- Part 3

February 16, 2011May 17, 2013

Zyliss Pizza Wheel Cutter

There’s a few different methods of cutting pizza, with the pizza wheel being the most traditional. Wheel cutters are suitable for most pizzas, with the exception perhaps of pizzas with toppings that can easily be disturbed – things like whole prawns and so on. For those pizzas I use scissors or a single rocker blade style cutter, but for everything else I use a Zyliss cutter, one of the best pizza cutters I have used!

You can see the difference between this and a more traditional wheel cutter – the large handle lets you get a really good grip, and because the blade is supported on both sides it feels more sturdy that the old fashioned cutters.

To clean, the plastic part is hinged on one corner, so the blade can be removed. It seems to be dishwasher safe after many cycles, which is a bonus if you eat pizza often (I do).

I use a diamond stone to sharpen the wheel, but I have to say it’s trickier than sharpening a knife (as are all pizza wheel cutters). More to come on that as I figure out the best technique. To be honest, it might be easier to just buy a new wheel every year or two!

You can buy the Zyliss cutter here for around $10. If you try them, let me know what you think.

February 14, 2011September 8, 2013

Bacon and Egg Breakfast Pizza

A bacon and egg pizza has been on my mind for a while now, so with a cool sunny morning on the weekend it seemed like the perfect time to do some morning baking in the wood oven! This is the first breakfast pizza recipe I’ve put together and while it wasn’t an unqualified success it was quite delicious, and I’m going to enjoy tweaking the recipe.

A note on ingredients – most commercial bacon is made by injecting pork with a solution of brine and phosphates so that it retains water and weighs more when it’s sold. They use liquid smoke and other additives for flavouring. While any bacon can taste good, I prefer to buy bacon from smaller producers who care about the quality of their products and minimise the chemicals they use. If you can find such a producer at a farmers market or specialty store, or even direct from the farm, stock up – the taste of traditionally cured and smoked bacon is worth the hunt!

You could vary the ingredients to include other breakfast favourites but I chose to keep it simple with onion adding some crunch and tomatoes contributing acidity and richness that goes well with smoky bacon. I chose to dice rather than slice the onions, to give a layer of texture underneath the bacon. Tearing the bacon adds to the presentation a little and makes for more interesting, varied mouthfuls.

This recipe allows for topping 2 small or one very large pizza.

Bacon and Egg Pizza

1/2 a Brown Onion, diced finely
1 ripe Tomato, coarsely diced
3 Rashers of bacon, torn into manageable pieces
Fresh herbs to garnish
4-6 Free range eggs
Pizza sauce
Mozzarella
1 Quantity dough of choice
Olive oil
Salt & Pepper

breakfast pizza-3 — Tearing off crust to dip in the egg yolk was delicious!

Shape the base, and place on a floured peel. In a bowl, sprinkle the tomato with a little salt. Place the pieces in a sieve and allow to drain. This will remove some moisture from the tomatoes and give them a little flavour kick as well. Drizzle olive oil over the base, then add tomato sauce followed by a thin scattering of mozarella.

Scatter the onion and tomato over the base. Add a little more cheese, then the bacon pieces.

At this point you need to make a decision about when to add the eggs, based on how well you want them done. I cooke my pizza in a wood fired oven for a minute before I poured on the eggs. This resulted in quite a runny yolk which was great to dip pieces of the crust into. If you are cooking in an indoors oven with a pizza stone, allow a few minutes for the eggs to cook to runny or put them on at the start if you like well done.

When adding eggs, you can choose to beat them in advance or pour them on whole. Whichever approach you take, have all of your eggs cracked and ready so you can get them on quickly and the pizza back in the oven. If using whole eggs, think about the position so that you can give guests an egg on every slice. The next improvement I will be making to this recipe will be to use large egg rings on the pizza – it is quite hard to get them to land where you want! I think egg rings will allow a little white to leak out around the edges and look nice, but hold the eggs roughly where I want them.

Once cooked, scatter with some fresh herbs. It’s hard to go past parsley for a classic egg pairing; I used basil from my garden as well. A final note – you could easily make mini pizzas following this approach, and I bet kids would love having their own breakfast pizza with an egg in the middle!

breakfast pizza — As always, don't overdo the toppings - leave room for the crust to breathe. This is before adding the bacon.

breakfast pizza-4 — Enjoy! Yes, I burnt the crust... just a little.

February 8, 2011February 18, 2012

American Pie – by Peter Reinhart

I’m an avid cookbook collector, but I always gravitate towards books that are more than just collections of recipes, preferring to learn more about the background and general techniques involved in the topic than just cook blindly from a list. For these reasons, I grabbed Peter Reinharts pizza recipe cookbook American Pie as soon as I heard about it!

This book has been out for a few years now, but is well worth tracking down.

American Pie is subtitled “my search for the perfect pizza”, and true to the name the first part of the book tracks Peter’s travels around the world, hunting down great pizza at some well known international destinations. I enjoyed reading about the different pizza styles and toppings in different cities and continents, but if I have one criticism of the book it is that as travel writing, it is a little ‘tame’. Not many great adventures, but I guess that’s not really the point. Many American locations are also featured, with some great descriptions of well known pizza joints like Pizzeria Bianco and their techniques.

The second section of the book is where it gets good though. Peter dedicates nearly 40 pages to different dough styles alone, including many of the recipes described in the first section of the book. This focus on dough is in line with Peter’s statement that for him, a good crust is 80% of the enjoyment of a pizza. For me, it might be a little less than 80% but it’s certainly the most important factor! Delayed fermentation doughs are introduced together with standard enriched doughs, thick and thin crust, and so on. A good recipe for sourdough pizza dough is included, with instructions on raising and maintaining a sourdough starter from scratch.

Following the dough recipes, there is a good range of sauces and other toppings like pesto, flavored oils, purees and so on. The sweet and sour onion marmalade sounded good to me but my first attempt was a mess!

Rounding out the latter section of the book is a large collection of pizza recipes, with most of the recipes from the earlier travel section of the book recreated.
American Pie is available on Amazon for under $20.

January 31, 2011June 7, 2013

You Need A Tomato Press

Our family has been growing a large patch of tomatoes for a few years now, and bottling our own tomato sauce for pizza sauce, pasta, and everything else. When you are processing a large quantity of tomatoes you quickly realise that pressig them through a sieve, or even using a food mill, is going to take an awful long time.

We got around this problem by ‘borrowing’ a tomato press from a relly – I say ‘borrow’ because they haven’t asked for it back yet, and it’s far too useful to get rid of it unless we have to!

This machine is a pretty simple design, consisting of a large suction cap mounted base (very useful, pasta machine manufacturers please take note) with a funnel for the tomatoes, a tray to catch the pulp, and a spring loaded handle.

It all hinges on the white part of the handle that you can see, which sits under the funnel. There are two small spring loaded paddles protruding from the side, and these press the tomatoes against a wire screen which is just fine enough that seeds and skin slide past while the pulp and juice pass through. Here’s the tomato mill in all it’s glory (excuse the photo) together with a shot of the inside with the handle/scraper mounted:

To start processing tomatoes, you just briefly simmer them in boiling water to loosen the skins, and start dropping them into the funnel. It’s not a bad idea to cut larger tomatoes in half once they have been simmered, but mind your fingers – they are hot. Alternatively, squish them down into the machine with the handle of a wooden spoon as you go. A word of warning – remove any protruding stems as they will block the machine up.

Here’s the tomato strainer in action, you can see a bunch of skins being pushed out the side and lovely tomato sauce being produced. Don’t throw the skins out straight away though – I have found a good quantity of extra tomato pulp can be produced by running the skins through the machine a second or even third time. My one criticism, at least with the machine we have, there is a bowl supplied to catch the pulp but nothing to catch the skins. You can manage with any bowl though.

When you are finished, the whole thing comes apart neatly to clean up (and it will be messy). Make sure to pull apart the I-shaped plastic blades, as sauce gathers in between them.

The good news is that a tomato machine like this one can be found cheaply online, Amazon have the exact model here for under $50 last time I checked. I highly recommend a similar version if you’re planning on processing any amount of tomatoes.

January 18, 2011June 7, 2013

Fresh Tomato Pizza Sauce

When tomatoes are in season it’s nice to make a pizza sauce with good, ripe freshly picked ones. There’s maybe less of the rich cooked tomato flavour in the sauce, but more fresh, zingy flavour. I like to use fresh herbs in fresh tomato sauce – thyme in particular.

Bring a large pot of water to the boil. Drop in a few tomatoes at a time and cook until the skins start to crack, or feel loose when prodded with a spatula. Remove the tomatoes to a strainer and repeat until all tomatoes are cooked.

pizza sauce-2 — Simmered tomatoes, ready to be pulped

I use a tomato mill as detailed here to remove the seeds and skins. A mouli/food mill can also be used. If none of these tools are available just peel the skins off by hand and mash or blend the tomatoes. The sauce at this point tastes amazing (if you made lots, try splashing a little onto some spaghetti for a snack!) but it might be too runny to use for pizza sauce. It can be thickened either by simmering over medium heat until thick or just straining the pulp through a sieve, which works surprisingly well! If you sieve the pulp, save the runny juice for soups or something.

pizza sauce-3 — Separating the tomato pulp from the juice

Add fresh herbs and a little salt to taste before using on pizza. This sauce can also be preserved in jars or bottles.

August 9, 2009March 21, 2013

Leek, Tomato and Mushroom with Stracchino

I cooked a bit of an unusual pizza recently on a whim, and it turned out pretty well! I was inspired by a new (to me) cheese that I found at the markets. It’s called Stracchino, and is a soft cows milk cheese. It has a lovely delicate flavour with a hint of sweetness combined with a little tangy-ness. It melts amazingly, turning into a soft, sticky and creamy puddle.

I wanted to match this up with some ingredients that would complement the sweet cheese as well as something to contrast with the sweet flavours. This is what I came up with. The sweetness of cooked leeks is nice with this cheese and the contrasting texture of slightly crunchy/slippery leek with the smooth melted Stracchino worked well. Pieces of tomato and mushroom are little bursts of intense flavour to contrast with the smooth sweetness of the cheese and leek.

Ingredients

Pizza dough (I made one massive pizza with a 500g dough ball, you could also make 2 smaller ones with these quantities of toppings)
Pizza sauce
2 Leeks
Good handful of button Swiss brown mushrooms
2 Ripe tomatoes, diced
Paprika
300g or so Stracchino. You could use mozzarella if you absolutely can’t find this, it will still work well with these toppings

Method

Cut the green tops off the leeks and discard. Wash the leeks well. Dice and saute in olive oil with one crushed clove of garlic until translucent.
Tip the mushrooms into a hot pan, and leave them to cook until starting to brown, shaking to stop them burning.
Shape your pizza base and spread with a thin layer of sauce.
Scatter a few pinches of paprika over the tomato sauce. It’s amazing how much of a difference there is between a good quality paprika versus the ones I have tried from supermarkets!
Scatter the leek mixture evenly over the base.
Slice the cheese and tear each slice into chunks. Scatter evenly over the pizza. Make sure to leave some gaps so that the crust doesn’t get too moist.
Now scatter over the mushrooms and diced tomatoes. Don’t overdo it – a good guide is to end up with around 2 pieces of each per slice, on average.
Cook on a preheated pizza stone or any other cooking method of your choice.

July 26, 2009February 18, 2012

How to cook wood fired oven style pizza in your home oven in 20 minutes

Last night I planned to fire up the wood fired oven for a pizza party. I had my dough balls and ingredients ready and laid out, and even made a new peel for the occasion! The only problem was that when it came time to cook pizzas, my oven was too wet from all of the rain we’ve been having (I should really stop procrastinating and render the oven so that it doesn’t get waterlogged in the rain, but that’s another story).

Wondering how I could feed the hungry hordes without even having a pizza stone preheated in my inside oven, I remembered something else I read on the net a while back and thought I’d give it a try. It worked so well that I wanted to share it so that you too can have a backup plan if you need to cook some emergency pizzas one day!

You will need

Pizza dough, sauce, other toppings (obviously)
A cast iron skillet (frying pan with a metal handle)
An oven with a grill (broiler)

How it works

Put your skillet on your stovetop burner and preheat it on high heat for 15 minutes
Turn on your grill and leave it long enough that you can see it glowing (if using an electric grill, gas versions won’t need to preheat)
Prepare your pizza on a floured peel, making sure that your base is not larger than the base of the skillet
Using oven mitts or a tea towel, take your skillet off the burner and turn it upside down. Slide your pizza onto the skillet.
Quickly place the pizza + skillet on an oven rack below the grill. The top of the pizza should be 2-3 inches below the grill.
Watch the pizza as it cooks, you can easily overcook if you aren’t careful. The pizza should take 2-3 minutes to cook. You may need to rotate your pizza 180 degrees half way through cooking.
Before cooking your next pizza, return the skillet to the hotplate for a few minutes to reheat the base. Or use 2 skillets, alternating so that you don’t have to wait between pizzas.

This method works because the pizza is cooked evenly at a very high heat from above and below, similar to a wood fired oven. The pizzas were actually quite close in appearance to those from my wood oven, although the sides of the crust did not cook quite so evenly. But this trick is absolutely worth adding to your home made pizza arsenal!

NOTE: be very careful as the handle of the skillet will be very hot. Wear oven mitts and use a tea towel when lifting te pizza. This should only be done under adult supervision.

July 15, 2009March 10, 2013

Fig, Walnut & Mascarpone Pizza with Pear

This pizza recipe is a bit of a different combination. You wouldn’t quite call it a dessert pizza, but is quite light and sweet and can definitely finish off a meal. I make my own plum sauce from our trees, and my sauce is quite light and tangy. If you can’t make your own, try an asian style plum sauce.

Ingredients

Plum Sauce
A small handful of Walnuts (freshly shelled makes a difference)
Mascarpone
Dried Figs
Honey (optional)
Thin slices of fresh Pear
Sugar
Lime juice

Method

Drizzle plum sauce over your prepared pizza base. You don’t want the base totally covered.
Drizzle some honey if using – just some thin swirls.
Scatter the pizza with halved figs and halved walnut pieces.
Finish with chunks of mascarpone – I use teaspoon sized pieces.
Carefully slide into the preheated oven using your peel and bake until the crust is golden. Be careful with this one as the nuts can burn easily.
While the pizza is cooking, slice your pear thinly and put the pieces in a bowl with the juice of one lime, and a teaspoon of sugar. Toss together to coat. When the pizza is cooked, finish by dressing with the slices of fresh pear and serve!

July 7, 2009February 18, 2012

New Gluten Free Pizza Dough Recipe

This is a new version of a gluten free pizza base that I have been working on and I think it’s finally ready to share! I’m quite excited about this base – you would be hard pressed to pick it as gluten free and it tastes delicious. The key is to give the shaped base time to rise before topping and baking.

Full credit to the talented Dan Lepard who wrote a recipe for gluten free bread using psyllium husks. I had never used these before and they work amazingly well in gluten free doughs, helping the dough to rise naturally and giving a nice chew to the cooked base. I use both yeast and baking powder in this recipe to get as much lightness in the dough as possible without overloading on the taste of either ingredient. Another interesting addition can be to add some herbs and spices to the dough as in this gluten free pizza recipe. Maybe not for the purists but worth considering.

I have included links to some of the more unusual ingredients on Amazon, but you should be able to find them in your local health food store.

Ingredients – makes 2 bases

Ingredient	Weight	Measure	Bakers Percentage
Rice flour	140g	1 Cup	100%
Tapioca starch	70g	½ Cup	50%
Cornflour	70g	½ Cup	50%
Soy flour	20g	2 Tbsp	14.3%
Psyllium husks	12g	2 Tbsp	8.6%
Guar gum (you could use Xanthan gum if preferred)	6g	2 Small Tsp	4.3%
Instant Dried Yeast	12g	4 Level Tsp	8.6%
Baking Powder	8g	2 Level Tsp	5.7%
Salt	8g	2 Level Tsp	5.7%
Olive oil, plus more for shaping	20g	2 Tbsp	14.3%
Sugar	20g		14.29%
Gluten free Vinegar	3g		2.1%
Warm water	110g	1/2 of a cup	78%

Method

Mix together all of the dry ingredients
Add the oil, vinegar and water and stir well for about 30 seconds. The dough should be a stiff, sticky paste.
Lay out 2 squares of oiled baking paper. Oil your hands to prevent sticking, and separate the dough into equal sized lumps.
Following the shaping technique from my previous gluten free dough recipe, press the dough into a disc shape. Drizzle with as much olive oil as needed to make the dough workable. Aim for a base about 4mm thick with a slightly raised edge.
Lay a piece of plastic wrap or baking paper over each base to stop it drying out and leave to rise for about 1 hour. You should also start preheating your pizza stone at this point.
Once the bases have risen for an hour and the oven is properly hot, add cheese, sauce and ingredients according to your recipe and slide the pizza along with its sheet of baking paper into the oven. Cook until the crust is starting to brown, rotating in the oven halfway through cooking if necessary. You can also finish it off under the grill for a minute to really get the top browned well.

NOTES: If you don’t have all of these ingredients, you could substitute the rice flour, corn flour & tapioca for a commercial gluten free flour mix. The soy flour could be replaced by millet flour, fine polenta or maize flour as it is used to add flavour and colour. If reducing the sugar at all, add a pinch more baking powder as the sugar helps the yeast leaven the bread. Salt can be reduced or eliminated completely; it is mostly for flavour.

June 29, 2009June 7, 2013

Shaping pizza bases

Pizzaiolo competitors in the Pizza Olympics lend a certain mystique to the art of shaping pizza bases, spinning them into shape between their legs or behind their backs blindfolded. But stretching out a nice pizza base is a straight forward process and you will get great results in your own kitchen. This method is for non gluten free doughs, as gluten free doughs may not have enough elasticity to handle in this way.

TIP: The key to stretching out a base is to use dough that has been resting for at least 1 hour, preferably more. This gives the gluten in the dough time to relax, so that it spreads more easily. If you find the dough is too elastic and keeps springing back while shaping, cover it with plastic wrap and leave to rest for 10 minutes. If all of your dough is quite springy, do the first step of pressing out your dough into 1cm thick discs, then leave them all to rest for 10 minutes before stretching.

Method

Place your dough ball onto a floured surface. If it becomes too sticky to handle at any point, dust with flour again.

Start by pressing the dough ball into a disc shape, first with your fingertips and then with the flat of your hands. Try to get the dough as flat as possible before you start the next step. Pressing out the dough first makes it much easier to maintain a nice round shape in the finished base. You may find that you need to flip the dough over and press on the other side.

At this point you should have an evenly round disc perhaps 1cm thick.

The next step is to stretch the dough. First, pick up the dough with your thumbs and forefingers near the outer rim. Stretch gently by moving your hands apart. Once you have stretched a section, rotate the dough and stretch again, working your way around the dough. Keep rotating and stretching until the base is a fairly even thickness.

You may be able to achieve an even thickness just by stretching and rotating the dough as above. If not, try draping the base over your knuckles, with both hands clenched into fists in front of you. Gently move your hands apart to stretch the base out. Concentrate on any thicker areas that you might have missed. The thickness of your base may vary with personal taste, but I aim for a base around 2mm thick in most places, with a slightly thicker rim.

The base should now be ready to flip onto a floured peel and start topping. If you have ended up with a few minor tears in the dough, just squeeze them together – they will not be noticed in the finished pizza.

And that’s it! Don’t worry if this seems tricky, give it a try and you will be stretching and spinning bases in no time. Just take it slow, and start off stretching gently until you get a feel for your dough.

NOTE: If you aren’t confident to try this method, you can use a rolling pin to roll out your base. However rolling pins tend to knock more air out of the base, so stretching is the preferred method.

June 26, 2009June 7, 2013

Kneading dough

Kneading is the process of working dough to help proteins join together and form gluten, which gives dough its strength and elasticity. The most common method of kneading is to press the dough flat, fold it over itself, squash flat again, and repeat.

Method

Prepare your pizza dough according to the recipe you are using.
When the recipe calls for kneading, proceed as follows steps. If the dough becomes too sticky to handle at any point, sprinkle a little flour as needed.
Press the dough into a flattish lump, pushing forwards with the heel of your hand so that the dough is longer than it is wide.

Pick up one of the long ends, and fold the dough back over itself.

Rotate the folded dough a quarter turn.

The dough is now ready to press flat with the heel of your palm again. Repeat these steps as many times as called for in the recipe.

June 26, 2009June 7, 2013

Making dough balls

Shaping your pizza dough into balls before use is an important step. If shaped correctly the balls will tend to expand evenly as they rise, rather than slumping into puddles and sticking together in your tray. They will also be easier to stretch into a nice round pizza base. There are several good methods of making a dough ball but the key principle is to stretch the ‘skin’ of the dough around the ball to create surface tension. This surface tension is what helps the dough ball to hold its shape. This method works well but you can use any method which creates a tight ball.

Method

Once you have finished preparing your dough according to your pizza dough recipe of choice, take a lump of dough weighed out to make one base.
Sprinkle a little flour on the dough and your working surface to prevent sticking if necessary. Don’t overdo the flour at this point though, as you want the dough to stick to itself as you form the ball.
Flatten the dough with the palm of your hand.

Fold the dough in half.

Fold the dough again, so that it is now folded into quarters.

Turn the dough so that the folds are underneath, and you have a flat surface on top. Make a ‘karate chop’ shape with each hand, and press the bottom of each hand against the top of the dough, on the left and right sides.

Applying pressure, squeeze the top of the dough over itself with the sides and bottoms of your hands and pinch together underneath.

Keeping the bottom of the dough ball squeezed together, move one hand forwards and the other backwards. The dough ball should rotate in your hands while it squeezes together underneath.

If necessary, you can pinch together the bottom a little to neaten up, or repeat the previous step. You should end up with a nice round dough ball! Dust the dough ball well with flour and set aside while you roll up the rest of your batch of dough.

June 26, 2009March 10, 2013

Toppings

It’s sometimes easy to get carried away and cover your pizza with every topping you like. And fair enough, everyone has a good memory of the supreme from their favourite takeaway.

The problem with using a lot of toppings on a thin style base is that the base doesn’t support a lot of weight. It can also get soggy if overloaded. Using just a few toppings lets you play off different flavours against each other – you can really come up with some unique combos of just a few good ingredients.

A good rule of thumb is to use no more than 3 separate toppings, as well as cheese and/or sauce. Try to think of interesting flavours that will work well together. A good way to come up with a new idea for a pizza is to use some of the key ingredients in a favourite non pizza dish!

Whatever toppings you decide on, make sure not to lay them on too thickly. Aim for a single layer of all of the ingredients combined, on top of your cheese/sauce layer – this means that you might have to leave space between each ingredient.

This is a quick series showing a the process of putting together a simple prawn, tomato and basil pizza made on a gluten free base. The prawns were marinated in olive oil with a clove of mashed garlic whisked in. Delicious vine ripened cherry tomatoes were used – good quality tomatoes make a big difference and are worth the extra cost.

A layer of sauce is spread over the base. Leave a rim around the edge for visual appeal and so you have a good place to hold the slices. When applying sauce, try to leave a few spaces with less or no sauce, so that the base doesn’t get too soggy when it cooks.

Scatter a sparse layer of mozzarella over the sauce. The purpose of this layer is really just to help hold the toppings to the base. Using grated cheese is also perfectly fine but I like using slices torn into pieces to vary the appearance and texture a little.

If you are using fresh herbs, it is best to put them underneath the other ingredients to stop them overcooking and drying out. Here, a handful of torn basil leaves are pressed into the dough.

Finally, an even layer of the prawns and sliced tomato are added, and a garnish of some extra whole prawns followed by another sprinkle of chunks of mozzarella and a little fresh grated parmesan.

And here’s how it looked straight out of the oven. The tangy garlic and prawns were wonderful together with the acidic sweetness of the tomatoes. A winning combo!

June 25, 2009June 7, 2013

Using a pizza stone

Wood fired ovens have some characteristics that really influence the pizzas that they produce. Most importantly they are extremely hot – often 400 degrees Celsius / 750F or more. This very hot environment cooks the pizza extremely quickly. The quick cooking time means that a lot of moisture remains in the dough after it is cooked which produces a lovely moist, chewy crust with a crisp outside. In contrast a thinnish crust pizza cooked on a tray in a home oven with a standard method might take 20 minutes or more to cook through, by which time the crust will be as dry as a cracker.

A genuine wood fired brick oven is not something everyone has room for, but a home oven can be greatly improved for pizza cooking by using a a ceramic or terracotta pizza stone. Pizza stones can be found at most good kitchenware or department stores fairly cheaply, and they are probably the most essential tool for making great pizza at home. If you don’t have a pizza stone and can’t get one easily, a common alternative is to use unglazed quarry tiles. I’ve had success using sandstone and granite tiles too, any untreated stone tile should work. Failing this you can preheat a heavy baking dish in the oven and slide your pizza onto this instead.

pizza stone (1 of 1)-2 — This stone tile cost me a dollar from a local hardware store. It is much stronger than a ceramic pizza stone and works just as well.

To use a pizza stone, put the stone on a shelf in your oven, and then turn the oven to its highest setting for up to an hour before cooking pizza. It’s important to preheat the stone for a fair while, as it absorbs heat slowly. Experiment with different positions in your oven – I recently got a new oven but was disappointed with the results using a stone in the top shelf, which worked well in my last oven. Moving the stone down a shelf made a huge difference – every oven probably has a different hottest spot. If you are in a hurry and don’t have time to preheat a stone properly it is better not to use one at all, as pizza will take much longer to cook if the stone is absorbing all of the heat from the oven – try this method instead. Once the stone is really hot, slide your pizza directly onto the stone using a peel. The stone acts as a heat bank and radiates the heat that it has absorbed, cooking your pizza quickly.

Most thin crust pizzas cooked on a properly preheated stone should be ready in as little as 5-7 minutes.

TIP: In ovens that have a top element for grilling (broiling), switch over to the grill on medium heat after 5 or 6 minutes of cooking. This gives a beautiful burst of heat to the top of the pizza to crisp up your cheese. The bottom of the pizza will continue to cook from the heat of the stone. Just keep a close eye on it so the toppings don’t burn.

pizza stone (1 of 1) — Your nice new pizza stone will end up looking like this very quickly.

June 24, 2009June 3, 2013

Onion, rosemary & blue cheese

The strength of this pizza is it’s simplicity and the combination of a small amount of powerful ingredients. The subtle sweetness and texture of the onions is lovely against the bitey blue cheese and the rosemary.

Use your favourite blue cheese here but don’t be afraid to experiment. A nice gorgonzola would be wonderful.

This is a good introduction to the pizza bianca, or white pizza, for those who have always used tomato sauce before!

Ingredients

1 Small brown onion, sliced finely into rings
Mozzarella, finely sliced
Blue cheese
Pecorino (or Parmesan if preferred)
2-3 tsp of fresh Rosemary leaves, chopped but not too finely.
Olive oil
Pizza dough

Method

Prepare your pizza bases.
Tear up two slices of mozzarella and scatter over the base.
Scatter rings of onion over the base.
Cut or crumble the blue cheese into small pieces and spread evenly over the base.
Tear up one or two slices of mozzarella and scatter these as well.
Finish by scattering over with a few pinches of rosemary and some grated fresh pecorino or parmesan.
Drizzle with olive oil and cook.

And here how it looks straight out of a wood fired oven!

June 23, 2009June 7, 2013

Making your own peel

A peel is one of the most useful tools in the pizza-makers arsenal. Peels can be bought fairly cheaply online or at most good kitchenware suppliers.

You can also make your own peel easily using sheets of medium plywood. They might not look quite as nice, but they will work fine! I have a couple of homemade peels as well as a bought one, and the extras come in handy at pizza parties where lots of guests want to get their pizza ready at the same time.

You will need:

Medium thickness plywood – look for around 3-4mm thick (1/4″)
An electric jigsaw or hand coping saw.
Sandpaper

Method

1. Start by tracing out the design of the peel. The basic design is a square with a handle at the back. You can round the corners here and there for appearance. Here’s an example of the shape you are aiming for.

2. Make it a little wider than the size of the largest pizza you think you’ll make – eg a bit bigger than your pizza stone. Just make sure it will fit in your oven!

3. Once you have cut out the shape, use sandpaper to clean up any rough parts around the edges. You can also use sandpaper to create a slight slope on the front edge of the peel to help slip under your pizzas more easily.

4. Before using the peel, rub some cooking oil into the wood with a clean cloth and allow to stand to soak in.

June 23, 2009February 18, 2012

Pizza peel tips and tricks

A pizza peel is a kind of wood or metal paddle, used to slide a pizza into the oven, move and turn it while cooking, and take it out again when it’s done. Pizza peels allow you to make a pizza in advance, then slide it directly onto a pizza stone to cook, without damaging the base or disturbing the toppings. This is a critical skill to master for wood fired ovens, where pizzas are placed deep in a very hot oven. Peels are very useful for home pizza cooking as well, but a shorter handled peel like this one will do the job.

The best peel for home use is a wooden one. A wooden pizza peel will help slide you pizzas without sticking, as the wood absorbs some of the moisture from the base and stops it from sticking. The worst disaster is when your pizza sticks to the peel, changing its graceful slide into a messy cartwheel. This may well be how calzone was invented!

Before using a wood pizza peel, sprinkle some flour over it and then rub the flour into the wood. Over time, your peel becomes even more slippery as it builds up a coat of flour.

Once you have floured your peel, you simply place a prepared pizza base on it, add your toppings, and slide it into the oven!

TIPS:

It can be useful to keep several peels, so you can prepare a few pizzas at once and put each into the oven as soon as the last is cooked.
Instead of using wheat flour on your peel, try using white rice flour. This is less prone to absorb moisture and become sticky, and it is also less likely to burn on the pizza stone. I keep a small shaker of rice flour handy for this purpose.
If your pizza sticks to the peel, try quickly but carefully shaking the peel back and forth. If this doesn’t work, try lifting the spot where it is sticking and brushing some flour underneath.
If you don’t have a peel, you can use a flat cookie tray, turned upside down. If you do, don’t leave the pizza sitting on it for too long as it may stick! Or, try making your own.

June 23, 2009June 7, 2013

Gluten free pizza dough

Having a few friends and family members on gluten free diets, a good gluten free pizza recipe has been a bit of a holy grail for me over the last few years. This recipe is the closest that I have come – and it is quite delicious!

Recipe

150g White rice flour
80g Tapioca starch
30g Fine polenta
6g Guar or xanthan gum
6g Sea salt
10g Sugar
10g Baking powder
25ml Olive oil
1 Egg (this can be omitted to make a vegan base, add a little more water instead)

Method

In a large mixing bowl, stir all of the dry ingredients together.
Add the oil, egg and water and stir until the mixture is smooth. The consistency should be a thick, sticky paste.

Shaping the bases

Place 2 squares of baking paper on a bench or peel and give them a light coat of oil.
Before handling the mixture drizzle some olive oil into the bowl, and rub a little into your hands. This makes the bases much easier to shape and handle.
Separate the mixture into 2 equal size lumps and place one on each square of paper. Drizzle a little more oil over the lump of dough.
Using the palms of your hands, start to press the dough into a pizza shape. Try to get an even thickness of about 4 millimeters.
Smooth any cracks around the edge and create a slightly raised rim.
The base is now ready for your toppings! Once topped, use a peel to lift the pizza and greaseproof paper and slide onto a preheated pizza stone to bake.

See the article on toppings to see how this pizza looked fresh out of the oven!

June 23, 2009June 6, 2013

Basic Pizza Sauce From Tinned Tomatoes

Some people like a rich sauce with herbs and garlic, some like an ultra simple sauce with nothing but tomato – the DOC standard (which dictates how traditional Italian pizza is made) is to use nothing but crushed tinned San Marzano tomatoes. There’s a lot of opinions about what makes a good pizza sauce and of course no one recipe to rule them all – if it tastes good to you, then it’s ‘right’ (unless you simply must have a DOC pizza of course…). For me a fairly simple sauce with just a hint of extra herbs is best, a good burst of tomato acidity and sweetness that still lets the other ingredients shine through.

1 Tin of good tomatoes, preferably skinned whole tomatoes. San Marzano are traditional but there’s good and bad brands like everything else. A good tin of generic plum tomatoes is much nicer than a bad tin of San Marzanos. If you make pasta or pizza sauce regularly it is worth buying a few different brands that are easy to find in your area and comparing them to find the nicest.
1 generous pinch of dried oregano – the good stuff is sometimes sold as ‘Mediterranean oregano’, an olive/tan colour with a pungent aroma from the dried flowers.
1 generous pinch of salt

Tip all ingredients into a bowl and use a stick blender to briefly pulse and break up the whole tomatoes. Don’t overdo the blending – a little texture in the sauce is nice. If you don’t want to use a blender, use kitchen scissors to snip the whole tomatoes into pieces or just squish them with a spatula or even with bare hands. Good tinned tomatoes shouldn’t taste bitter but if yours do, add a little pinch of sugar to the sauce for balance. You might also find that the taste of some tinned tomatoes is a little dull or flat – in this case 1 tsp of lemon juice can give a lift.

June 23, 2009June 3, 2013

Zucchini, mushroom & smoked cheese

This is a simple veggie pizza that packs a flavour punch. The earthy mushrooms work nicely with the sweet zucchini, and the smoky cheese is complemented by a little squeeze of fresh lemon.

Ingredients

Half a cup of your favourite mushrooms, roughly diced
Half a cup of zucchini (courgette), diced to the same size as the mushroom
1 Clove of finely chopped or mashed garlic
Olive oil
1 Good pinch fresh or dried Oregano
1 Tbsp Lemon juice
Smoked cheese
Mozzarella

Method

In a hot pan, add 1 Tbsp of olive oil and then the zucchini and oregano. Saute for 1-2 minutes until just starting to soften. Add the mushrooms and sautee for another minute.
Pour over the lemon juice, and stir well. Season with salt and a little freshly cracked black pepper and put the mixture aside until ready to use.
Top your prepared base with sauce and a thin layer of torn or grated mozzarella.
Scatter a layer of the zucchini and mushroom mixture over the pizza. If any juices have collected, avoid transferring them to the pizza with the rest of the mixture so the base doesn’t get too soggy.
Crumble or dice the smoked cheese and scatter the pieces over the pizza.
Finally, top with a little more mozzarella before baking.