Re: Blackened cornmeal

Posted by Rado (144.134.35.124)

In Reply to: Re: Blackened cornmeal posted by Rado

John,
In this respect, a bit on how I got used to making pizzas at home. Last weekend we spent one day with Italian Couple who are pizza Chefs. To my surprise we had many ways in common, however it was greatly educational experience on my part.

Starting with the dough, Dada's Pizza A to Z page has a best recipe I think - link to the page is below and the page includes kneading and all that stuff to produce pizza dough. Best flour is the one that is being sold in the red packaging and imported from Italy grade/quality '00' is originally used for making pizza or pasta. Ordinary organic plain flour is good too but the 00 is amazing. Anyone can knead into the dough little pieces of fresh basil herb, basil produces beautiful flavor and it's traditional Italian way (so I was told by competent people.)
Roll the pizza base on a flat and dry natural wooden surface (if you don't use only hands and air, i cannot do it that way ;o). It is important the surface is dry with and has a bit of loose flour on. I know people who made their own kneading boards, my is from Ikea, was manufactured in Romania actually, it's very good item cost at $30 bucks AUD$.
When you have the base stretched into a size you like dust it with flour on top and give it quick rub with hand.
Use another dry surface for saucing your pizza bases where also toppings are being applied. Take the base and put it on this other surface laying on the side that you dusted with flour previously. Always sauce the base and add toppings just before you want to cook the pizza, don't let it sit like that because it'll get sticky. You can roll the base in advance but wait with toppings the tomato paste and toppings prior to cooking.
Now, take the dry paddle (can be dusted with flour just a little) and slide it under the pizza base without any other help. No need to touch the pizza, just slide your paddle under. It goes easy (well maybe not at first time till one gets used to the movement with the peel).
Slide the pizza off the paddle straight onto the hot bricks. When the oven inside atmosphere is too hot, while inside the oven pizzas may be rotated by using the paddle or they can be taken out and rotated by hand on the paddle.

***Making the floor clean! ***
This is how to make the floor clean from the ash dust with OR without using copper or brass brush. First shift the embers to a side or sides with your paddle or a piece of a tree branch - rubbing the floor with the branch from side to side does the job fine and all this deal is a matter of less then 10 seconds.
Now there is still heaps of that ash dust on the floor where pizzas and anything else goes. Even if you use a brush to clean it some dust will still remain. Here is simple but very efficient help - naturally you could try to blow air into the oven to push the dust away, but by doing so only little bit of the dust moves away from the place. So get a ~3' to 4' or 0.9m to 1.2m long pipe of small internal diameter. Place the pipe inside pointing it to that spot required to be free from the ash dust and with mouth blow air into it. It will get rid of the dust perfectly with almost no effort ;o)! I got my pipe here from Woolloongabba demolitions yard, it's a straightened up copper pipe used by plumbers. Any pipe would be okay, from an old broom for example but I think copper looks nice.
Who knows why some dough creates those annoying bubbles whilst next time the same dough does not do it ;o)? r

How to make pizza from A to Z page with photographs by Dada