Ooni Pizza Oven

[scott123]

On 6/11/2020 at 1:09 AM, &roid said:

I was using 1/2” thick steel as in this post and it was decent enough. I got better results when I moved to caputo flour and started using a darto pan on my range top for the base followed by some time under the broiler. Total time for that method was around 30s on the gas burner followed by about 90 under the broiler. They were good pizzas but they were very hit and miss, it was hard to get the balance between base and top just right and my broiler was never quite even enough to do the whole pie without turning. This was probably the best example I did of that method, I really enjoyed it, but it wasn’t a patch on what the ooni gave me on its first try

 

 

Wait a second.  The first Modernist Cuisine says that, with steel plate, "you can cook a pizza that's as fast and good as any you'll find in Naples." Have you finally proven Nathan wrong?  :)

 

Seriously, I'm happy that you finally found your Neapolitan style pizza bliss, but, without folks like Nathan, Kenji and Andris (bakingsteel.com) telling home pizza makers that they could make Neapolitan pizza on steel, you likely could have reached this goal many years ago.  There's an entire universe sitting between 60-70 second pizza and a 2 minute bake.  Had any of these people actually spoken to Neapolitans, they would have understood this.

 

Congrats on finding an Ooni 16 in stock.  That's not easy to do these days.

If you're going with a 48 hour or longer ferment, I recommend the cuoco, since the pizzeria flour  was reformulated last year and doesn't stand up quite as well to long ferments.

[&roid]

10 minutes ago, scott123 said:

Wait a second.  The first Modernist Cuisine says that, with steel plate, "you can cook a pizza that's as fast and good as any you'll find in Naples." Have you finally proven Nathan wrong? 

🤣

 

11 minutes ago, scott123 said:

Congrats on finding an Ooni 16 in stock.  That's not easy to do these days.

I was very surprised, I’d been looking for one for a while and had become increasingly resigned to not having it this summer. Then an ad on my google search made me check a store again that I’d looked at many times before - they suddenly had just a single unit available. I can only think it was a cancelled order or something. This was about 1am - for once I’m happy about targeted ads and insomnia!

 

16 minutes ago, scott123 said:

If you're going with a 48 hour or longer ferment, I recommend the cuoco, since the pizzeria flour  was reformulated last year and doesn't stand up quite as well to long ferments

that’s really good to know, I’d not seen about the reformulation, what changed with it? Be interesting to see how they turn out this afternoon, do you reckon they’ll be ok with blue?

[adey73]

3 hours ago, scott123 said:

If you're going with a 48 hour or longer ferment, I recommend the cuoco, since the pizzeria flour  was reformulated last year and doesn't stand up quite as well to long ferments.

 

and what are your thoughts on the new  Nuvola flour from Cupto?

[scott123]

23 hours ago, &roid said:

that’s really good to know, I’d not seen about the reformulation, what changed with it? Be interesting to see how they turn out this afternoon, do you reckon they’ll be ok with blue?

 

Somewhere around June 2019, Caputo took the pizzeria flour from 12.75% protein:

https://web.archive.org/web/20181024231832/http://caputoflour.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/00-Pizzeria-SPECS.pdf

 

to 12.5%

https://www.mulinocaputo.it/en/flour/la-linea-professionale/pizzeria

 

A drop in .25% may not seem like a great deal, but, because the Neapolitans import so much of their pizza flour from North America, and, since strong North American flour is so expensive, they've always formulated these blends with just enough strength- and no more.  From a perspective of a flour that's always been a bit borderline, a small drop in protein can be meaningful. 

Don't get me wrong, I'm sure that the pizza that you made yesterday turned out fine, but if you really want to play to the blue bag's strengths, I would recommend keeping it to a day or less, and saving the stronger Cuoco for the longer ferments.

[&roid]

So it was a bit of a mixed bag yesterday, the pizzas looked quite good and the dough had a good flavour but I wasn’t really happy with the texture. I cooked six pies in total and, despite experimenting with different heat levels, they all had a bit of an underbaked gumminess to them. Overall they weren’t as good as the quick dough I did earlier in the week. 
 

I made too many changes to be 100% sure what impact each made - different flour, lower hydration (60% vs the 64% in the quick dough) and a 48 hour ferment. 
 

 

[scott123]

 

21 hours ago, adey73 said:

 

and what are your thoughts on the new  Nuvola flour from Cupto?

 

My feelings are mixed.  I've seen some puffy crumbs with Nuvola, but also some crumbs that weren't puffy at all.  For me, it's difficult to view Nuvola outside of the greater Caputo lens.  Like many American pizza makers, when I started this journey, I was a pretty rabid Caputo fanboy.  And then, about 10 years ago, I learned that, in Naples, they didn't have the market share, which surprised me.  And then I watched Caputo take over the Pizza Expo in Vegas and, amazingly, make it even crasser.  Combining that with the Americana- attempting to sell Americans their flour back to them at a markup- with the inference that we don't know how to mill good flour for our styles of pizza, the transitional whole wheat Typo 1 (bran is a gluten/volume killer), and the more recent corner cutting with the reformulation- needless to say, my love affair with Caputo has come to a close. 

 

Not that I'd ever to tell anyone to avoid the Cuoco or that the 5 Stagioni Napoletana is inherently superior.  As a company, though, I resonate more with 5 Stagioni- and Pivetti- and I'm also hoping a domestic 00 producer steps up their game.  GM was showing some promise with their Neapolitan, but, then they got greedy and starting jacking up the price. North American flour that hasn't been marked up by the Italians shouldn't be comparably priced.  Ardent Mills came out with an 00 last year.  Perhaps they could be the competition that brings down the price of GM. At the end of the day, I think it's kind of ridiculous to sell wheat to to the Italians and then buy it back again.

 

So... it's not that I'm anti-Nuvola, I just, at this point, don't trust Caputo any more.

[weinoo]

On 6/10/2020 at 10:23 PM, &roid said:

You won’t regret it, wish we had your weather!

Yikes.

 

I'm sure it will be perfect for @Franci, but have you @&roid ever lived in Florida? 

 

I'd take the weather in Manchester over that any day of the year.

[Franci]

1 hour ago, weinoo said:

Yikes.

 

I'm sure it will be perfect for @Franci, but have you @&roid ever lived in Florida? 

 

I'd take the weather in Manchester over that any day of the year.

 

Love the weather in Florida! And not this year,  but otherwise I am of the lucky one that can go back to Italy for 2 months in the summer 😁😁😁 Talking flours, @scott123, do you like Polselli, that is another of the most loved flours by the Italian home pizza makers, and it’s easy enough to buy here. 

[scott123]

21 hours ago, &roid said:

So it was a bit of a mixed bag yesterday, the pizzas looked quite good and the dough had a good flavour but I wasn’t really happy with the texture. I cooked six pies in total and, despite experimenting with different heat levels, they all had a bit of an underbaked gumminess to them. Overall they weren’t as good as the quick dough I did earlier in the week. 

 

FWIW, that white pie has one of the prettiest Neapolitan crusts that I've ever seen on this forum. 

I had a sense that the pizzeria flour @ 48 hours wouldn't be as wonderful as your emergency dough, but the gumminess is throwing me for a bit of a loop.

 

How are you stretching these? Are you using the slap technique?  If you are, how aggressively are you slapping?  The reason I bring this up is that slapping with a heavy hand tends to promote gumminess.  It's so closely associated, the second I hear 'gummy' my mind goes to the slap. Basically, aggressive slapping compresses the dough and makes it harder for heat to penetrate.

 

It might just be as simple as 48 hours breaking a (relatively) weak dough down, which, in turn, freed up water, with a wetter dough resulting, with a similar amount of heat/bake time as your last bake- resulting in a wetter crumb. Was the dough overly sticky and/or slack?

 

What bake times did you play around with?  Did you go as long as 90 seconds?

 

Visually, I'm not going to lie, this doesn't really look like a dough that's too far past it's prime.  On the last pie, those blisters that you're seeing at 8:30pm, in Naples, those are generally considered to reveal overproofing, with smaller, more freckled leoparding being the goal. Considerable numbers of home pizza makers are happy as a clam with that kind of blistering.  All the same, if you keep the pizzeria flour to 24 hours or less, you be less likely to see those.

[scott123]

15 hours ago, Franci said:

 

Love the weather in Florida! And not this year,  but otherwise I am of the lucky one that can go back to Italy for 2 months in the summer 😁😁😁 Talking flours, @scott123, do you like Polselli, that is another of the most loved flours by the Italian home pizza makers, and it’s easy enough to buy here. 

 

In my travels, I've met hoards of Caputo fanboys/fangirls, countless pizzaiolos that worship at the 5 Stagioni altar, and a considerable number of Pivetti devotees, but, so far, at least, outside Italy,  I haven't run across a lot of praise for Polselli. Not to say that there isn't, I just haven't run across it.

http://www.polselli.it/download/334/?lang=en

 

At 11.5% protein and a W value of 270, the Polselli Classica could be a little stronger, imo.  I'm guessing that Italian home pizza makers are most likely not taking this flour beyond a same day ferment much.  Within that paradigm, I'm sure it performs admirably.  But I lean a bit more towards a W of 300ish, which is where the Caputo Cuoco sits.

 

This person ran an interesting experiment comparing Classica to Caputo pizzeria flour (at the time, a W value of 295)

 

https://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=39897.msg400212#msg400212

 

He said that they 'looked identical when baked up.'  I disagree :)  But I think the number of people that would care that much about the difference would be minimal.  If the Polselli is readily available- and, these days, readily available is an important feature, then enjoy the Polselli in good health.  But, like the Caputo pizzeria, I wouldn't recommend pushing it past a day.

[&roid]

1 hour ago, scott123 said:

 

FWIW, that white pie has one of the prettiest Neapolitan crusts that I've ever seen on this forum. 

I had a sense that the pizzeria flour @ 48 hours wouldn't be as wonderful as your emergency dough, but the gumminess is throwing me for a bit of a loop.

 

How are you stretching these? Are you using the slap technique?  If you are, how aggressively are you slapping?  The reason I bring this up is that slapping with a heavy hand tends to promote gumminess.  It's so closely associated, the second I hear 'gummy' my mind goes to the slap. Basically, aggressive slapping compresses the dough and makes it harder for heat to penetrate.

 

It might just be as simple as 48 hours breaking a (relatively) weak dough down, which, in turn, freed up water, with a wetter dough resulting, with a similar amount of heat/bake time as your last bake- resulting in a wetter crumb. Was the dough overly sticky and/or slack?

 

What bake times did you play around with?  Did you go as long as 90 seconds?

 

Visually, I'm not going to lie, this doesn't really look like a dough that's too far past it's prime.  On the last pie, those blisters that you're seeing at 8:30pm, in Naples, those are generally considered to reveal overproofing, with smaller, more freckled leoparding being the goal. Considerable numbers of home pizza makers are happy as a clam with that kind of blistering.  All the same, if you keep the pizzeria flour to 24 hours or less, you be less likely to see those.

thanks Scott, that’s all really really helpful. 
 

My shaping technique is still a work in progress, probably a bit ham fisted right now so I’ll try going a bit more gently. 
 

the theory about the long ferment time breaking down the dough seems like it might be right though - despite being just 60% hydration compared to the 64% of the emergency dough, this one felt a lot wetter and stickier when I shaped it. 
 

For my next try I think I’ll go back to cuoco and a longer fermentation. Do you have a preferred method at the moment?

[scott123]

18 hours ago, &roid said:

For my next try I think I’ll go back to cuoco and a longer fermentation. Do you have a preferred method at the moment?

 

For about a decade, I was a huge proponent of long cold ferments. I've always been at the forefront of the time = flavor philosophy and that less time = flavor compromised pizza, which, if you look at the online pizza making community, is pretty much universally adhered to.  Even you exhibited a little short ferment shame in your earlier post Like many, it wasn't a case of "I set out to make an emergency dough, because that's what I like," but, rather, you felt like you were forced to compromise because of your impatience.

 

But I'm finding myself moving away from some of that dogma.  One thing that helped me to perceive this a little differently was coming to grips with understanding the chemistry.  The flavor you get with long fermentation is basically amino acids/umami via proteolysis. It's fundamentally just process derived msg.  Now, I'm not necessarily telling people that a 2 day dough can be recreated in 2 hours with the addition of some Accent (not yet), but, I am confident that the extra 'flavor' people respond so favorably to in long fermented dough is umami. Instead of looking at long fermentation as this mysterious, magical, inherently better process, I now look at it as a means of adding more or less umami to dough- and, while sometimes I want to ramp up those amino acids, sometimes I don't.

 

Don't get me wrong, I not necessarily "Yay, 1-2 hour doughs!" I think, for most styles, you want at least a tiny bit of time derived umami, not to mention I believe it can take longer than 1-2 hours for the flour in dough to fully hydrate for optimum texture (temperature can play a role).  But I don't think that Neapolitan needs to be an umami bomb.  I think that the magic of Neapolitan pizza comes from the super puffy and soft texture and char, not a super flavorful crumb.  While, in the past, I might have bristled at the loss of flavor in a shorter ferment, I can now see the benefits of a blanker canvas.

 

Pardon the pun, but I also find myself cooling on refrigeration.  At least, I do for shorter ferments.  You never want to bake cold dough, and, depending on your container, it can easily take 6+ hours to reach room temp in the center of your dough balls.  Once you get into minimum warm up times, refrigeration can push the clock too far. And when you add bulks to the mix (which I'm very much warming on), it's an added layer of complexity. There's also a camp who believes that refrigeration comprises texture. I'm not completely sold on this concept, but, since warm up times can be problematic for shorter ferments anyway, if cold is compromising texture, it's just one more reason to avoid it. Now... am I going to freak out if I encounter someone tossing their dough balls in the fridge overnight and then letting them warm up 6 hours the next day?  Of course not.  But I think the traditional same day room temp Neapolitan approach deserves more respect than it's been getting.  Like most people, I thought that this tradition was born out of spacial limitations- or possibly even corner cutting/greed, but, in recent years, that stigma has faded.

 

TL;DR?   This has been a very long winded way of saying that I resonate very strongly with the VPN specs- but not because I'm blindly following them, but rather, that I started off believing that I knew better- that I could basically take bread baking knowledge and somehow improve upon the original, but I've now reached a point where I can see that keeping it simple isn't necessarily a compromise. For me, the sweet spot is anywhere between 8 and 24 hours total time, with a portion of that being a bulk. I've also reached the same traditional place with water.  Pizza is not bread.

 

This is my best attempt at narrowing down some of the parameters in the official VPN specs:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Pizza/comments/8rkpx3/first_pizza_attempt_in_blackstone_oven_72_hr_cold/e0s9sqr/

 

Edited June 15, 2020 by scott123 (log)

[&roid]

Thanks, Scott, that is another amazingly helpful answer. Those links are great too. After following the thread you posted I read your thoughts on when the dough was ready to cook, I think this might have been part of my less than stellar results too. The emergency dough was super light and definitely felt ready to go, the 48 hour stuff only had about 2-3 hours out of the fridge and was a fair bit firmer feeling and less risen pre-shape. 
 

I’ll give your recipe a go next time and see where we get to. Thanks again for taking the time, it’s really helpful. 

[weinoo]

I gotta go out for some pizza. Some day.

 

On 6/14/2020 at 1:26 AM, scott123 said:

At 11.5% protein and a W value of 270, the Polselli Classica could be a little stronger, imo.  I'm guessing that Italian home pizza makers are most likely not taking this flour beyond a same day ferment much.  Within that paradigm, I'm sure it performs admirably.  But I lean a bit more towards a W of 300ish, which is where the Caputo Cuoco sits.

 

Don't you think, additionally, that Italian home pizza makers are baking at much gentler temperatures in their home ovens?

 

[scott123]

9 hours ago, &roid said:

Thanks, Scott, that is another amazingly helpful answer. Those links are great too. After following the thread you posted I read your thoughts on when the dough was ready to cook, I think this might have been part of my less than stellar results too. The emergency dough was super light and definitely felt ready to go, the 48 hour stuff only had about 2-3 hours out of the fridge and was a fair bit firmer feeling and less risen pre-shape. 
 

I’ll give your recipe a go next time and see where we get to. Thanks again for taking the time, it’s really helpful. 

 

Technically, it's the VPN recipe   but you're very welcome. Thanks for the kind words. I'm looking forward to seeing where you go from here.

 

[scott123]

4 hours ago, weinoo said:

Don't you think, additionally, that Italian home pizza makers are baking at much gentler temperatures in their home ovens?

 

 

Well, @Franci did ask about pala style in an Ooni, but, unless I'm wrong, the rest of the conversation has related to Neapolitan style pizza, so when she mentioned Italian home pizza makers using Polselli, I assumed that the Neapolitan aspect was implied. If she was referring to Italians baking pizza in their home ovens, that's a different ball of wax.  For pan pizza in a home oven, I think it's possible to coax something passable from the flours being discussed, but, for non pan pizza in a home oven,  because these flours are all so incredibly anti-browning at lower temps, they are all recipes for disaster, imo, with the lower protein of the Polselli being a worst case scenario.

 

With their Americana flour, Caputo understands the importance of malt and high protein flour for cooler ovens, but I think, so far, that knowledge hasn't made it's way very far throughout Europe, and, whatever inroads it has made have been on the wholesale front, and not retail.  All of the Italians I've dealt with own some kind of Neapolitan capable equipment, so I really can't speak to what the average Giovanni Q Pubblico is making in their home ovens. Based on the fact that I've dealt with at least a few thousand European home pizza makers, though, and I haven't run across any Italians working with home ovens, I have a strong feeling that they are going to be the last Europeans to get the high protein/malt memo.  The fact that high protein/malt is so closely associated with American pizza (hence the 'Americana'), it's most likely only going to compound the problem.

[Franci]

On 6/14/2020 at 1:26 AM, scott123 said:

http://www.polselli.it/download/334/?lang=en

 

At 11.5% protein and a W value of 270, the Polselli Classica could be a little stronger, imo.  I'm guessing that Italian home pizza makers are most likely not taking this flour beyond a same day ferment much.  Within that paradigm, I'm sure it performs admirably.  But I lean a bit more towards a W of 300ish, which is where the Caputo Cuoco sits.

 

 

He said that they 'looked identical when baked up.'  I disagree   But I think the number of people that would care that much about the difference would be minimal.  If the Polselli is readily available- and, these days, readily available is an important feature, then enjoy the Polselli in good health.  But, like the Caputo pizzeria, I wouldn't recommend pushing it past a day.

 

I am thinking of getting the yellow Polselli here. I do mainly teglia alla romana 24hrs because I can reach 550F with my Wolf oven. For now I am happy with it, it’s the best solution for what I have available. I think I should specify that Italian pizza makers that use Polselli are already between the enthusiasts that mix and match flour according the time of fermentation. There are so many Pizza App online that is amazing 😁. 

 

6 hours ago, weinoo said:

I gotta go out for some pizza. Some day.

 

 

Don't you think, additionally, that Italian home pizza makers are baking at much gentler temperatures in their home ovens?

 

 

Ok on this, I should have been more specific. There is a big difference between general population and the pizza fanatics. I am not really into it,  but still I joined  the group of Confraternita della pizza and the majority of the people there have the F1 oven. Very rarely people in the house make a verace. Usually the general people make a deep dish style of pizza for the house with lower temperatures. 

Edited June 15, 2020 by Franci (log)

[Paul Bacino]

pretty nice PIE--I would more in likely/  try the wood burning or coal one

[rotuts]

you might put some wood chips in the gas one and get the same effect

 

a little smoke ...

 

w a lot less work

 

just saying.

[&roid]

21 minutes ago, rotuts said:

you might put some wood chips in the gas one and get the same effect

 

a little smoke ...

 

w a lot less work

 

just saying.

agreed, the ease of use of this unit was one of the big selling points for me - connect to gas bottle, turn the ignition and I’m cooking pizza in 20-30 minutes. 

 

I’m not even sure there’s that much smoke from a properly lit wood burning pizza oven... isn’t the temp way too hot for that?

[rotuts]

you will get flavor from the wood

 

might be independent of smoke.

 

wood and coal fired ovens deliver a different flavor

 

than electric or gas.

 

Pepe's in New Haven , I think is coal fired.

 

you can taste in in the pizza.

[Paul Bacino]

https://ooni.com/products/ooni-pro?gclid=CjwKCAjw26H3BRB2EiwAy32zhVRa8toc79el-TcV892tAc1lIwuhog0L56DaoClsG3daBFVrdyuR5BoCSngQAvD_BwE

 

multi demensional oven/  so u could just do gas only if you wish.

[&roid]

They look great ovens Paul. For me, the simplicity and form factor of the koda 16 made it the preferred choice (plus it was £150+ cheaper!). But if someone wanted the versatility of being able to burn wood or charcoal as well the pro seems a good choice - sometimes a real fire is just more fun. 
 

I remain sceptical about the taste difference though, Rotuts. I’ve never eaten at Pepes (though funnily enough I was watching a video about their pizzas just yesterday), but I’ve seen plenty of evidence that the great taste of these high (650-750F a la pepes) and very-high (900+F as in the ooni or a Neapolitan wood oven) heat pizzas comes from temperature alone rather than fuel choice. 

[&roid]

For my latest round of experimenting I tried the VPN recipe that Scott posted upthread. 
 

100% Red Caputo 

61% water (30°C)

2.7% salt

0.05% active dried yeast 

 

This was intended for an eight hour rise but was probably closer to ten by the time I made the final (and best) pizza. They had 6 hours in bulk and then were balled for the remainder. @scott123, what’s the effect of different times in bulk vs. balled?

 

Next time I’ll try upping the yeast slightly as the dough hadn’t risen much during its time today. I put a test ball in a cylinder when I made the dough to measure it better and it only grew around 20% in size:

 

 

Still, we had to eat so I ploughed on. I was cooking these for 75 seconds with a floor temp of 480°C. My turning has got a little bit better so I managed a slightly more even bake. They were good, definitely more enjoyable than the caputo pizzeria flour ones from last week. And I feel like I’m getting better at judging the right amount of sauce to add. On the downside I would say they could have been a bit thinner in the base, I’m guessing with a bit more fermenting time or a bit more yeast I might have been able to stretch them better. Next time around I’ll keep everything else the same and just change that one thing to see what effect it has. 
 

 

 

still loving the ooni. It’s a great bit of kit to play around with. 

[scott123]

17 hours ago, &roid said:

@scott123, what’s the effect of different times in bulk vs. balled?

 

Fermentation/proofing generates heat, which, in turn, accelerates the process even further.  Because bulk fermentation is all one mass, it keeps some of this heat from dissipating. Yeast activity ramps up, as do enzymes (dough degradation).  Bulks degrade the dough a little faster- which, for a same day, is generally a good thing, and, assuming the yeast is viable, they generate more CO2 than balls.  This is still a bit theoretical, but I believe that even though the act of balling is equivalent to a punch down, where the majority of whatever gas is formed is pressed out, I think there's a method by which dough retains some of this gas, so the net oven spring of a double proof is greater than a single one. Improved final volume is either greater gas retention, and/or gluten extended further by letting the dough rise, deflating it, and then letting it rise again.   I've also read that balling/punching down redistributes yeast and introduces it to new nutrients.

So a bulk is a bit more flavor (atrophy) and a bit more final volume. The length of the bulk is not that critical, though.  It's not like a 3 hour bulk is going to be noticeably less flavorful or have considerably less volume than a 4 hour hour one. You generally don't want the dough to deflate during the bulk, as this can damage the gluten. The most important element of the bulk is consistency- picking a time and sticking to it, so that the balled ferment  always proofs at the same rate.  The length of the ball is much more important, because the balled proof has a very clear goal.  You want dough that, by the time you go to stretch it, is at or near the peak of it's volume. The traditional approach of allowing the dough to double is really just an oversimplification for beginners.  Depending on the flour, the hydration, and how you treat the dough, you can see anywhere from between doubling and quintupling, and, if you're chasing perfection, you really want to push the dough as far as it will go- without having it deflate.

Determining peak volume for a particular dough can generally only be done by failing- by giving the dough too much time, seeing how long it takes to deflate, and then making the dough again and using it right before the deflation deadline. The most important part of this initial process is consistency.  Every step has to be done the same way, every temperature involved has to be close to identical and the schedule cannot deviate. The only thing you want to change, as you've already figured out, if the dough is proofing too quickly or too slowly for your schedule, is to make minor adjustments to the yeast.

This particular recipe, with the yeast you're using, might work perfectly well with 6 hours bulk and maybe 8 hours balled.  But that's obviously not a very user friendly schedule.  Before you dive in and start ramping up the yeast, though, I would look at the form of the yeast that you're using.  Are these yeast packets?