Pizza at 650 F

[Syzygies]

We've been making pizza for years on the Komodo Kamado, with the thin crust pizzas of southern Italy as our gold standard. Recently, we took a pizza making class with Rosetta Costantino, coauthor with Janet Fletcher of My Calabria. I highly recommend both her classes and her book. One can learn recipes anywhere, but she is a former engineer with a gift for technique. She made a number of points that sent us back to the drawing boards; this is our first attempt at pizza since the class, and radically different from what we made before. I'm more of a cook than a baker, and I've seen some great pictures of KK pizza on this forum, so these points may be already understood by some of you, but... [1] She has traveled for years with her infrared temperature shooter, measuring temperatures on the stone where the pizza cooks, for every wood-fired pizza oven she crossed paths with in southern Italy. No matter what extravagant claims were made as to the temperature of the oven, she measured around 650 F at the pizza baking surface, which is what she aims for with her own wood-fired pizza oven at home in the Oakland, CA hills. [2] I had always backed off 650 F or higher, aiming at 550 F to 600 F on the KK, because my crust burned first. Her dough recipe consists only of flour, salt, water and yeast. Nothing else. Any other ingredient will cause the crust to burn at 650 F. Using olive oil? Leave it out. Using milk? Leave it out. Using sugar? Leave it out. Nothing else. [3] The dough rises once as a single ball, and again as individual balls per pizza. One then expands each ball into a pizza, one at a time just before baking, cradling over one's hands. Use semolina flour for the brief transit on a pizza peel to the oven. It is imperative that one not compress the dough in any way during this brief handling. There's no point in repeating the dough recipe, you'll adapt yours to taste. Pizza is technique, not recipe. The salt is to taste. The water is basically as much as you can manage, still able to knead the dough. She didn't spell this out, but I hypothesize that the quantity of yeast, and degree of success of the rising, doesn't matter so much: The yeast creates little pockets, that the steam expands when baking, if one hasn't glued them shut during handling. For two pizzas we used 11 ounces of hard red winter wheat kernels, ground to flour using a Wolfgang Mock grain mill, sieving out the bran with a drum sieve, and padded out to 14 ounces using white baking flour. The dough handled like our sample dough in class, only a bit more durable. All the adjustments we now need to make notwithstanding, this was my favorite whole wheat pizza. (I've only encountered great examples of white flour pizza, in my travels.) Adjustments: I cooked on a FibraMent-D pizza stone on the upper grill, shielded from direct heat by a KK heat deflector on the main grill. With both lower draft doors pulled open and the top spun wide, I nailed 650 F on the nose using Lazzari oak lump. It's easy to also overshoot, so be prepared to stop down the airflow. Next, time, I'd using the main and lower grills; the edges of my pizza burned first, as if they were caught in a convection oven wind tunnel. Roughly speaking, they were. I could go thinner. The crust expansion surprised me. We now need to back off even further on the sauce, leaving out much of the oil and revisiting the choice of cheese. The crust bubbles created valleys where the toppings congregated. Our preferred sauce is an uncooked mixture of (skinned, salted, partially dried) garden tomatoes from the freezer, garlic, basil, capers, olives, anchovies, olive oil. Better to leave out most of the oil, and drizzle on some fresh at the table, as desired.

[slu]

Re: Pizza at 650 F

Your post is a very good primer on the art and science of pizza. In particular with respect to the KK, the use of a heat deflector on a grate below the pizza stone, when cooking at the range of 600-700 degrees, allows for rapid baking without burning the underside of the pie. Baking at the above temperature range permits the vaporization of the dough moisture giving the pizza its "lightness." I would add, that with respect to toppings, less is more. Go very light, and use what's in season. I can't wait for the fresh porcinini that we find in the Monterey area!

Jeff Verasano's website, linked elsewhere in these pages, is also very insightful.http://www.varasanos.com/PizzaRecipe.htm

Thanks for your post!

Peter

[jiarby]

Re: Pizza at 650 F

Dave...

Are you fermenting the dough for a few days with a small yeast percentage, or is it a one-day (high yeast) batch? That cornicione looks just right!

I've been pizza'ing off and on here for about 10 years now... and agree that a 600-650° stone is good.

I also use two stones, One is the old thick wavy Kamado one (broken in half, of course!) and then another thin one.

In between I also put an old cooking grate (probably 1/16th inch rod, probably from a weber) in between the stone to minimize direct heat transfer... this way I don't get that nuclear hot stone from the direct fire. This should also allow you to run a hotter dome and keep the stone temp below the scorch zone.

My pies are more sicilian than neopolitan... I use a super-peel to transfer the pie to a screen, then place the screen on the stone.

This one is a fajita-pizza: skirt steak, chicken breast, peppers & onions, chipotle powder spiked fire roasted tomato sauce.. cheeze is 75% mozz and 25% sharp cheddar. Dough was a high hydration foccaccia style... like we made in 2004 in Sacramento. Half the pizza is Pepperoni & Mushroom... for my wife. She doesn't like the onions as much as me.

[Syzygies]

Re: Pizza at 650 F

Jeff Verasano's website' date=' linked elsewhere in these pages, is also very insightful.http://www.varasanos.com/PizzaRecipe.htm

That's a great page, if a bit stream-of-consciousness in its editing; only the punctuation and formatting gave it away I wasn't reading the last chapter of Ulysses. He mostly tells you what doesn't matter, yet one could still come away thinking pizza is harder than it is. Like so many things, pizza is on dog-time: The best pizza is the pizza you're having now. And my honest reaction to his photos is about the same as my reaction to pretty much anything I do: Good, but for the effort I put in I should do better.

White flour is great for technical stunts, but we can't imagine giving up the flavor of freshly ground whole wheat flour. It's a bit funny having him wax philosophic over the importance of sourdough starter versus yeast, while he's using white flour and canned tomatoes.

Sticking to Tweeter-length insights, one of my baking books explains what the names of French baguettes mean, and how the differences affect shelf life. In short, rye helps with flavor and keeping (and with the occasional whole village acid trip), as does either sourdough starter or a sponge.

We'll get back to a sponge approach: use the yeast, water and half the flour in the morning. Proceed on a normal schedule later in the day, with the salt and the remaining flour. 80:20 rule says this is nearly as good as sourdough starter, but not as high maintenance. My lifestyle doesn't permit keeping sourdough starter alive.

He's dead-on right about an autolyse stage, having the flour and water sit together for at least 20 minutes before kneading. Grinding one's own flour, the dough is thirsty, and one needs this rest stage before any application, such as fresh pasta.

[Syzygies]

Re: Pizza at 650 F

That cornicione looks just right!

Glenn! Thought you might be lurking. Long time no see!

The cornicione was entirely shaped by the positioning of the sauce, as much as anything to keep it from spilling off the pizza onto the stone. A wet dough fairly explodes at these temperatures. My difference in dough thickness from center to edge was no more than an inevitable accident of my shaping technique, I did nothing to encourage it.

No ferment, we went by the book (other than the choice of flour) to first try Rosetta's technique. Usually we make a sponge, and I'd like to experiment with slow fridge rises.

[slu]

Re: Pizza at 650 F

When it comes to quality canned tomatoes, I'm afraid I am more sanguine than you!

[DennisLinkletter]

Re: Pizza at 650 F

Great advanced pizza making post..

Thanks guys..

This gives me something to aspire to.