Recipes

People often refer to wood fired ovens as "pizza ovens", but if designed with plenty of thermal mass they can be used to cook so much more. Pizzas cook best at very high temperatures (around 400C), but the heavy thermal mass retains temperature enabling the oven to cook on the retained heat with that heat cooking by radiation rather than by convection as a standard kitchen oven. This results in meats retaining their moisture, breads developing superior crust and unparalleled slow cooking.

Dave’s Gourmet Wood Fired Pizza Menu

Prosciutto
sauce, cheese, olives, fresh tomato.
dressed w/ rocket & sea salt.

Vegetarian
sauce, cheese, capsicum, onion, mushrooms, capers. dressed w/ rocket & sea salt.

Margherita
sauce, mozzarella, feta, fresh tomato.
dressed w/ basil & sea salt.

Sweet Potato & Rosemary
garlic, olive oil, cheese, feta, sweet potato, rosemary. dressed w/ sea salt.

Pizza dough recipe (makes 5 medium sized bases)

4 cups (00) pizza flour 

2 Tblsp  semolina (makes the base more crispy)

1 tsp dried yeast

2 tsp salt

1 1/2 cups warm water (depending on the type of flour used)

Mix all ingredients in a bowl dry, then add water and continue to mix. Knead on a lightly floured board until dough is smooth. Cover and allow rising in a warm place for one hour, then punching down, kneading lightly and cutting off fist-sized balls of dough to roll out into bases. (A bread maker with a dough setting saves time and mess. I light the fire and put on the dough at the same time.)

 

By all means make the dough the day before you need it, if you’re that organised. Spray a little cooking oil on the inside of a plastic bag, put in your dough and pop it in the fridge. This overnight refrigeration actually helps the dough develop better, resulting in a better-cooked base.

Pizzas

We used to cook our pizzas on pizza trays and when done, we removed them from the tray and put them back in to crisp up the base in the middle. We’ve now graduated to the traditional method using corn meal or semolina flour under the base to help it slide and simply slide the pizza off a wooden pizza peel onto the oven floor, This produces a superior crust, but you’ll develop your own style. Smaller pizzas are easier to handle. Rolling out the dough is about the hardest task, but if you use oo flour it rolls out beautifully, hardly springing back at all, like bread flour will. It is special super fine flour and I won’t use anything else now. If you own a bread maker you can use it to mix the ingredients (use dough setting). I put on the dough to mix at about the same time as lighting the oven. This gives the dough a chance to rise. Generally, at the high temperatures the wood fired ovens achieve, thin bases are best. Roll out your dough about as thin as you can.

When cooking the first pizza keep an eye on it because it will be done in around 2 mins or less.  It’s a bit like pancakes; the first one is never the best. The more you cook the longer they will take, but you should get about an hour and a half of pizza cooking temp (see graph) or use the maintain flame technique and cook for much longer. Simply keep a small fire going on one side and throw small pieces of wood onto it regularly. This will maintain the high temperature required for pizzas.

 

 

Pear & Goats Cheese
olive oil, pear, goats cheese.
dressed w/ rocket & sea salt.

Pepperoni
sauce, cheese, pepperoni.
dressed w/ sea salt.

Pizza Night shopping List

Makes 20 x 9” pizzas to feed 30

  • 400g bottle Passata

    140g Tomato Paste

    600g Tasty Cheese (grated)

    600g Mozzarella (grated)

    200g Olive oil

    Small jar Garlic (minced)

    5 slices (approx. 120g) Proscuitto

    600g (approx. 5) Roma Tomatoes

    1 packet (120g) Rocket

    100g whole pitted Olives

    100g Goats Cheese

    160g Pepperoni

    1 x Red Onion

    150g x Feta cheese (not Danish too gooey, and not fat reduced too crumbly)

    Sea Salt

    1 Red Capsicium

    100g Mushrooms (sliced)

    Handful (fresh) Basil

    3 sprigs Rosemary

    1 Pear (slice with potato peeler)

    1 Potato or Sweet Potato (slice with potato peeler)

    Small jar Capers

Life Happens, Pizza Helps.

Roasting Meats

The roast is placed in the oven, and with the door fully closed, at a slightly higher temperature than you would use in a standard kitchen oven, which results in a caramelized crust, then as the temperature drops somewhat, the roast continues with a slow cook. Raise the roast off the fllor of the roasting tray with a rack or trivet, pour in half a cup of wine and half a cup of water. When the roast is done the perfect amount of liquid will remain in the pan to create a fantastic gravy. If you are keen a small handful of smoking chips can be cast onto the coals just before placing the roast. With the door on place they will just smoulder because of lack of oxygen. A good rule of thumb is one minute for every millimetre of roast thickness. I find one hour of firing is sufficient to charge the oven for roasting or baking.