Perfectly Singed Pizza Blog

Yellow Topped Pizza and Using a New Pizza Tool!

I fancied making a pizza with just one colour and for this week it was yellow.  I used some small yellow tomatoes with a sliced up yellow bell pepper.  The pepper was fried beforehand. So, this turned into a very fresh and tasty pizza that would be perfect for someone who loves yellow or just because it's a nice pizza to make.  The pizza was cooked using the Ooni 3 gas-fired pizza oven.

The Dough Recipe for this pizza was:

  • 500g Molino Grassi 00 Flour
  • 9g dissolved table salt
  • 3g yeast
  • 6 hour room temp proof
  • 5 day cold proof

I used the pizza dough option on my bread-maker

I think the Molino Grassi flour dough cooks really well under a gas flame and provides a great crust.  The stone was hot - about 460c in the middle - maybe I should have left it cool slightly down to 440c.  The base turned out well but I had to lift it off the stone a bit during the cook.

USING A NEW PIZZA TOOL!!

I had to get one of these tools.  I'd seen it on Amazon and wanted to give it a go with the dough.  I know that when I started making pizza I would have benefited from using this tool for times when things weren't going to plan.  My dough has improved since and I will continue hand-stretching with no tools.  However, back then when my dough wasn't so good I would have found this tool handy to save the day!  If you are a beginner pizza maker this tool may be useful at times but learning to stretch pizza dough by hand is definitely a better way to make great pizza!

The dough recipe for this Pizza:

  • 500g Blue Caputo Flour 00
  • 9g dissolved table salt
  • 0.2 g dissolved dry yeast
  • 300g water  (150g for the yeast, 150g for the salt)

Used the pizza dough option on the bread-maker machine.

  • 24 hour room temperature proof

The tomatoes and ham were so tasty on this cook.  The ham cooked wonderfully in the oven because the flames had given it a crispy edge.  The dough cooked really well giving the pizza a delicious crispy, bubbly crust.  The base of the pizza wasn't that great - it could have been better!  The temperature of the stone when the pizza went in was 440c in the middle which is normally good to go, but I think I should have let that increase to 450 to 460c.  The flame was very fierce at the back and yet the stone temperature right at the door was about 400c.  I kept the pizza away from the strong flames at the back but the base wasn't getting the 440c heat it needed.  If the flame at the back had been less fierce I would've moved the pizza up further into the oven and the base would have cooked just fine.

And that leads me on to one of the things I really love about the Ooni Pro - and that is the size of the oven.  You are able to move your pizza around to suit the flame cook - bring it forward - move it back.  This helps so much when you cook with real flames and gives you more control. 

See you soon!

Continue Reading

CIABATTA BREAD-MAKING AND PIZZA MARINARA IN A WOOD-FIRED PIZZA OVEN

I fancied making ciabatta bread rolls this week.  Only because I'd never made them before and I had some bread flour that was nearing its use by date.  I've made bread in the wood-fired pizza oven before but not ciabatta.

I found some standard wood-fired recipes off the internet.  The first thing I needed to make was "biga", the night before the bake.  It's the starter used to create those lovely big holes in the bread. That was the easy part.  It was just like making a small amount of dough and leaving it to room proof for 24 hours.

I used a US version of the dough recipe and I had to convert the Cups into Grams and this may be where I went a bit wrong!  I searched for how many Grams in a Cup and I found an answer that stated 128g for flour and 237g for water.  I'm still not sure if those measurements are correct but they are the ones I used for this recipe.  This recipe stated they used all purpose flour and I was using bread flour.  Looking back there is a difference to the Gram amount for all purpose and bread flour.  So it's 128g for All Purpose flour and 136g for Bread flour.  This explains why my dough mixture was so runny.

BIGA

  • 1/2 teaspoon yeast, 1/2 cup warm water, 1 cup all purpose flour

DOUGH

  • 2 cups water, 1 teaspoon yeast, Biga, 4 cups all purpose flour, 1 1/4 teaspoon salt

 

I placed all of the ingredients into the bread-maker and switched the dough option on.  But the consistency was so runny the blade just swished around.  There was no way the ingredients I had placed in there would form a dough.  So not to waste what I had already started I added more flour - pouring it in until it formed a very wet consistency that I'd be able to pick up.  I added at least another 1.5 Cups to the mixture.   This dough has a very high hydration level and it's very wet to handle.  It sticks to everything like glue so you'll need to get your hands floured up just to handle it!  I got flour everywhere and I had dough sticking to my sink and taps!

Whilst the dough was getting its second and final room proof for an hour  - I was busy getting the pizza oven temperature down to 250c.   I placed the dough on a metal peel covered in parchment to stop the very wet dough from sticking to the peel.  That worked and after a few turns and about 20 minutes later the rolls were ready.

What did I learn from this first cook?  

  • Try not to get flour and the sticky dough everywhere - this dough is very wet and sticks like glue to everything!
  • Biga is really easy to make and it's a fantastic starter.
  • Placing the dough balls on a metal peel/tray with parchment for the final rise is a really good idea.
  • The flour you use may affect the consistency of your dough and a bit of tweaking may be required.
  • Using parchment is a really good idea and it doesn't burst into flames in the oven!
  • Keep an eye on your bread - regular turning is needed.  Also, you will be close enough to smell it cooking or burning!

PIZZA MARINARA

Of all the pizzas I've made - this recipe frightens me the most.  I think my last attempt on video making this Pizza Marinara was a disaster and ended up in my Pizza Fail Playlist.  It's taken me at least a year to make this again.  I have bad pizza memories of the experience!  And what is my greatest fear about this recipe you may ask?  It's the olive oil.  The final set of this recipe is pouring rather a lot of olive oil onto the dough.  And if you don't get that pizza straight into the oven, the oil seeps into the dough and there you have it - a disaster in the making!

Even with this cook I didn't quite get it right.  ARGH.  My oven wasn't quite ready because I forgot to add the log 5 minutes before.  This meant I had to wait for the oven stone to increase in temperature whilst my oil was seeping into the dough!  After all of the cooks I've made I can pretty much get away with these little issues - but not with the Marinara!

The pizza cooked well and quite fast for me too which was nice.  The basil melted beautifully into the sauce and the oil prevented its delicate leaves from burning.  Those ingredients are so tasty together - a real pizza classic.  So, if you are new to making Marinara - just remember that once you pour that oil onto the dough, try and get your pizza into the oven as soon as you can.

See you next week!

Continue Reading

SALMON PIZZA AND LAMB PIZZA. AND I’VE MADE SOME INSTAGRAM CHANGES!

SALMON PIZZA

We made another two pizzas this week - a Salmon Pizza and a Lamb Pizza and they were both very tasty but not without their challenges!  The Salmon Pizza was undoubtedly the nicest fish pizza I've made so far.  Another white pizza, I spread some light soft cheese onto the base, added mozzarella, salmon pieces, a sprinkle of sweet chilli sauce and finished off with a garnish of rocket leaves (arugula).

This cooked quite fast (compared to the troublesome Lamb pizza cook!).  I was disappointed with the pizza base though.  The temperature on the stone was 420c in the middle and that just wasn't enough.  I should have waited a bit more for it to rise to 440c.

The dough recipe I used:

  • 500g Blue Caputo Dough 00 Flour
  • 300g water
  • 9g dissolved salt
  • 0.2g dissolved dried yeast

Process:

I used a Panasonic bread maker with the Pizza Dough option that runs for 45 minutes.  I'm not sure I've mentioned this before  -  I use 150g of the water to dissolve the salt and the other 150g to dissolve the yeast.  I keep them separate, then mix them quickly into the flour with a spoon and finally place the ingredients into the bread-maker.  The dough goes straight into the proofing bowl for a 24 hour room temperature proof.  I ball up the dough and cook it straightaway.  In the video I explain why I do a 24 hour room proof.  There are 2 main reasons: One, it comes out great - taste and texture and Two, it's handy for the unpredictable Winter weather.  

MINCED LAMB PIZZA

Wow, I messed this cook up big time!  I mean - once I got outside to the pizza oven I managed to create a mess but one that I was able to extricate myself from thankfully!  It started off with the log suddenly losing its flame as soon as I had placed the pizza into the oven.  That meant I had to add kindling to boost a flame otherwise the pizza top would have remained under-cooked.  But because the stone was very hot I had to remove the pizza from the oven whilst I put the kindling in to prevent the pizza base from burning.

Once the kindling had taken, it went back into the oven.  The stone remained hot which meant I had to lift the pizza off the stone for most of the cook.  Should I blame the windy day for the log burning out too fast and the stone getting too hot too fast?  No.  I messed up but at least I knew how to save it.  6 months ago I wouldn't have done that.  I would've just carried on with an uncooked top and a totally singed base!

And the thing is - this cook was really fun.  This is the type of challenge that inspired me to share my pizza cooking on video - to show the good and the bad and learn from them.   No matter what - it is the oven that controls me - the fire is the boss and it will put me in my place when I least expect it.  And that's a good thing - it will ensure I never get too confident around flames and fire - you can't play with fire!

INSTAGRAM STORIES AND IMPROVING MY GALLERY!

I've been using Instagram for about 2 years where I've been adding a photo of each pizza I've made to create a pizza gallery.  But there was something missing - it looked soulless to me. So last week I set out to re-vamp it.  I've learnt to add Instagram stories and I'm uploading stills from the pizza videos to the gallery:  

https://www.instagram.com/got2eatpizza/

Hopefully this will give the gallery that extra bit of personality.  There's also an "Updates" button which highlights when I've updated this Blog for example and when I upload a Video.  

Please check the gallery out on Instagram and I really do hope you like the changes!  Thank you 🙏.

See you next week!

Continue Reading

MEATBALL PIZZA AND BACON PIZZA COOKED IN A WOOD-FIRED PIZZA OVEN.

MEATBALL PIZZA - COMPARING A GAS COOK TO A WOOD FIRED COOK

We've been back to using the wood-fired oven this week and the dough suits it better.  I made the same Meatball Pizza as last week - using the same dough recipe and toppings.  In this video I cooked the Meatball Pizza in the wood-fired oven then added clips from the gas-fired oven Pizza to provide a visual comparison of the two cooks:

The outcome from the two differently cooked Pizzas shows that even with the same dough and toppings the gas and wood ovens do provide different results - but not huge ones.  The main difference I noticed was the top of the gas Pizza certainly had been cooked harder, whereas the wood-fired oven had cooked the top in a gentle and less vicious way (I had the gas power on full throttle to cook the crust)!

It also took a while for the gas to cook the dough on the crust and that was one of the reasons why I had to hold the peel over the toppings to protect them whilst the crust cooked.  My thoughts on this are that the dough I'm currently using has been tweaked to work well with a wood-fired flame.  For the gas I will recreate my older dough recipe using Molino Grassi and try again.

This was a delicious pizza and it cooked well.  The taste difference between the gas and wood is minimal.  There is a slight difference but it's very subtle.  I need to do a blind taste test experiment - that'll be interesting.  The wood-fired flame certainly brought the leoparding back to the crust.

BACON AND ONION PIZZA USING A WOOD-FIRED PIZZA OVEN

I made this Pizza on Friday in such a flurry because I only had 45 minutes to get the oven to temperature, make the pizza and cook it.  Why?  Rain.  The weather forecast had predicted just a 10% chance of rain.  And that was due to increase to 50% within the hour.  We've had so much bad weather - rain and strong winds practically every day that it's been impossible to get outdoors for a cook and so if there's a break in the cloud at this time of year - you've got to go for it!

It was a bit windy but overall this was a really good cook.  The bacon lardons together with the cooked and uncooked onions worked well together.

This was the first white pizza I'd cooked in a while and a nice change from a tomato based pizza.  The fried mushrooms together with the onions and bacon were perfect topping combinations.  Add some pine nuts and rocket leaves and you've made one tasty pizza!  The pine nuts roasted beautifully in the flames and provided the hidden crunch within each bite. Yum!

Back to the weather on this Pizza.  Within 5 minutes of finishing the cook, it poured down.  Big time.  I was lucky.  I'll put a video up to show what happens when it starts pouring with rain for more than an hour right onto your 600 centigrade wood-fired oven!

Hoping for better weather - see you next week!

Continue Reading

ANCHOVY PIZZA & CURRIED CHICKEN PIZZA USING WOOD AND GAS FIRED PIZZA OVENS.

OONI 3 GAS-FIRED PIZZA OVEN - ANCHOVY PIZZA

I love anchovies and particularly the way they crisp under the intense upper heat from the Ooni 3 gas-fired pizza oven.

Anchovies have a strong delicious salty taste so I kept the other toppings subtle and added some black olives, roughly chopped baby spinach - not to forget the buffalo mozzarella and the tomato sauce on the base!  Check it out!

This was a real-time cook and I had the gas on full power throughout just to ensure the crust cooked as fast as possible.  Why did I use the pizza peel to protect the toppings throughout the cook?  It was because my dough was taking longer to cook than the toppings and so if I hadn't covered the top it would have cooked within 60 seconds and the crusts would have been left pale and uncooked.  

I've been tweaking my current dough recipe to work well with wood-flames.  Over the last couple of weeks I'd used the Blue Caputo flour dough recipe in a gas-fired oven for the first time and hadn't realised how differently the dough would cook in a gas flame.  This is all I could do to stop it from burning on the top whilst I waited for my crusts to cook.  And it was fine - the pizza tasted delicious.  

In previous videos where the dough cooked really well with the gas flame I was using the Molino Grassi flour.  As you may know by now I love to experiment with dough etc.  I am going to recreate the Molino Dough recipe that I had used previously and make pizza using the Ooni 3 gas-burner.  I'll do that in the coming weeks....

CURRIED CHICKEN - OONI PRO WOOD-FIRED PIZZA OVEN

Back to wood-flames this time!  I used to think that cooking with wood would be more of a fiddle than cooking with gas.  Your hands (and clothes) do get grubby from the wood and lump-wood ash but other than that - setting up the oven and getting it to the right temperature isn't much more effort.  The gas is cleaner and you just switch it on and after 15 minutes - it's ready.  With the wood, it takes 1 minute to light the kindling and then 5 minutes for the kindling and the lump wood to take.  Then you put the log on and in 5-7 minutes the oven is ready.  So it takes about the same time.

When I started cooking pizza I never thought I would be able to cook with wood.  I'd never cooked with the fuel before and had no idea what to do.  I give huge thanks for the support from the viewers and subscribers who gave comments full of advice on the videos I made. They taught me how to cook with wood.  It's been totally invaluable and has definitely shortened my learning curve considerably.  If you are a newbie to wood-fired cooking you may find it helpful to check out the comments on the Ooni Pro videos uploaded from September 2018 when I had just started to use the Ooni Pro.  And if you have any comments or thoughts on cooking pizza with wood or gas then please leave them in the comments section below!

The Curried Chicken Pizza was very tasty and the colourful toppings looked as good as they tasted!  I'm using baby spinach as a topping here as it works really well with the curry.  When I make slow-cooked curries I always add a large handful of fresh spinach to it.  I am also using baby spinach on a lot of my pizzas at the moment to replace Basil.  Unfortunately, my house temperature (which isn't freezing!) gets low enough at times during the Winter to kill off my growing Basil.  It just droops, gets all floppy and withers away at this time of year. 

For this Pizza I used my standard wood-fired Blue Caputo dough recipe but changed the process slightly.  I left the dough to rise for 24 hours at room temperature and I also gave it a 24 hour cold-proof too.  This dough enjoyed that final proof.  But again it was so bubbly even though I had only put in 0.3 g of yeast!  So I need to lower that again to 0.2g and see if that does anything.

It's been a busy but a lovely and sunny week which was good as our family had been off for the half-term break!

See you next week!

Continue Reading

Cooking Meatball Pizzas using Ooni 3 and using All Purpose 00 Pizza Flour.

The weather is improving and it feels like Spring!  This week I had a little experiment using All Purpose 00 Pizza Flour.  I wanted to make a garlic bread and so opted not to use Caputo because it's so bubbly.  To tone the bubbles down for this type of bread I opted for the All Purpose.

When I started making Pizza I had no idea what 00 meant and the difference between All Purpose 00 and Caputo 00 flour.  One is totally stretchy and the other totally isn't.

  • 00 is the mill of the grain.  This is the finest milled grain.
  • The grain itself will determine how stretchy your dough will be.
  • Caputo 00 Flour uses soft grain - with a lovely protein balance to give that stretch you need to make pizza.
  • All Purpose 00 Flour uses harder grains and is great for making pasta.  This flour does not become stretchy in dough.

The All Purpose Flour didn't stretch as I'd expected.  I cold-proofed it for 4 days and so gave it optimum conditions for a good dough cook!  From the way it cooked I'd put far too much water in the recipe.  It was so sticky compared to the Caputo flour even though I'd used the same wood-fired pizza dough recipe.  So lessons learned from this - if you are using All Purpose 00 Flour to make pizza, maybe use less water than you would normally if you use soft-grain flour dough recipes!

For my next garlic bread or pizza bread type experiment, I'm going to use Molino Grassi 00 flour as I've used that before and it cooked really well.

MAKING TWO MEATBALL PIZZAS BUT I ONLY REALLY WANTED TO MAKE ONE!

Yeah - I only wanted to make one!  An hour before I made this Pizza I dashed out to my local homeware store and grabbed a new full bottle of propane patio gas.  Time to get the Ooni 3 Gas Burner out!  I hadn't used it for a while and have now realised that it's good practice to keep using the different fuels regularly.  Why?  Gas and wood cook Pizza very differently.  And I had pretty much forgotten my gas cooking technique.

The wood flame, whether it's from logs or wood pellets, cook pizza in a different way.  The gas took longer to cook my pizza crust with the dough that I am currently using for wood.  The outcome is the same - great tasting pizza but they do cook differently and it's handy to keep using both fuel options if you have them, regularly.

I hadn't used my gas Ooni 3 Pizza Oven since making the Not-so-Starry Pizza (that was a lot of fun!)

And so the reason why I ended up cooking two of them is that I burnt part of the top of the first pizza.  The Ooni 3 Pizza Oven is lower in height than the Ooni Pro and so the flames hit the top of the pizza and cook it very quickly.  My crusts were not cooking as fast and so the top and base of the pizza cooked quickly but the crust was still pale.  I put the gas on minimum to prevent the top cooking quickly but that did not help.

So for pizza number two, I went for it and pushed the gas to high heat for the whole cook to get the crust cooked.  This meant that I needed to use my pizza peel to protect the top throughout the cook.  It worked!  My crusts cooked better and the top didn't burn.  The base on the first cook looked better than the second.  Don't know why that happened as the stone was the same temperature.

I've been using the Ooni Pro a lot recently and the oven is a lot higher which means the flames don't reach the top of the pizza so fast.  So, not only do I need to keep using the gas regularly to keep familiar with the way it cooks, I need to keep using the Ooni 3 too because I forgot how quickly it cooks the tops of pizza!

So, to sum up this weeks cooking efforts - I had great fun using All Purpose 00 Flour but will keep that for my pasta dishes!  Getting the Ooni 3 Gas Burner out again and using it after a few months became more of a challenge than I had realised!  In the video above I said that I thought cooking with wood was easier now.  In hindsight it's probably the same, it's just that I'm used to cooking with wood more and got used to it!

See you next week!!

Continue Reading

SURF & TURF PIZZA AND TRYING TO MAKE A BREAKFAST PIZZA IN A WOOD-FIRED OVEN!

This has been a fun pizza making week!  Valentine's Day happened on the Thursday and so I wanted to make a heart-shaped pizza with a friendly twist too.  Not every one has a valentine and so I created this pizza for those with a palentine to share with their pals instead!

Surf and Turf is a great way to do this as it offers two types of preferences on one pizza.  The surf is for fishy food and the turf is for red meat.  So I cooked shrimps, red pepper with chili olive oil on one half of the heart and steak mince with cooked onion, mushroom and garlic olive oil on the other side.  Cut it down the middle and there you have it - two dishes in one for a special occasion!  Check out the video below!

And so that was deliciously tasty plus it was easy to make.  I used a 24 hour room proof blue caputo dough. Recipe below:

  • 500g blue caputo 00 flour
  • 310 g water
  • 0.5g dissolved yeast
  • 10g dissolved in water(from above) table salt

Process -

  • Bread machine knead for 45 minutes
  • 24 hour room raise at 18 celsius

TRYING TO MAKE A BREAKFAST PIZZA!

Last week I received a number of suggestions from viewers asking me to make a Breakfast Pizza.  I've never eaten or made a breakfast pizza before with an egg on top and the actual application of this concerned me.  One thing you should not do is get wet food on your pizza stone at a high temperature.  I don't think a runny egg would crack it to be honest but it wasn't something I wanted to test out with my first attempt!

I considered an easier option of half-frying the egg before putting it on top of the ingredients that had already been cooked in the wood-fired oven.  The reason why I made it this way was:

  • if I put a runny egg on top of the pizza at the start - how would the ingredients underneath the egg cook?
  • maybe some of the runny egg would just roll off the pizza onto the stones.

So, for me this was a much safer and easier option.  These are the ingredients I used:

  • spicy sausage
  • fried mushrooms
  • tomatoes
  • baked beans
  • mozzarella cheese
  • fried bacon
  • runny egg on top (added 3/4 way through wood-fired cook)

Check out the video below!

This came out well in the end and tasted good!  I particularly enjoyed the runny egg mixing in with the other ingredients after I had sliced the pizza up.  Maybe with practice I should feel confident enough to break the egg onto the pizza and cook it from the start but I'm still not sure how the ingredients underneath will cook properly.

The recipe for this pizza is the same as the pizza above.

Pizza making is fun and enjoyable and there is no limit to what you can cook on a pizza.

Experimenting is also a great way to learn new things and it really doesn't matter if it goes wrong.  That's part of the process.  As I've said all along - I've learnt more from things gone wrong than things gone right! 

See you next week!

Continue Reading

NEW YOUTUBE CHANNEL TRAILER AND COOKING PIZZA WITH THE DOOR ON!

This week I didn't feel great with a bad cold and instead of going out and braving the winter weather, I decided to stay inside, keep warm and finish off the YouTube channel trailer I'd been working on.  Last year I dropped my hard-drive and lost all footage from 2017 and early 2018 but I still had loads more available from my iPhone to use.  So here it is, the new trailer - I wanted it to give an overview of the channel in 2 minutes.  I hope you like it.  If you do please give it a thumbs up!!

Once I was back on my feet I started to prepare to make a pizza with the Blue Caputo dough with the following process and ingredients:

The Recipe:

  • 500g blue Caputo flour
  • 310g water
  • 0.5 dried dissolved yeast
  • 10g dissolved table salt

The Process:

  • 45 min pizza dough option in bread machine
  • 24 hour warm room proof
  • 3 day cold proof
  • 4 hour back to room temperature

As seen in the video above, I made a Red Pepper and Prosciutto Pizza.  It was really delicious and I did fry the red pepper beforehand.  Such a simple and tasty pizza combination.  The dough tasted great and had a good consistency.   This was also the moment of truth - where I taste tested the cooked dough with the recipe outlined above.  I wanted to taste the dough and feel the stretch difference between the 24 hour warm room proof dough I made last week and this dough that had an additional 3 day cold proof.  Honestly, I was expecting the difference to be more significant.

The stretch wasn't better, in fact I had more holes in the cold-proofed dough.  The taste was slightly better with the cold-proofed dough but nothing much and so if you are in a rush (like me all the time!) then a 24 hour warm room proof is just fine.  I'll keep experimenting with this recipe for consistency and report back if I experience any issues with it.

THE PIZZA DOOR!!

A big thing for me this week was that I actually used the pizza door on the pizza oven!  I'd received many comments from viewers asking me to cook with the door on (I know they were frustrated with the fact that I kept cooking with the door off!) and so I capitulated and used the pizza door!  The only reason why I love cooking with the door off is so that I can see the flames and the pizza cook.  It's just more fun for me that way.  Anyhow, I totally understand why the oven has a door as it improves the cooking process and reduces the time it takes to cook a pizza from 3-4 minutes with the door off to about 1 - 2 minutes with the door on! I will use the pizza door more often now I promise! 🙃

AND ONE MORE THING.......I've decided to build a cob clay pizza oven when the weather gets warmer!

I've done a load of research and I think this is something we can do 😀.  I mean what could possibly go wrong?!  So that's going to start in the Spring.  We will need to build a base with stones and concrete - that's going to be the toughest part I think.  Anyhow, we've got lots of planning to do as we want to make sure it'll last a good few years.   I'll provide more updates on the delivery of this project  - especially sharing plans for the base and location of the oven. 

See you next week!

Continue Reading

COOKING PIZZA IN THE SNOW! PLUS I’VE CHANGED THE BLUE CAPUTO PIZZA DOUGH RECIPE!

Another week of wintry weather and that's fine as I've been waiting a long time to cook pizza in the snow!  Ok it wasn't a full on blizzard snow  - it looked more like polystyrene beads but nonetheless, we very rarely get snow so anything was a bonus! And it's not cold out there when your oven is firing off heat at 550 Celsius!

This week we made two salami pizzas.  The first one I topped with delicious salami with fresh mushrooms and chopped spinach.  In the Spring/Summer/Autumn season I would've used basil but....basil does not survive well in my house in the Winter!  It's just too cold.  If you have any tips on growing basil in the Winter and keeping them alive then please leave a comment either here or on the YouTube video - many thanks! 👍

The salami was so tasty - the nicest salami I've tasted in a long time.  It tasted so good with the mushrooms.  I like mushrooms quite springy and fresh so I hadn't pre-fried them.  Is it just me who likes them like that!  The other significant change I made this week was the dough recipe.  The dough recipe I used for this cook was:

  • 500g blue Caputo flour
  • 0.5g dry dissolved yeast
  • 10g dissolved table salt
  • 300g water

And the other important change I made was to the dough making process:

  • kneaded the dough with the bread machine using the 45 minute pizza dough option (the best way I think!) 👍
  • left the dough to rise for 24 hours in a warm room
  • rolled the dough into balls and used straight away.
  • NO cold proof.

The reason why I experimented using only a little yeast and just a 24 hour warm room proof was that the Blue Caputo flour gets very bubbly with just a little yeast.  And because of this I thought it would be good to test how little yeast I needed to get the dough to rise.  As can be seen from the resulting dough - you don't need much at all!

The second salami pizza we made was the spicy salami, potato and onion pizza and this was like eating a whole dinner!  It was very tasty.  The spicy heat from the salami kicked in after 30 seconds and wow it was hot!  I loved it!   I used the same dough as above and therefore didn't;e expect any significant differences to the cook of the pizza.  Also, this was the second pizza cook and I always tend to burn the base of the pizza on the second cook but this time it came out really well! 

I'm very happy with the new dough recipe and process for the Blue Caputo flour and will continue to make the dough like that.  However, I am going to make my next pizza with the same process as above but I'm adding a 3 day cold proof to the pot just to see if it really adds anything to the flavour and consistency of the dough.👍

Continue Reading

EXPERIMENTING WITH BLUE CAPUTO 00 FLOUR – WEEK 1

The weather this week was bad!  It was cold and if it wasn't sleeting it was wet and windy.  Roll on the Spring.  Making Pizza outside in the midst of Winter isn't so bad though.  The heat of the oven soon warms you up and because you get so focused on the fuel and the pizza you forget about the weather!  Owning a pizza oven is a good way to get outdoors in the Winter.  Before, I used to hibernate but now - I'm outside and enjoying cooking outdoors.

This week we made a Chorizo pizza using the new Blue Caputo 00 flour.  It always takes a good few cooks to get used to using a new flour and Caputo is certainly no different.  Over the last few weeks I've been reading articles and watching videos on how to make dough using Blue Caputo.  I started watching an old "how to make dough" video thinking that the process wouldn't have changed and that any advice would be current and useful.

I was just about to follow this very technical dough process thinking that I had been doing everything wrong.  But I then checked the comments box and the dough maker had simply added 4 years later that the process was no longer used!  All dough-makers are continually experimenting!

I realised after cooking the Chorizo Pizza with the new flour that I was getting a very bubbly dough and needed to change the recipe.  The Chorizo dough for this cook was the same recipe that I had used with the Molino Grassi flour and the same process:

  • Bread maker to knead the dough (my favourite and best results using this)
  • A 6 hour room temp raise
  • A 3 day cold proof
  • Back to room temperature for the pizza cook.

Recipe: 500g Blue Caputo Flour, 3g yeast, 11g dissolved salt, 320g water.

This made the dough very bubbly and I knew that the recipe had to be tweaked for the next cook:  So I made a thinner Mozzarella Pizza with a 1 day cold proof:

The recipe for this Mozzarella Pizza was:

Bread machine to make the dough - 45 min programme.

  • A 6 hour room temp rise
  • Then in the fridge overnight
  • Back to room temp before the cook.

Recipe: 500g Blue Caputo Flour, 2g yeast, 11g salt, 320g water

I realised I needed to amend the yeast quantity due to it rising so much in 6 hours.  This still wasn't enough as I really had to stretch this out.  I probably stretched the life out of it to get it this thin!  I shouldn't need to do that with the right dough recipe.

So, the dough needs more tweaking for a better cook and so for my next pizza I am going to change the recipe to this - a very bold dough move but thought it would be a good experiment!

  • Bread machine for the dough as per usual
  • 24 hour room temperature proof in a big bowl
  • Then form into dough balls and proof for another 9 hours at room temperature
  • Ready to cook.

Recipe: 500g Blue Caputo dough; 0.5g yeast, 11g dissolved table salt, 300g water.

From the above recipe compared to the previous dough recipe I've made quite a few changes.  I've removed the cold proof completely and increased the room temperature proof considerably.  I've also reduced the water from 320g to 300g and reduced the yeast from 3g to 0.5g.  Let's see what happens! 👍

Continue Reading
Close Menu