how does it work out for you? any tips? also a small insect just crawled out of my keyboard is that bad?
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I have been making pizza all summer. Have a pizza oven on the porch. It’s probably one of the best things I’ve invested in other than music gear this year. There is a lot of technique with pizza making. From dough recipe to stretching your pizza. Not to mention learning your oven temps.
Most useful tip I’ve learned is getting the dough prove right. There are different types of yeast. RTFM! Then don’t be afraid to screw up. The first 4 or so pizzas I made were a disaster. Also, a messed up pizza can easily be flipped into a calzone! If you have kids it’s some of the best family time you can have outside. Or inside. Pizza is magic.
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Actually it might have been much worse if it were a large insect — I heard those are horrible at making pizza from scratch
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I make super lazy no-rise pizza dough, love it!
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I make frying pan pizzas semi-regularly. Make the dough in the morning, leave for 8 hours or so, make a quick sauce (tin of tomatoes, a small dried red chill, lots of oregano, black pepper, garlic powder, stick-blended), roll em out at dinner time, throw into a red hot frying scattered with semolina (for extra crusty bottom), add toppings and finish under the grill. There’s no better pizza to be had at home outside of using a proper pizza oven.
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I’ve been making pizza at home for 3 years now and it’s becoming like a second job. All this because of a story made by mylarmelodies. His reviews are also the reason I bought a Moog Grand Mother, sold it to buy a Matriarch, and now selling it in order to buy a Muse…
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I do 
been doing this for years now, started with making on oven stone, moved to cast iron with bit of frying first then top broil method, finally got a proper oven and everything changed…
many failures on the way but no leftovers so doesn’t matter if you fail - you’ll still eat it and it will be good
find a good dough recipe and work it, I personally love the Ken Forkish Elements Of Pizza book, there’s whole lot of good recipes that work you can use, focus on one and make it work.
quality ingredients been making real change for me, for sauce I use whole canned Italian tomatoes, I crush them and done, nothing else needed.
good quality flour like Caputo will also make a difference.
yeast imo less important as fermentation times, if you go for 24-48 cold ferment doesn’t matter the yeast, as long as the proportions are correct the dough will be great.
do not overload your pizza, spread everything to create a single layer, try not putting one thing on top of another thing, obviously if it’s something thin as basil you can, but if you start putting chunks of cheese or vegetables one on top of the other it won’t cook properly.
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Those pizzas look amazing.
Love that book, So much information there. I tried making the Saturday morning dough recipe but it didn’t turn out so good. Messed something up with the ratio of water. Been using the simple recipe that came with my Ooni.
One thing that’s been a huge help is a mixer with a dough hook. Makes getting some dough ready the night before so much easier.
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Ooh, thanks for this rec. I swear by his Water Flour Salt Yeast (a serious more general bread book) and his pizza dough made with a poolish is incredible. His pizza instructions there for making pizza on a stone in the oven are excellent, too.
Beautiful pizzas!
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from my experience no recipe works straight out of the box, every single one I tried needed to be adjusted to some degree, most crucial parts were hydration % and bench rest/fermentation times, for example the one I currently use from his book calls for 70% but that’s too much for my flour, I’ve settled on 65-67% after couple of attempts and it’s perfect.
the times always change with seasons, winter time longer fermentation, summer shorter, these things come with practice and no recipe is 100% accurate on these.
never used one, with my current recipe I’m barely kneading for 1 minute in total so this is optional, I also make 1-2kg of flour by hand so not that big of a deal to me… but some recipes call for 15-20 minutes kneading, in this case a mixer is a blessing 
thanks! these are not the best photos, but always having hard time to take proper pictures, as soon as I take it out of the oven people swarming them so fast there’s no time to take a good picture…
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I do not make my own pizza at home. However, I would still like to see more pictures of delicious pizzas here.
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Something I will definitely be getting into more as our new place has a pizza oven which we tried out a few weeks ago with some friends round. Was a bit daunting being the pizza chef using a wood oven for the first time but it worked out great. I made dough but we also had plenty of store bought bases as well as backup - all came out pretty good.
This was several hours later the same day making some pizzas for dinner, even with the fire down to coals it was still at least 300 degrees celsius inside, so they just took a bit longer. These are the store bought bases, we were too tired at that point to roll/stretch out more dough.
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Sure - takes a bit of time, but good results possible. I make my own dough for thin crust style pizzas, and also have a great recipe for Chicago style deep dish (will eat a piece of the last one I made out of the freezer for lunch today). Once you get into a bit of a routine, not all that hard to make good stuff at home.
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Fun app for playing with ratios
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That’s a huge oven! Pizzas look good for a first go. How long does it take to get up to temp?
That reminds me do any of you use an infrared thermometer to check stone temps? I’ve just been cranking my oven to max for 20 mins the. Turning it down before I throw the pizza in.
oh yeah I was using similar tools at the beginning when I started doing bread, but eventually using calculator app works just fine and I rarely use it anyway…
percentage is easy, your flour is 100% so hydration calculated from that, so if your recipe is flour, water, salt and yeast you go like this:
- 1000 g (or 1kg) flour = 100%
- 700g (ml should be equal to g with water)water = 70%
easy
things start to get weird with sourdough where you need to calculate the starter and the poolish, but for simple recipes it’s very easy
oh yeah I do, winter/summer very different in heat up/recovery times and it’s too hot to stick my hand inside
I used to, for decades, at times weekly. Even in New York, where there was a decent pizza place literally on the nearest corner to us. But then I moved to Lisbon, leaving behind all my appliances and equipment. My old pizza stone would not have fit in our oven here, which is underpowered. It has a maximum temperature of 250C but I doubt it can reach that. I also cannot find San Marzano tomatoes, low-moisture mozzarella, or high-protein flour (that last one should be possible, at least, but there’s no point). There’s a lot I can’t make in this kitchen or buy in grocery stores, but I also can’t find decent commercial pizza here. (I don’t like Neapolitan pizza; I prefer New York or Roman styles.) It’s so bad I made a point of seeking out a good pizza on my recent trip to London. London!
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honestly NY style is easier to make with regular oven and I’ve seen people achieve insane results with steel instead of stone, also for NY sauce I’d cook the sauce with a good quality paste, if you fry some crushed garlic with pure tomato paste you can probably use less quality tomatoes then San Marzano.
flour is important though, worth looking for a good one.
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Yeah, it’s a monster (edit: I got curious this arvo and measured, the diameter of the floor inside the dome is 120cm. Probably a mixed blessing, smaller would definitely be more practical for more regular use). It took about 4 hours to get it up to 500+, and that’s after giving it a slow warm up the day before as it would have been at least 6 months since it was last fired up.
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i like a good plain cheese and tomato pizza, i think if you can get that right you’re golden
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