Pizza dough for wood fired oven

[polo1665]

I stripped the gears in my Kitchen aid twice, but I was fond of making heavy doughs for rye bread and bagels. After the second set of gears I gave it up and bought an Ankarsrum.

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I built my own wood fired oven about nine years ago. Love it!

 

[ray66v]

I have found the Wewalka Round Thin Bistro Pizza Crust, (available in grocery stores), can take heat of a brick oven. European Bakery Style Dough | Wewalka (use the right arrow on the web page, to see this product).

They are not as good as homemade of course. But, it is still good. And, a great time saver.

These are designed to be cooked right on the parchment paper it comes with, which of course since brick oven temps are usually higher temperatures than it's designed for, you want to remove it.

I do a pizza with this dough, at 650F for 2 minutes. Normal brick oven pizza is meant to cook at around, 850F

 

[bunyip]

I stripped the gears in my Kitchen aid twice, but I was fond of making heavy doughs for rye bread and bagels.

We make brioche which really puts anything mechanical to the test including your arms if you like masochism and we have never had a problem, Mums old machine is now owned by my brother and that has only had one issue since 1955, it had a seal let go over the planetary mixer and it dumped black grease into her cake mix, I was about 10 at the time and still remember it, I am 69 now, she was not happy.
Like I said the downside of the KENWOOD is the noise from the gearbox, it is a shocker but they are all the same, you just get used to it.
We tried a few other mixers on the market such as Sunbeam and other well known names but when it came to even basic bread mixes they were out of their league.
I have noted that forum and will have a look later but it is interesting thatthe dough I made that prooved too quickly was about 65% hydration and was just a gooey mess that ran off the board, normal prooving/proving/proofing and it is a nice elastic dough that stretches easily and doesn't shrink back like an underhydrated dough (I have made a few of those!!).
I have no idea what happened or why it turned out that way as there was no introduction of additional liquid, I even repeated the process to see if it happened again and it did and adding more flour to the mess didn't help either, it was a wreck from the outset and beyond any recovery.
My next step is to build an outdoor table with a marble insert so I can prepare next to the oven as I believe speed is of the essence when making a pizza and launching onto the hot floor.

Ray, we have many pizza bases in the freezer section of the supermarkets and some 'fresh' (?) but with a sauce on them, I have tried many but have not liked them, the brand you mention I have not seen and most likely doesn't make it this far, no doubt there would be a market for it if someone took the time and to date I have not found a frozen pizza that comes close to acceptable, they always seem to have cheap product on them, too salty and way too much cheese.
I messed some up a few nights ago, got the oven too hot, the floor was 490C, the base cooked OK but the toppings didn't, took a long time to cool down.

 

[CADplans]

This is our "KitchenAid",,,, (HOBART)
It will make three loaves of bread at one time,, and is probably 30+ years old,,,

We grill pizza all the time, using bread dough out of the Hobart,,

Nothing special, we cook the pizza right on the wire rack of our 18" charcoal grill

The dough is grilled for a little while, then the toppings are added,, then the pizza is cooked some more,,,

 

[bunyip]

I am familiar with those brutes, can you mix concrete with it too? probably strong enough.
I have tried a charcoal grill but it is not the same, the shape of the pizza oven directs flame over the top of the pizza, the result is completely different, I have done them on a weber q as well, the result is passable but still not the same and when you have finished open the door and enjoy the heat from the fire with a glass or three of wine.

 

[CADplans]

I am familiar with those brutes, can you mix concrete with it too? .

There is a cement plant near us,, they use this type Hobart to mix sample batches of concrete to test the cement,,

 

[newbie11]

I, for one am extremely impressed. Pizza and pizza dough sort of gets taken for granted nowadays, even though by this post is more complex of a process than cooking with most high end ingredients. Way more complex than a steak haha.

 

[bunyip]

I have cooked steaks in the pizza oven, just put in a cast iron griddle and let it get hot, first time I put oil in the hot griddle and it combusted immediately now I oil the steak, pull out the griddle and put steak on and push back in for 90 seconds, pull out and flip for another 90 seconds, a nice caramelised crust and medium rare 2" thick eye fillet, works really well, the oven was running over 450C.
A couple of big spuds for about 15 minutes wrapped in foil take on a different flavour too.
It is a very versatile tool.
I forgot the yeast in the first post but I add at 1-1.5% which is about 7g of dried yeast for 500g of flour, type of yeast?, a whole new can of worms just like brewing beer.

 

[RobertN]

A few years back my son made pizza at a Boy Scout campout. He made the dough ahead of time and kept it cool.

At camp, he lined up three camp Dutch ovens over coals, and made a bunch of 8" pizzas for the kids in his groups. They loved it! He made veggie, pepperoni, and sausage pizzas.

We make homemade from scratch, but cook in oven or on grill.

 

[bunyip]

I used to be a Scout Leader and one of the delicacies they made was a dough wrapped around a stick and held over a fire, I was watching the proceedings one evening and one of the boys had a black dough wrapped around a stick, I laughed at him because he had burnt it, he looked bewildered as he told me he hadn't cooked it yet, it was just that he formed it with his filthy hands................................... and was happy to eat it.
I suppose what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.
Scout food could be very hit and miss when cooked by scouts, but they enjoyed it and they are all still alive 14 years later.