The Pizza Therapy Forum and Pasta Therapy Forum

[pizza]

Ron writes:

I've been experimenting this weekend and have not taken you up on your suggestion just yet. I've been reading lots of blogs, etc. and its interesting how my problem is fairly common among home pizza makers.

In any case, on Saturday night I made some dough and let it sleep.
Experiment number one: putting my oven stone on the grill and cranking it.

It was a bit cool here today so I didn't get a reading over 450. In any case, The bottom came out crispy, the cheese melted well, but the top of the crust stayed whitish. The bottom was beginning to burn so I had to take it out. There was one blogger who thought you should elevate it closer to the top where the heat is, but I didn't do that at first, but when I tried to get some doneness on top, I elevated it and got a little soot.

Experiment number two: Cast iron skillet idea. Heat the large cast iron skillet on the burner and warm up the broiler. When it gets really hot, put the cast iron skillet under the broiler bottom up. Finish fixing the pizza and slide it on the bottom of the skillet right under the broiler.

Very interesting result however, when I made my dough I left out salt so my dough was tasteless. I've taken to using a check list after this, checking the ingredients as I add them.

The result was, the bottom was excellent. The melt was very good, though bordering on burning it. The top crust browned some. I had to remove it so as not to burn the cheese. It seems like this might work better if I dropped the shelf down a level.

I don't mind a burn so much but I have two small children, and a wife that doesn't share my taste for burnt. I thought about your suggestion the whole day, and wondered if you had ever experimented with different techniques with any success.

The answer for all home pizza makers seems to be a wood burning oven on the patio. One can only wish.

My response:

Thanks for writing... Any suggestions, here?
_________________
"Pizza on Earth...Good Will to All!"
Visit: http://pizzatherapy.com
http://pizzatherapy.blogspot.com/
http://legendsofpizza.com/blog

[pizza]

Albert -

Sunday evening I mixed up a batch of Pizza Therapy dough exactly as directed. I divided it by 4, and put them in what I use for my pizza dough proofing container.

Tonight I pulled out a ball, let it warm up a little, then made a pizza crust.
Dressed it up, and popped it in the oven that had been pre-heating to 550 degrees.

The pizza and the crust came out lovely, near perfection in doneness, brownness and crispiness. Why? Well, I think for several reasons.
You may recall that I experimented with a batch of dough over the weekend.

Tried three or four different processes, including the skillet heated and then used in the oven upside down, and several different processes on the grill. What I learned was that the upper heat has to be as consistent as the stone heat to get proper browning, so what I did was pretty simple. I baked the pizza on the shelf level one
down from the top after a fairly lengthy preheat as you suggested.

It may be that I should have been doing that all along, but the solution was simple. I kept reading about the counter top pizza ovens, both residential and commercial, which usually
showed a high heat of 500.

What was different was the height of the ovens, which
are only 4 or 5 inches high. The success i had on the grill also came with
building a little tent over the pizza to concentrate the heat lower so I came away
thinking the pizza had to be higher and closer to the source of heat.

Nevertheless,
I enjoyed an excellent pizza on an excellent PizzaTherapy crust. Now if I could
only get the dough from not wanting to shrink back after rolling it out...Thanks,
Ron


My resonse:

Hey Ron...

Sounds like you got it!!!

albert
_________________
"Pizza on Earth...Good Will to All!"
Visit: http://pizzatherapy.com
http://pizzatherapy.blogspot.com/
http://legendsofpizza.com/blog