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Pizza is one of my standard food items. E.g., I get bread and pizza flour in 25 pound bags from Sam's Club. Each batch of dough uses 650 ml water, 1 tablespoo

Pizza is one of my standard food items. E.g., I get bread and pizza flour in 25 pound bags from Sam's Club. Each batch of dough uses 650 ml water, 1 tablespoon of Fleischmann's active dry yeast, 1 tablespoon of salt, and 1 kilogram of the flour. I end up with 8 chunks of pizza dough. So, each chunk of dough is good for one pizza for one. No way do I want to try to compete with the artistry of brown spots from 600+ F wood-fired pizza ovens, etc. I don't even want to warm up the oven in my kitchen stove. So, I put the pizza in just a clean, dry standard cast iron frying pan, put on a glass cover from a glass casserole dish set, and set the stack on a standard stove burner for 22 minutes. Doing that, the bottom got done while the top was still not hot enough, so to insulate the bottom I set the dough on a round sheet of Teflon. Cut the sheet from a long roll from Amazon intended for drying fruit or some such. Works fine. Get a good pizza for $1- each. Ah, the BBQ is better: Picnic pork shoulder, ~9 pounds, skin side down, on a rack, in an uncovered roasting pan, in a 200 F oven to an internal temperature of 175 F, separated, chopped, sauced, warmed in a microwave, with coleslaw. ~$2 per sandwich. Or a 1/2 pound of 80% lean ground beef, frozen, as a round slice from a 5 pound tube from WalMart, in a cast iron frying pan, ..., with a sauce of heavy cream, beef consomme, Dijon mustard, Worcestershire sauce, etc. -- fake, cheap, Steak Diane!

SideburnsOfDoom 4y ago
> No way do I want to try to compete with the artistry of brown spots from 600+ F wood-fired pizza ovens, etc If you make pizza a lot, consider also the middle way of gas-fired "portable" ovens, the likes of Ooni or Roccbox. My experience was very positive.
- AlbertCory 4y ago
  Disclosure: very much a beginner at this and I'm happy to be corrected on any of it. My Ooni experience has been very bad. I have an IR thermometer, so I can check the temps: at the back it's 900, at the front 600. This is after an hour of warm-up. If I weren't so stubborn I'd have gotten rid of the Ooni already. Furthermore, the lack of height means you can't use gravity to slide the pizza off the peel, like you can with a kitchen oven when you slide the rack out. So the pizza tends to stick to the peel and not want to go in. (I know: lots of flour on the peel. I do that.) I've had much better results with the kitchen oven at 500, preheated for an hour, and a steel. This article also neglects the art of gluten formation, which lets you stretch the dough without tearing it, AFAIK. Which raises a question for y'all: rolling pin, or hand-stretch? The owner of my local pizzeria, which has been there for 50 years, says rolling pin.
  - cheath 4y ago
    I don't have this issue with the Ooni. I wonder what is going on. One thing to consider trying, heat it up at high heat and then when you put the pizza in, try turning the temperature down to a medium or low. I am wondering if it is possible that the high temperature reading is directly from the flame and by turning it down during the cook, you'll have a more consistent temperature.
    - AlbertCory 4y ago
      thanks. I'm aiming the laser dot at the stone, near the flame but not AT the flame.
  - SideburnsOfDoom 4y ago
    > My Ooni experience has been very bad Sorry to hear that, but maybe you can still work at it. > at the back it's 900, at the front 600. This is after an hour of warm-up. I think that it will be as hot as it is going to get, after about 30 mins. I get a touch over 500c at the back corner (maybe 950F) and a bit over 300C (600F) at the front lip. This should be right, with a centre at 350 to 400C > rolling pin, or hand-stretch? I hand-stretch, but also autolyse. > lots of flour on the peel. Semolina. Put your friend Semolina on the peel. It's a very coarse flour, as opposed to pizza flour, which is very fine. It makes the pie slide like it's little dry ball-bearings. Semolina. If you can't get Semolina, use coarse cornmeal. The next time you have pizza in a relatively authentic Italian place, run your finger along the underside of the pizza. You should feel a slightly rough, sandpapery texture that isn't present on top. That's from the semolina. Just before launch, give the pizza a back-and-forth shake on the peel first, to be sure that it's moving, and get it moving if need be. You should know that it's not sticking to the peel, because you've seen/felt it move a bit. Do you use the same peel to launch and to extract? Typically this is not recommended as the extraction can make that peel hot and moist, which would affect the next launch. Launch off wood or aluminium. Extract with aluminium or other metal peel. Look for the "ultra-low zone" trick for turning the flame down very low after launch. You will get these tips in https://www.reddit.com/r/ooni https://www.reddit.com/r/ooni You can see techniques demo'd on youtube. e.g. ulttra-low zone: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAGmW4SI4PU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAGmW4SI4PU and shake https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkD-IrTNpTk&t=27s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkD-IrTNpTk&t=27s Don't give up, there are tricks and techniques to learn.
bombolo 4y ago
Italian here! I don't think you're legally authorised to call that "pizza" (just joking, you are, but people might disagree). 1kg of flour for a single portion pizza seems very excessive.
- Jensson 4y ago
  It was divided in 8 chunks, so 125 gram of flour per pizza.
  - SideburnsOfDoom 4y ago
    Or 206 g of dough ((1000 + 650) / 8) per pizza, not accounting for losses from evaporation and waste. That's a reasonable size, not large.
- graycat 4y ago
  Italian??? Thank you, thank you, thank you, yes, for pizza, Pecorino Romano, Chianti, ..., and also for https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aiSSz0snWzA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aiSSz0snWzA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-TwMfgaDC8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-TwMfgaDC8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2J7JM0tGgRY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2J7JM0tGgRY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkHGUaB1Bs8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkHGUaB1Bs8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1woH96ROG-c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1woH96ROG-c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7OyQf90WNc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7OyQf90WNc
  - bombolo 4y ago
    I had no part in any of that. But here's another song you probably won't like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9WWz95ripA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9WWz95ripA
    - graycat 4y ago
      I don't have any "psrt" in any of that either. It's just that I like those things, a lot. I like music a LOT, and that Italian music is some of what I like the most. A lot of what I included is opera, and I can't sing. But here is some Italian violin music I like a lot: https://youtu.be/kS-W3lfcVvY https://youtu.be/kS-W3lfcVvY The girl is pretty, but she is also quite good on violin and especially in this famous Vivaldi music. In my first effort at grad school, two of the classes they had me in were the same or below what I'd done in ugrad, and I didn't like anything else they had. So, I kept up with my teaching, e.g., calculus, and in the music school got started on violin! Great fun! Eventually I got through several pages of some of the most famous Bach pieces for violin -- more great fun! A violin is an amazing instrument and going to be really tough to replace with just computer software. Gee, in good things from Italy, I rate its opera right up there with pizza!
deltarholamda 4y ago
Pizza gets a bad rap healthwise, but when it's made at home it can be perfectly healthy. I make flatbread and use that as the pizza crust. Then everybody in the family gets to put their choice of toppings on. It's a bit of a circus as you can only bake one pizza at a time in our 24" oven, but circuses are fun. The advantage of the flatbread is all you really have to do is get the toppings hot and cheese melted, as the crust is already cooked. Pizza purists won't like that, but it works very well. You can keep the sugar and salt content reasonable, and making a decent sauce is really simple.
- ilyt 4y ago
  Got any good recipe for flatbread ? I tried few but kinda got mildly dissatisfied with most I tried. Or annoyed that they took enough work that I might as well be making pizza. I got food processor nearly just to make pizza dough without much mess. Just one big batch that then gets mostly frozen after for fast pizza on upcoming weeks. Flatbreads I prefer to use as base for essentially a grilled sandwich or to put some leftovers between 2 and heat it up as sort of "quesadilla" > Pizza gets a bad rap healthwise, but when it's made at home it can be perfectly healthy. Eh, half of that will still be crust and that's basically calories-only. I would still not call it healthy unless you replaced so many "traditional" pizza elements that it stopped being a pizza and became just some round bread-like carrier for ingredients. Being able to fit within healthy eating, sure, but still something that would be hard to eat day to day unless you got high daily calorie burn.
  - deltarholamda 4y ago
    >Got any good recipe for flatbread I don't remember where I got this, but I have it memorized. 6 C bread flour 4 tsp rapid rise yeast (breadmaker yeast) 2 tsp salt 2 tsp sugar 2 Tbsp olive oil Mix 5 C flour, yeast, salt, sugar and oil in stand mixer or by hand. Add the last cup of flour (or possibly more, depends on temp and humidity, etc) until the dough is no longer sticky. Dump out dough, knead by hand a bit until it's soft and smooth. Add flour as needed. Make a ball, put in greased bowl, spray top with cooking spray, cover with towel and let rise until doubled, about an hour. Dump out risen dough, punch down and knead a bit more, then divide into 16 pieces (8 if you're doing pizza crust sizes). Make balls from the pieces, cover with towel, and let rise a second time, about 30 mins. Flatten out balls into rounds, can use a rolling pin but can also do by hand. Gently stretch to reach desired size. Cook the bread on a cast iron griddle or pan set to medium to medium high heat, about 1-2 mins per side. Kids love every step of this process. You're supposed to be able to freeze the flatbread if you want, but I never have because it's gone in a couple of days, as I have a big family. I also use 3 Tbsp of olive oil instead of 2 for the extra fat calories. Most of the sugar is used up by the yeast, this is not at all sweet. You can certainly add herbs or whatever, but we use these for gyros, mini pizzas, dipping in hummus or tzatziki, pita mozz, that sort of thing. It's dead easy, and as I said, if you do it with kids it's great fun.
ilyt 4y ago
I cook it for a sec on stove to get that bottom crust then shove it to a oven. Totally worth for me for that cheese. Never got the stove-only right but maybe I just don't have right pan for it

SideburnsOfDoom 4y ago

> No way do I want to try to compete with the artistry of brown spots from 600+ F wood-fired pizza ovens, etc If you make pizza a lot, consider also the middle way of gas-fired "portable" ovens, the likes of Ooni or Roccbox. My experience was very positive.

AlbertCory 4y ago
Disclosure: very much a beginner at this and I'm happy to be corrected on any of it. My Ooni experience has been very bad. I have an IR thermometer, so I can check the temps: at the back it's 900, at the front 600. This is after an hour of warm-up. If I weren't so stubborn I'd have gotten rid of the Ooni already. Furthermore, the lack of height means you can't use gravity to slide the pizza off the peel, like you can with a kitchen oven when you slide the rack out. So the pizza tends to stick to the peel and not want to go in. (I know: lots of flour on the peel. I do that.) I've had much better results with the kitchen oven at 500, preheated for an hour, and a steel. This article also neglects the art of gluten formation, which lets you stretch the dough without tearing it, AFAIK. Which raises a question for y'all: rolling pin, or hand-stretch? The owner of my local pizzeria, which has been there for 50 years, says rolling pin.
- cheath 4y ago
  I don't have this issue with the Ooni. I wonder what is going on. One thing to consider trying, heat it up at high heat and then when you put the pizza in, try turning the temperature down to a medium or low. I am wondering if it is possible that the high temperature reading is directly from the flame and by turning it down during the cook, you'll have a more consistent temperature.
  - AlbertCory 4y ago
    thanks. I'm aiming the laser dot at the stone, near the flame but not AT the flame.
- SideburnsOfDoom 4y ago
  > My Ooni experience has been very bad Sorry to hear that, but maybe you can still work at it. > at the back it's 900, at the front 600. This is after an hour of warm-up. I think that it will be as hot as it is going to get, after about 30 mins. I get a touch over 500c at the back corner (maybe 950F) and a bit over 300C (600F) at the front lip. This should be right, with a centre at 350 to 400C > rolling pin, or hand-stretch? I hand-stretch, but also autolyse. > lots of flour on the peel. Semolina. Put your friend Semolina on the peel. It's a very coarse flour, as opposed to pizza flour, which is very fine. It makes the pie slide like it's little dry ball-bearings. Semolina. If you can't get Semolina, use coarse cornmeal. The next time you have pizza in a relatively authentic Italian place, run your finger along the underside of the pizza. You should feel a slightly rough, sandpapery texture that isn't present on top. That's from the semolina. Just before launch, give the pizza a back-and-forth shake on the peel first, to be sure that it's moving, and get it moving if need be. You should know that it's not sticking to the peel, because you've seen/felt it move a bit. Do you use the same peel to launch and to extract? Typically this is not recommended as the extraction can make that peel hot and moist, which would affect the next launch. Launch off wood or aluminium. Extract with aluminium or other metal peel. Look for the "ultra-low zone" trick for turning the flame down very low after launch. You will get these tips in https://www.reddit.com/r/ooni https://www.reddit.com/r/ooni You can see techniques demo'd on youtube. e.g. ulttra-low zone: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAGmW4SI4PU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAGmW4SI4PU and shake https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkD-IrTNpTk&t=27s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkD-IrTNpTk&t=27s Don't give up, there are tricks and techniques to learn.

bombolo 4y ago

Italian here! I don't think you're legally authorised to call that "pizza" (just joking, you are, but people might disagree). 1kg of flour for a single portion pizza seems very excessive.

Jensson 4y ago
It was divided in 8 chunks, so 125 gram of flour per pizza.
- SideburnsOfDoom 4y ago
  Or 206 g of dough ((1000 + 650) / 8) per pizza, not accounting for losses from evaporation and waste. That's a reasonable size, not large.
graycat 4y ago
Italian??? Thank you, thank you, thank you, yes, for pizza, Pecorino Romano, Chianti, ..., and also for https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aiSSz0snWzA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aiSSz0snWzA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-TwMfgaDC8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-TwMfgaDC8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2J7JM0tGgRY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2J7JM0tGgRY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkHGUaB1Bs8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkHGUaB1Bs8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1woH96ROG-c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1woH96ROG-c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7OyQf90WNc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7OyQf90WNc
- bombolo 4y ago
  I had no part in any of that. But here's another song you probably won't like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9WWz95ripA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9WWz95ripA
  - graycat 4y ago
    I don't have any "psrt" in any of that either. It's just that I like those things, a lot. I like music a LOT, and that Italian music is some of what I like the most. A lot of what I included is opera, and I can't sing. But here is some Italian violin music I like a lot: https://youtu.be/kS-W3lfcVvY https://youtu.be/kS-W3lfcVvY The girl is pretty, but she is also quite good on violin and especially in this famous Vivaldi music. In my first effort at grad school, two of the classes they had me in were the same or below what I'd done in ugrad, and I didn't like anything else they had. So, I kept up with my teaching, e.g., calculus, and in the music school got started on violin! Great fun! Eventually I got through several pages of some of the most famous Bach pieces for violin -- more great fun! A violin is an amazing instrument and going to be really tough to replace with just computer software. Gee, in good things from Italy, I rate its opera right up there with pizza!

deltarholamda 4y ago

Pizza gets a bad rap healthwise, but when it's made at home it can be perfectly healthy. I make flatbread and use that as the pizza crust. Then everybody in the family gets to put their choice of toppings on. It's a bit of a circus as you can only bake one pizza at a time in our 24" oven, but circuses are fun. The advantage of the flatbread is all you really have to do is get the toppings hot and cheese melted, as the crust is already cooked. Pizza purists won't like that, but it works very well. You can keep the sugar and salt content reasonable, and making a decent sauce is really simple.

ilyt 4y ago
Got any good recipe for flatbread ? I tried few but kinda got mildly dissatisfied with most I tried. Or annoyed that they took enough work that I might as well be making pizza. I got food processor nearly just to make pizza dough without much mess. Just one big batch that then gets mostly frozen after for fast pizza on upcoming weeks. Flatbreads I prefer to use as base for essentially a grilled sandwich or to put some leftovers between 2 and heat it up as sort of "quesadilla" > Pizza gets a bad rap healthwise, but when it's made at home it can be perfectly healthy. Eh, half of that will still be crust and that's basically calories-only. I would still not call it healthy unless you replaced so many "traditional" pizza elements that it stopped being a pizza and became just some round bread-like carrier for ingredients. Being able to fit within healthy eating, sure, but still something that would be hard to eat day to day unless you got high daily calorie burn.
- deltarholamda 4y ago
  >Got any good recipe for flatbread I don't remember where I got this, but I have it memorized. 6 C bread flour 4 tsp rapid rise yeast (breadmaker yeast) 2 tsp salt 2 tsp sugar 2 Tbsp olive oil Mix 5 C flour, yeast, salt, sugar and oil in stand mixer or by hand. Add the last cup of flour (or possibly more, depends on temp and humidity, etc) until the dough is no longer sticky. Dump out dough, knead by hand a bit until it's soft and smooth. Add flour as needed. Make a ball, put in greased bowl, spray top with cooking spray, cover with towel and let rise until doubled, about an hour. Dump out risen dough, punch down and knead a bit more, then divide into 16 pieces (8 if you're doing pizza crust sizes). Make balls from the pieces, cover with towel, and let rise a second time, about 30 mins. Flatten out balls into rounds, can use a rolling pin but can also do by hand. Gently stretch to reach desired size. Cook the bread on a cast iron griddle or pan set to medium to medium high heat, about 1-2 mins per side. Kids love every step of this process. You're supposed to be able to freeze the flatbread if you want, but I never have because it's gone in a couple of days, as I have a big family. I also use 3 Tbsp of olive oil instead of 2 for the extra fat calories. Most of the sugar is used up by the yeast, this is not at all sweet. You can certainly add herbs or whatever, but we use these for gyros, mini pizzas, dipping in hummus or tzatziki, pita mozz, that sort of thing. It's dead easy, and as I said, if you do it with kids it's great fun.

ilyt 4y ago

I cook it for a sec on stove to get that bottom crust then shove it to a oven. Totally worth for me for that cheese. Never got the stove-only right but maybe I just don't have right pan for it