In my first post back in 2017 I mentioned that just like any other homebrewer, I dream of opening my own place someday and my vision was to open a brewpub that in addition to beer, focused on either pizza or burgers. The burger vs pizza decision became a lot easier earlier this year when I stopped eating meat. I haven’t decided yet how absolute this decision is. Maybe I will have some brisket when I visit Pohjala tap room, or eat the standard menu at work related dinners, but I doubt meat will ever be part of my regular diet again. And pizza really is the ultimate meat-free food. Vegan I won’t go. Cannot do the fake cheese thing, but pizza at its best doesn’t need meat.
In addition to cheese I will continue to eat eggs, because it is my understanding that the eggs you buy at supermarkets wouldn’t have ended up as chickens anyway. Egg farmers are like Orthodox Jews in the sense that all chicken and rooster marriages are arranged and chickens are only allowed to date roosters after they get married. This means that the eggs you buy at supermarkets are unfertilized and will never develop into chicks unless there was a divine intervention of some sort, resulting in virgin pregnancies. I buy this story, but I just find it strange to think that there are spinster chickens running around in the forests laying unfertilized eggs for no reason. What’s the purpose of this?
That’s the real chicken vs egg dilemma. The which came first question is easy. If you believe in evolution, it was obviously the egg because whatever species ultimately developed into the domesticated chicken also laid eggs. The mother of the first chicken may not have been chicken, but she did lay chicken eggs. Actually, you might not believe it by looking at one, but the domesticated chicken is the closest remaining relative to the T-Rex, who also laid eggs. There might have been a species or two in between though.
The Perfect Pizza
The best pizza I’ve ever had was at Roberta’s in Brooklyn N.Y.. I had their famous original, which was topped with tomato, mozzarella, caciocavallo, parmigiano, oregano and chili. Recreating something like that at home is difficult since Roberta’s bake their pizzas in a wood fired oven. I suppose you could call their pizza Neapolitan style, or at least Neapolitan inspired. Regular home ovens just don’t get hot enough for that. To tackle the temperature issue I decided to exchange some of my hard earned money for a Ooni Karu pizza oven.
Ooni is a company located in Scotland, but the founder is originally from Finland. The brand, Ooni, you see used to be called Uuni, which means oven in Finnish. Somehow they figured out that since Finnish is a peculiar language (which it is), people from other countries will pronounce Uuni wrong (which they would), so to prevent that they changed the name to Ooni. Only problem is, that there is not a language on earth in which you pronounce Ooni the way you pronounce Uuni in Finnish. To even think something like that you would have to be from Finland. People from different countries will still pronounce Ooni differently, so the only thing the re-branding did was confuse consumers and remove any meaning from the name. Luckily they have good products.
Ooni Karu is a portable wood and charcoal fired pizza oven, released earlier this year. It completes their lineup of pizza ovens in the sense that its their first portable wood fired oven. Previously all portable ovens have been either wood pellet or gas fired, and their wood fired oven, the Ooni Pro is significantly larger. There is also a gas option for the Karu, but that needs to be purchased separately.
My process
My philosophy for making pizza is similar to my brewing philosophy in that I’m focusing on the basics, the processes, before I turn my attention to recipes. When talking about pizza that means perfecting the dough before worrying about toppings. Below is a short description of my process, which requires very little actual effort, but you do need to plan ahead. Think of it like a comb over. You can’t just suddenly decide to make pizza unless you have prepared the dough in advance, just like you can’t suddenly start sporting a comb over, if you wake up bald one day. People will notice. But if you already start combing your hair from one side to the other years in advance before you actually go bald, you might get away with it for while. People will think you just prefer your hair that way.
The dough, for 3 pizzas
- 500g flour
- 315-325g cold water
- 10g salt
- 10g olive oil
- 1-2g dried or 2-3g fresh bakers yeast.
1. Mix the salt into the flour 2. Mix the yeast into the water. 3. Mix everything. 4. Work the dough until all ingredients are thoroughly mixed, but don’t knead yet at this point. Let sit at room temp for 30-60 minutes.
After the dough has had time to rest, start kneading the dough until it gets smooth and elastic. For me it usually only takes around 5-8 minutes. Most people do a bulk fermentation before dividing the dough into separate balls, but I skip the bulk fermentation and already at this point split the dough into three separate balls. I ferment them in separate plastic containers in the fridge only to take them out to room temperature an hour or two prior to using them. Usually I make the pizzas on three separate days; one, two and three days after preparing the dough. If I don’t have time to use all dough balls within three days of preparing them, I throw them in the freezer. Once they “over proof” they are difficult to handle.
Tomato sauce
- One can of peeled tomatoes
- 10g salt
- 10g olive oil
- 2 cloves garlic
Sometimes I mash the tomatoes by hand, but most often I use a blender for a few seconds. Add the salt, the garlic and that’s it. No heating/simmering of the sauce necessary. I prepare the sauce at the same time as the dough, meaning a day before I make the first pizza. You could of course make it later, but this gives the garlic time to add flavor to the sauce. I leave the garlic cloves behind when adding sauce to the pizzas.
Learning to use the Ooni Karu
I expected it might take some time to get used to the Karu, to get the temperature right etc., but I have to say, using the oven has been easier than I expected. Even without a proper thermometer. Once I get a thermometer, I assume my results will get even more consistent but the oven is manageable even without one.
The key to getting good results is having an even temperature from both below and above. As an example of what I mean; if you heat up the oven to really high temperatures, but let the flame die out before you bake your pizza, you will end up burning the bottom of the crust before the top of the pizza is properly cooked. On the flip side, if you bake your pizza too early; you have a good flame but the stone inside the oven hasn’t had time to heat up properly, you will burn the top of the pizza before the bottom is properly cooked.
As fule, I am using both charcoal and birch for now. My assumption is that the burning wood gets the temperature up to where I want it, while the charcoal helps maintain the temperature for longer. Don’t know if this is true or not, but hey, it works.
After having used the Ooni Karu for 15 or so times in the first month of owning it, I can highly recommend it to anyone interested in stepping up their pizza game from a standard home oven to a wood fired oven. It is well worth the 279€ it sets you back. I just refuse too pronounce the name Ooni as Uuni. It’s the little things that bug me.
Wooden Pickle Brewing 