dimension which adds to their appeal. My research encompassed observations, tasting, gathering snippets of information on their methods, ingredients and preparation process and was quite exhaustive. This process took me offline as I didn't want any distractions and diversions that regularly occurred during my earlier posts.
I am pleased to report that I have achieved this objective - and have been able to duplicate it several times successfully so believe I have developed consistency in producing the recipe. Not wishing to begin a discussion on the recipe itself, something else that I discovered involved the wood that I used, and I thought that a discussion on that topic may be of interest to those here.
There have of course been some discussions here on the "types" of wood used but not so much on the gathering and preparation of the wood itself - which had a significant impact on the end result, particularly leoparding, of the pizza. I will however start with the types of wood (WA specific) that I have found to work well.
Listed in order of hottest to coolest burning: Mallee roots, White Gum, Jarrah and Peppermint. I first build a good fire with White Gum and mallee and let that burn for a few hours, then introduce finely split Peppermint and White Gum for the flare to keep the fire running optimally for pizzas. Sounds simple enough but where do you get these products you may well wonder...
After a recent trip to the woodyard to get some White Gum (at $15 /small bag) I decided to find another source for this great burning wood. On looking around I noticed that there is tons of it growing everywhere! We are surrounded by it - growing like weeds. For those that have bulk rubbish collections in your area - keep a lookout for sawn branches/logs. I found heaps just waiting to be collected. Also (pics in an earlier post), a neighbour did some severe tree pruning of a White Gum tree and I grabbed all the good bits from him - enough for about 8 - 10 fires.
Now, what you will need is a good chainsaw and a log splitter to process the wood. Sounds expensive? No, not really - reasonable 50cc chainsaw plus 2 blades delivered to your door - $135. Hydraulic log splitter costs a bit more = $300 - $420 (7 Ton capacity). With those two items you will be able to process all your wood for future WFO needs very cheaply. If you don't want to spend the money on the hydraulic splitter - just go to Bunnings and buy an axe type log splitter for $30. It will have the same effect, only slower, but will be hard on your back!
I also bought a pole mounted chainsaw during my buying spree. I tried it on my neighbours White Gum that was hanging over the back fence. The trunk was almost 30cm thick and the small blade struggled a bit but soon it came crashing down. I took the chainsaw to it and after a while had split the logs into oven size bits - both larger for coals and thinner ones for flare. That made about 8 fires worth and there is another branch awaiting surgery too for when I get the next urge.
Logs will of course take a while to dry completely but I load my next firing of wet wood in the warm oven (after a cook) and it should be perfectly ready for use when I next fire up the oven.
I will post pics of the log splitting machine activities shortly. This piece of equipment has turned out to be one of the most useful items in my pizza making arsenal and it ensures that I have perfectly sized and very cheap wood available at all times. Definitely worth exploring if you are a serious pizzaiolo.
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