Pizza


 
LMichaels

LMichaels

TVWBB 2-Star Olympian
Last night it was the end to a nice day (hard work day but nice weather). I put down Milorganite on the 1/2 acre homestead (boy that stuff smells :D), then did a new frost free hose bib on front of the house to replace the old one that was not frost free and was leaking. Man what a job. It was plumbed in 1/2" copper. The hole in the sill plate just big enough. That was left extended from the sill plate and the brick layer bricked up to and tight to the copper. So the brick and house structures settled at different rates and what PIA to get it out. Of course the new frost proof 12" bib would not fit. I started trying to chisel by hand. Ugh. Then ran an air hose. Got my SnapOn air hammer out, a point chisel, and a muffler chisel (cheap ones from Hazard Fraught) and went to town. Then down into basement. Back side of sill. Hole saw and enlarged. Got er in. Now I need to either find my hammer drill or buy one so I can put some screws into the bricks and finally caulk it in.
Anyway I digress. Wife made home made pizza dough. I put the Wolf into action and we made small personal pizzas. Mine being sauce, a little Romano cheese, fresh basil, and Proscuitto De Parma 20200516_192118.jpg
 
Sounds like a big day! All I did was help SWMBO plant a few things the tested some Labatts for quality the first couple were just fine so, I decided that a test of some Fosters was needed for comparison! Then dinner with the kids being socially distant. Not an easy project but, since I didn’t need to cook the “Taco Bob” tacos were easy!
 
I made like 15 of those. So there was enough. Those were just the firs 2 that went on. Yes a little hint of smoke so it tastes like being done in a wood fired oven
 
Yeah I ended up needing to use that size because the dough was so tender it was either go small or go pan. I noted the how tender it was. Wife had used the 00 flour I use for pasta dough. They were still very nice just not quite the same "chew" as AP flour. But, of course thanks to the hoarders and panic buyers finding organic AP flour is hard. I can find tons of the plain cheapo variety AP flour but my blood sugar cannot handle the glyphosate residue and or the GMO it has to be to resist the use of glyphosate. So our preferred is Bob's Red Mill organic AP flour. Nowhere to be found. Not to mention how scarce yeast is.
 
Those pizza's look great Larry. But, living so close to Wisconsin, I would think you could have borrowed a bit more cheese for those bad boys.
 
Some of the cheese is not visible. I used a little Romana (sorry Bruce from Italy not WI) but the fresh mozzarella was from WI and on pizza done in true Italian way what you see on mine is the way it's done if you are in the mother country. BTW the factory where that WI cheese is made is not far from here. I once took the kids up there for a cheese factory tour. It was fun for them.
 
Excellent. I realized those pizza's were not "traditional" but they still looked very appetizing. Definitely a bit more healthy looking than the standard "pie".
 
Actually they ARE traditional. They're Italian not American versions. The idea of pizza all loaded down with huge amounts of cheese and sauce and other toppings did not come from Italy. It was an American idea. Some might say New York or some say Chicago FWIW. But truly Italian pizza looks like what you see on my grill and are also typically about the size you see as well
 
Yep, I get that. But traditional to me is what I grew up with and that is the flat loaded down with cheese and sauce and pepperoni. We just see it from opposite sides of the Atlantic. What strikes me about your pizza is that they surprisingly look very appetizing to me for some reason...
 
LMichaels said:
Actually they ARE traditional. They're Italian not American versions. The idea of pizza all loaded down with huge amounts of cheese and sauce and other toppings did not come from Italy. It was an American idea. Some might say New York or some say Chicago FWIW. But truly Italian pizza looks like what you see on my grill and are also typically about the size you see as well
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What you say about size and limited toppings on real Italian pizza is indeed true. However, I lived in Italy for many years and NEVER saw anyone cook a pizza on any kind of a grill or grid. While some ovens are gas fired, the best pizza is cooked in a wood fired oven with a stone floor. Pizza joints proudly advertise their wood fired ovens if they have one. I lived in Italy as a permanent resident for many years and I was lucky enough to have a wood fired pizza oven in my garden. It made great pizzas, but truth be told it was a PITA to heat up and it burned a LOT of wood doing so.

You can come very close to simulating genuine Italian pizza by making them exactly like you show in the photograph, but put a pizza stone (or two) on top of the grates of a powerful gas grill to simulate the stone floor of a real pizza oven. Turn it on full blast when you start making your pizza(s). Smoke from a foil pouch placed on the flavor bars with some wood chips does a nice job simulating a wood fired oven. You should be able to get your stone up to 700F, which is pretty close to the desired 900F of a genuine Italian oven.
 
I know about the wood oven. I have experimented with cast iron flat griddle (not a stone but close), cast iron pan(s), black steel pizza pans and so on and I keep coming back to just flat slappin that dough on the grates. It comes the closest to sitting lakeside at Il Forno on Lago de Iseo in Pisogne Italy. By far some of the finest eating (pizza or otherwise) I have ever experienced in my life. Of course we also ate raw langostino with a squeeze of lemon, lightly smoked but basically raw swordfish and other delicacies besides those beautiful pizzas.
Doing them directly on the grates gives me the best flame and slight (I mean VERY VERY slight) smoke exposure. Just to give that faint wood oven ambiance to it. It also gives me the best overall texture to the crust and chew.
Maybe one day I will build a wood fired pizza oven in the back yard but til then the Wolf doing just like my photos show will have to do and help me dream of the mother land
 
LMichaels said:
Actually they ARE traditional. They're Italian not American versions. The idea of pizza all loaded down with huge amounts of cheese and sauce and other toppings did not come from Italy. It was an American idea. Some might say New York or some say Chicago FWIW. But truly Italian pizza looks like what you see on my grill and are also typically about the size you see as well
Click to expand...
I agree. There is a forum out there for pizza addicts that I stumbled on one day. They are trying to perfect the Neapolitan pizza where they do whatever they can to get the cook times as low as possible. I might be wrong, but I think they were aiming for cook times in a kitchen oven under 2 minutes. They heat up the oven for an hour at max with steel plates or stones up near the top, then throw the pizza in with the broiler on. They use a special dough to make it work. It was pretty interesting reading. I'm going to try something like that in the Genesis and see what I end up with!

Gerry
 
I think I know the pizza forum you speak of. I'm interested in that sort of thing too, but the art of pizza making is a hole I just can't afford in terms of time or money (yet). What a fascinating subject though.

@LMichaels I don't mind saying, I am envious of your experineces with "the real thing". The closest I have to that experience is Via Napoli atDisney World -Epcot. For whatever place it holds in the pizza world, it spurred me to try and recreate that at home, and down the rat hole we go. I agree, cooking directly on the grill is by far the best result. In my case the Weber Performer.
 
If you look at the bar size of my grates and how tightly spaced they are you will see also why I had Dave Santana make those grates special for me. They are full on custom products. Spacing is a little under .25" bars are a full 3/8" solid 304 SS as well. I can even cook that pencil type asparagus on those grates. But, I digress. The biggest reason I have kept that Wolf and had those grates made is because of making pizza. I have tried on my Genesis and my Summit and neither can do a pizza that takes me back to the mother land. Because neither one has that huge glowing IR burner in the back bringing intense heat over the top of the pizza in the way the heat radiating off the top of the brick pizza ovens do. On a grill without that IR burner if you try to get the intense heat you need all you get is the bottom burned
 
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