How the leopard got his spots

…not from an Ethiopian as in Kipling's version, or in the usual fashion for Neapolitan pizzas but get them he did and we were pretty proud of last night's pizzas.

Yesterday was another day of tests, tweaking and perfecting. We were using Caputo Tippo 00 flour for the first time, we tried out three different dough hydrations (all with the Franco Manca recipe mentioned in the last post). We trialled three new topping recipes, all classics in their own right originating from some of the best places in the US. But we were also testing out a new method of making pizzas. Something I hoped would achieve the charred edges but chewy interior which we'd been aiming for. That's what I was most excited about. That's what I'd like to talk through here.

The technique itself I actually dreamt, yes, I now dream of pizzas - does that make me fluent?! The idea being to cook the base quickly and achieve the rise and 'oven-spring' in the crust as it's placed on hot stone for 60-90s; at that point though, I would take the pizza off the stone on a metal peel and use the lower firebox section in Bertha to caramelise / carbonise - take your pick. That was the plan anyway.

Here's how it looked in practice:

initial bake on the stone

finished off by the fire

And for once, it was a plan which worked. As tasty as our previous efforts had been, they'd always looked a little anaemic. We'd brought them out early to avoid drying out the crust and burning the base, but in doing so, we'd missed the speckled charring or leopard spots which add so much flavour - a hallmark of greatness for the best pizzerias. 

Check out these beauties though:

The texture was amazing too, fluffy, chewy and just what we'd been aiming for. We were chuffed.

I've love to go on about the flavour, to talk about the specific toppings, as these were three recipes I'd had my eye on for ages, although our sinuses had other plans. We both had stinking colds and as visually appealing as these all were, we couldn't taste a thing. What's the sensory equivalent of a rain check? We're going to have to make all of these once again.

Here are the recipes though if you're having better luck on the mucus front:

Brussels Sprout and Pancetta Pizza (à la Motorino)

 Pizza Sorrentina (Kesté Pizza & Vino)

 Rosa Pizza (Pizzeria Bianco)

D-Day

Saturday was D-Day, Dough-Day to be clear, we didn't venture to Normandy. The aim was simple, to try a variety of dough recipes with a view to finding our favourite. We were sticking to classic Neapolitan pizzas which happen to be both our personal favourites and notoriously difficult to perfect. The dough has fewer ingredients typically than New York, or square pan Sicilian styles, but the higher temperatures required in cooking mean there's a fine line when aiming for a charred exterior but soft chewy cornicione - or crust to you and me.

I'm an engineer by background and the geek in me took over as I insisted on minimising the variations between each pizza so we could be sure that all we were testing was the dough. Each pizza was formed from the same flour (not Caputo Tippo 00, which I know I'd be marked down for in Naples, but Stoate's Organic Stoneground Strong White flour - I've got a 25kg sack of the stuff which I really should use up before ordering another). The same toppings were used, this was classic Neapolitan style so it had to be margheritas. The oven was held at the same temperate, well, within the relms of what's possible on a small domestic wood fired oven. We heated Bertha so the temperature of the stone read ~300 °C with a flue temperature of 400 °C. Ideally I'd have liked this higher as traditional Neapolitan ovens tend to run around 500 degrees, however there the heat source is from one side and they have a much more even distribution. In Bertha the fire is directly below the stones, so the bottom of the pizza tends to cook much quicker than the top. As a result, we ended up having to take them out early to avoid burning the base, which means the crusts lack the telltale leopard spot charring typical of Neapolitan pizzas, but you can't have everything… I'm already planning to experiment with the blowtorch to rectify this.

finally... almost pizza time

Margherita was the order of the day

time to cook

Bertha in action

Anyway, back to the dough. I ended up trying 4 variations, a sourdough recipe with a strong pedigree, as I believe it's used by Franco Manca, "The Best Pizza Dough Ever" recipe from 101 Cookbooks, which stems from acclaimed baker and author Peter Reinhart. We also tried a no knead recipe from the Slice pizza blog and finally another Peter Reinhart recipe (I'm a bit of a fan) from his Crust and Crumb book, which started with a pre-ferment, poolish or sponge, so was a bit different to the others. Four dough recipes - can't be that hard I thought. Error. Each required several day's preparation along with an elaborate mixing and resting schedule, so out came the note book again. I didn't help myself by selecting mainly US recipes either, how many millilitres of water are in a cup… (well it turns out it depends on your cup, that'd be 236ml for a US one or 250 for a metric one - I worked on the assumption that they're patriotic about their cups in the US, so went with 236).

my scribbles, complete with pizza stained tasting notes

Here's a summary of the different doughs I made:

	Working Name	Origin	Pre-ferment / Special Preparation	Ingredients
1	Sourdough	Franco Manca, Margot's Kitchen	Active sourdough starter (Clare) 20h ferment	Water: 250ml Flour: 425g Starter: 7.5g Salt: 4.5g
2	101	Peter Reinhart, 101Cookbooks	Overnight rest for dough	Water: 196ml Flour: 284g Yeast: 1.5g Salt: 6g Olive oil 28g
3	No Knead	Serious Eats	Room temp rise 8-12h Refrigerate to prove for 2-4 days	Water: 242ml Flour: 373g Yeast: 5.6g Salt: 7g
4	Poolish	Peter Reinhart, Crust & Crumb	Active poolish Overnight rest	Water: 89ml Flour: 224g Yeast: 0.5g Salt: 7g Olive oil: 56g Poolish: 140g (Flour: 126g, Water: 236g, Yeast 1g)

As you can see from the ingredients column there was considerable faff to sort the ratios into manageable quantities, if we'd stuck to the original recipes we'd have ended up with enough dough for 32 pizzas, which even by our gluttonous standards seemed ambitious. This way we had just over 500g of dough from each recipe so we could make two 250g pizzas.

On to the pizzas themselves, and confusingly in the order we ate them:

No Knead:

Our thoughts: Very light and airy, best rise, crust like fluffy white bread, not much flavour.

Poolish:

Our thoughts: Sweet. Less rise, more 'crumb' texture. Tastes like potato cakes! More caramelised, could work well with blue cheeses and figs.

101:

Our thoughts: Better rise than Poolish, lighter than No Knead, still little flavour.

Sourdough:

Our thoughts: More complex and substantial, interesting flavour. Sweeter tomato mixture would work well to balance the sour flavour from the dough.

Summary

So there you have it, 4 different dough recipes with some surprisingly different results. I don't believe you can say which is the best, that's too subjective, but what we can say is which was our favourite, and that was the sourdough by quite some margin. It had a far more interesting flavour and added more to the overall taste rather than being just a receptacle for the topping. The dough was also one of the easiest to make too. Guess I shouldn't be too surprised that the recipe from the award winning Franco Manca came out on top, but we learned a lot along the way.

The first pizzas turned out so well we didn't feel the need to repeat the process, so after stuffing ourselves with an extra sourdough pizza we took the spare dough and made some focaccia (mmm… salt and olive oil) and a loaf too:

Outdoor food tastes better

My girlfriend and I are spending Christmas apart this year which seemed like a perfect excuse to hold our own mini Christmas beforehand. We weren't tempted by the traditional affair, much as we're both a fan of turkey, but liked the idea of an Aussie style meal and a chance to fire up Bertha.

I love winter BBQs and not to be dissuaded by the grim weather we strung a tarp from the back of the house making quite a cosy little grotto or more accurately our own shrine to meat, this wasn't a particularly veggie friendly menu. We'd decided on surf and turf and given the special occasion ordered a lobster from Fin and Flounder and a huge t-bone from Meat N16. I was excited. The lobsters available at the market were smaller than they were expecting but that way I felt justified in ordering a couple of scallops too - this was a once a year treat so why not… The lobster we bought was a beauty, a 700g Dorset Blue still live and kicking and complete with roe. We weren't originally planning on a starter, but combining the roe, scallops, creme fraiche, chives and some blinis we rustled up seemed to do the trick. Bertha did a great job on the scallops, steak and lobster and also threw out enough heat so that we could sit outside enjoying the evening and the sound of rain falling on the tarp. It was a merry mini Christmas indeed.

Strikes me now that this blog has a distinct lack of pizza posts currently, something I plan to rectify in the New Year, although for now I'll leave you by wishing you all a very merry Christmas and a happy New Year.

Introductions - Part 2

Moving on to the next members of the family, this time the little ones, Sanj and Clare. These are our sourdough starters. Sanj, I made from nothing more than flour and water in my old flat, and he takes his name from my old flatmate. Clare, Sanj's more sophisticated other half, came along later when I attended a baking course at the E5 Bakehouse and they both sit happily bubbling away in the fridge in their own booze. We feed them once a week, usually on a Thursday as this way they're pretty lively for baking on a Saturday and they're used every weekend we're home be it for loaves, bagels, pizzas or even naans.

We've toyed with quite a few different recipes and have finally found one which we're really happy with - that warrants a post of it's own. Although if you're interested in starting making your own sourdough bread I'd thoroughly recommend the course E5 Bakehouse run, they're a really friendly bunch and the course packs in loads of information and techniques in one day.

Here's the photo journal of this week's efforts:

Introductions - Part 1

Everyone meet Bertha, Bertha meet everyone. Here she is, our outdoor oven, handmade in the UK from Sheffield Steel and a bit of a looker even if we do say so ourselves.

I was originally planning to build myself an outdoor oven, I'd even downloaded plans from the internet showing how to go about it. Then, one Sunday whilst meeting some friends at a food festival at Hampton Court we stumbled across a stand from the Garden Oven Company. Moving house at the same time Bertha was my moving in present to myself, and an incredibly successful present at that. Gone was the issue of me traipsing through the house with all the materials to build an oven, the associate mess and risk of it cracking during the first winter and we had a fully functioning oven, ready to go which doubles as a BBQ - she's a beaut'!

Her official designation is Number 6 of Batch 1, although she's Bertha to friends, over these pages I plan to write more about what we cook in her, although for now here are some pictures of her in action.

my poking stick of choice

trial run

MEAT-MODE

I should also give a big shout out to the lovely people at the Garden Oven Company who were particularly helpful getting her set up and even upgraded parts as their design has evolved - cheers guys!

In the beginning...

So here it is, my first blog post, can't help feeling this is anti-climactic.

Perhaps a good place to start is to outline what I'm trying to achieve with this. This won't be your usual food blog, and I won't be out each week sampling new restaurants to post my thoughts here, there are plenty of excellent examples of those already. I've started this in an attempt to create some order to my research, my attempt to find the perfect pizza. This will be the place for my ramblings. Along the way I'll search for the best ingredients, I'll look into dough, how it works and what options there are, I'll chop logs, I'll play with fire, and I'll eat lots, and lots of pizza.

I think the first real pizza I made was at uni, longer ago now than I'd care to admit, but that was the first time I made everything from scratch, took the time to make the dough, slow cook a tomato sauce and procrastinate from the work I should have been doing. The issue was we didn't have an oven. That was never going to stop us though, in fact we saw it as an opportunity. Several beers later we had a George Forman Grill inverted over a frying pan on our electric hob and we were off, our first pizza was cooking, the charred crust being achieved by a plumber's blowtorch which was half the price of the namby-pamby "chef's blowtorch" the department store had on offer. Don't try this at home kids. But it worked. And no one died. 

Since then things have progressed somewhat, we now have an outdoor oven in our garden, our sourdough starter forms the basis for our dough and kebab meat is vetoed as a topping. But, that's not to say we've still not got so much more to learn, and that's what I hope will follow here...

how not to do it