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Pizza Physics: Why Brick Ovens Bake the Perfect Italian-Style Pie

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Re: Pizza Physics: Why Brick Ovens Bake the Perfect Italian-Style Pie

#71

Post by evgen »

dopeboy wrote: post #58
evgen wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Check out uuni pizza ovens. They use wood pellets for fuel and in 10 minutes of pre-heat mine gets to the necessary temp to cook a pizza in a minute or so. Small enough to put on table on a balcony or fire escape and you can even pack it in a carrying bag and take it on the road.

Thanks for the suggestion. How do you like the uuni pizza oven? Also, does using the wood pellets get you a smoky taste to it?

I like mine a lot and it was a lot easier to move to a new place then the fire-brick oven I had planned for several years ago. It limits pizza size to about 14 inches but since they cook insanely fast it is easy to do personal pizzas for everyone instead of bigger pizzas to be shared. No real smoky taste at all, the wood pellets are a short step up from compressed cardboard and seem to provide nothing besides heat.

Downside is that it only does pizzas. No chance to do pizzas one night and then use residual heat for bread the next day, etc. If you have the means and space I highly recommend a real clay/brick beehive oven, but once you do pizza in a high heat oven you are never going to go back to trying to crank up the temp in a conventional kitchen oven.

Re: Pizza Physics: Why Brick Ovens Bake the Perfect Italian-Style Pie

#72

Post by jankassens »

mathgeek wrote: post #70
dopeboy wrote: post #48

The guy quoted, Kenji, contributes to Serious Eats and is active on reddit and twitter. He's done a lot of work on comparing different flours, comparing different pizza ovens, and also has good recipes. If you're a pizza buff, it's well worth your time checking out his work. I've made his hacker free pizza [0] which turns out decent. The hard truth, though, is that you're never going to get the chewy, moist flavor fr…

The RoccBox has interested me before, but I can't seem to connect the "you need higher temperatures for Neapolitan pizzas" claim with RoccBox's "[t]o achieve an authentic Neapolitan pizza, a 90 second cook in a stone floored, 500°C pizza oven is required. RoccBox is just that." You're saying it goes much higher than 500 degrees, though? Their site seems to say 500 degrees is its limit, but maybe they mean the stone f…

800°F is 427°C.

Re: Pizza Physics: Why Brick Ovens Bake the Perfect Italian-Style Pie

#73

Post by evgen »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #46
evgen wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Check out uuni pizza ovens. They use wood pellets for fuel and in 10 minutes of pre-heat mine gets to the necessary temp to cook a pizza in a minute or so. Small enough to put on table on a balcony or fire escape and you can even pack it in a carrying bag and take it on the road.

Starting a fire on a fire escape sounds like it should be a prohibited activity.

It probably is, was just trying to think of the equivalent for a place like NYC where apartment balconies are less common than they are in CA. OTOH I am pretty sure I have seen a small weber or two on fire escapes on occasion.

Re: Pizza Physics: Why Brick Ovens Bake the Perfect Italian-Style Pie

#74

Post by evincarofautumn »

pizzamyheart wrote: post #14

The self cleaning cycle on an electric oven is close to 1000 degrees, and can be used to cook pizza: http://staff.washington.edu/freitz/pizza/clean_cycle_pizza.h...

“I bought more/cleaner/flatter bricks, including 1 granite tile ($5.50) and 2 slate tiles ($1.60 ea) to try in lieu of expensive ($20-40) pizza stones.”

Oh no, that granite is going to—

“granite cracked after 1st use. slates were still ok.”

Yup. Still, solid results for a home oven setup.

Re: Pizza Physics: Why Brick Ovens Bake the Perfect Italian-Style Pie

#75

Post by vborovikov »

I bake pizzas on a ceramic baking stone and I'm very satisfied with the results. Before baking a pizza I preheat the oven with the stone in it to the max level. Pizza is baked after 8-9 minutes in the oven.

My ratio for the pizza dough is 265 ml (gr) of water, 400 gr of flour. That would be two pies 33 cm in diameter.

Re: Pizza Physics: Why Brick Ovens Bake the Perfect Italian-Style Pie

#76

Post by swsieber »

rootusrootus wrote: post #18
pizzamyheart wrote: post #14

The self cleaning cycle on an electric oven is close to 1000 degrees, and can be used to cook pizza: http://staff.washington.edu/freitz/pizza/clean_cycle_pizza.h...

But keep in mind that many people have tried and still failed to adequately disable the locking mechanism on a self-cleaning oven, and had to watch (and smell) as their pizza turned to a big pile of ash.

You'd think that they'D try a test run...

Re: Pizza Physics: Why Brick Ovens Bake the Perfect Italian-Style Pie

#77

Post by dopeboy »

awinder wrote: post #60
dopeboy wrote: post #48

The guy quoted, Kenji, contributes to Serious Eats and is active on reddit and twitter. He's done a lot of work on comparing different flours, comparing different pizza ovens, and also has good recipes. If you're a pizza buff, it's well worth your time checking out his work. I've made his hacker free pizza [0] which turns out decent. The hard truth, though, is that you're never going to get the chewy, moist flavor fr…

this is fantastic, thank you for the great writing & information! I was curious, is there a reason you go for KA over caputo? I migrated from KA -> Caputo after getting into the recipes from https://www.amazon.com/Flour-Water-Salt-Yeast-Fundamentals/d... , I perceived a positive difference, but it was anything but a blind experiment :D.

This is on my list of things to test. I've done 00 in the past but I wasn't capturing my notes from those runs. I've recently gone with KABF because it's easier to acquire and Jeff Varasano claims "...you can buy any bread flour available at your local supermarket and you'll be ok." [0].

Interestingly, Jeff uses a blend of 00 and KABF which may be another experiment to run.

[0] - http://www.varasanos.com/PizzaRecipe.htm

Re: Pizza Physics: Why Brick Ovens Bake the Perfect Italian-Style Pie

#78

Post by stevekemp »

cup-of-tea wrote: post #19
Spooky23 wrote: post #5

This isn’t unique to pizza. A French bread bakery also uses a brick oven, and that oven takes days to break in and requires periodic brick replacement.

French bread is made using a special oven with a steam injection at the start of the bake.

My own bread-making improved a lot once I started getting steam into the oven at the start of the bake - initially via a misting-spray, and later via a container of water.

Re: Pizza Physics: Why Brick Ovens Bake the Perfect Italian-Style Pie

#79

Post by mathgeek »

jankassens wrote: post #72
mathgeek wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The RoccBox has interested me before, but I can't seem to connect the "you need higher temperatures for Neapolitan pizzas" claim with RoccBox's "[t]o achieve an authentic Neapolitan pizza, a 90 second cook in a stone floored, 500°C pizza oven is required. RoccBox is just that." You're saying it goes much higher than 500 degrees, though? Their site seems to say 500 degrees is its limit, but maybe they mean the stone f…

800°F is 427°C.

That will teach me to ponder these things before my morning coffee! Thanks for pointing out that it's Celsius.
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