Oven-baked pizza
I always wanted to bake my own pizza in a wood-fired oven, and my dream came true a few years ago, thanks to my uncle, a handyman. My uncle specialized in repairing refrigerators and knew nothing about stove-making, but together we somehow managed to put up a piece of solid construction in my garden that looks like a chapel, which may explain why passersby sometimes stop in front of my fence, folding their hands as if in prayer.
Making a traditional dome-shaped oven was beyond our technical skills, so I decided on a much easier construction in the form of a hangar, or half-cylinder. I got the idea from the internet. When you type "how to build your own pizza brick oven" into YouTube, you get full instructions on how to do it. You cut out a structure in the shape of the inside of your oven from a fiberboard, cover it with sheet metal, and then build a layer of fireclay bricks upright, and then another layer of clinker bricks on top of it. It's easy when you have an uncle on hand.
Good pizza is not so easy. Like everything good, it requires patience and heart.
We start by lighting the oven. This takes at least two hours. But to really light the oven well, you need more time. According to the Neapolitans, the right temperature for pizza is 485 degrees Celsius - at this temperature, the pizza will need a minute or two to bake. The fire should be lit in the very center of the oven, i.e. in the place where the pizza will later lie, closing the hatch to the oven, leaving the air supply. You should add wood several times - I use oak and birch, and when the oven is well heated, move all the embers to the corner and clean the place for the pizza with a metal brush on a boom.
The Neapolitan makes dough without using any mechanical devices from four ingredients: zero flour, yeast, salt and water. I also add olive oil and sugar to my recipe. I use type "zero" flour, i.e. "450". Italians call flour by consecutive numbers starting from zero, and in Poland they use notation that indicates the content of mineral substances, i.e. ash. Type "450" flour, also called cake flour, contains 0.45% ash, which is why it is the whitest of flours, bread flour "750" has 0.75% ash, and wholemeal "2000" - 2% ash. Half a kilogram of flour will make three pizzas. And this amount of flour is best for hand kneading. I knead the dough with a machine. And most often I make dough from a kilogram of flour, i.e. for six pizzas.
I put a kilogram of flour into the mixer, which I do not sift. I add three heaped teaspoons of salt and two tablespoons of olive oil and mix. To half a liter of lukewarm water I add 60 grams of fresh yeast or alternatively two, seven-gram sachets of dry yeast and two heaped teaspoons of sugar. I wait at least ten minutes for the yeast to start working, as evidenced by the appearance of foam and gurgles. Then I slowly add the water with yeast and sugar to the flour, mixing with a mixer or by hand. Even if I use a mixer in the first phase of mixing, after a while I always switch to kneading by hand anyway, because it is a great pleasure. Well-kneaded dough does not stick to your hand and is very elastic, which can be easily checked by gently pressing your thumb into it - after a while the thumbprint will disappear.
I put the prepared dough in a bowl and put it in the fridge for two days. I didn't do this before, and I put the pizza in the oven after only two hours of rising. Some time ago, however, I discovered the benefits of fermentation. Dough fermented - for at least a day, and preferably two - tastes delicious. I once did a test by making two pizzas - one fermented and the other only for two hours of rising. The first one came out noticeably tastier.
The bowl in which you put the dough should be much larger than the dough, because it will increase in volume at least twice. You don't have to do anything with this dough for these two days. It should ferment quietly in the fridge, covered.
The next element is the sauce. The Neapolitan adds only tomatoes – preferably those grown at the foot of Vesuvius. I put my own tomato sauce on my pizza. I always make more of it, because then you can use it in a thousand ways, the best of which is your favorite pasta with sauce and fresh basil.
I take two or three large onions, which I roughly chop and fry in olive oil. At the end I add garlic. I pour two or three cans of canned tomatoes, necessarily uncut, and a large bottle of tomato passata. I simmer everything for two hours, covered. Then I season with salt, pepper, oregano and basil - preferably fresh, and good balsamic vinegar, I cook with the spices for a while, then I wait for it to cool down and blend thoroughly.
An hour before baking, I divide the dough into equal pieces. I use a scale for this. Then I form them into nice balls, rolling them up with a few movements "from the top to the bottom". I arrange them, sprinkling them with flour, and cover them with a cloth.
You shouldn't use a rolling pin to spread the dough on the pastry board, because the rolling pin removes air from the dough and it doesn't rise as much in the oven. Using your hands, however, it's not easy, and I usually use a rolling pin. The rolled out dough should be well sprinkled with flour or semolina so that it can be easily lifted with a spatula.
Place three tablespoons of sauce on the rolled out dough and spread well with a spoon, leaving a narrow edge that will crunch nicely later.
Then comes the mozzarella. A Neapolitan would use buffalo milk cheese, which he would tear apart with his hand. I buy regular mozzarella in the supermarket, but I choose the least watery one. I prepare it by cutting it into cubes or grating it on a grater, then it is easy to spread on the pizza.
I put various ingredients on top. I like to experiment. The first ones are seafood: octopus, shrimp and mussels, which I first fry in butter with garlic.
Gorgonzola with pear tastes delicious, and I put rocket on it after taking it out of the oven – I also fry the pear beforehand. I also love chorizo with rocket, Black Forest or Parma ham with rocket, or carrots with onions fried beforehand.
