Spice It Up Wood Fired Pizza is made the way pizza was made in Italy over 200 years ago with authentic taste and texture. Our traveling wood-burning tailgate oven that bakes a pie at over 850 degrees in 90 seconds using fresh local ingredients is how we deliver the most delicious artisan pizzas. Spice It Up was founded in 2010 with the concept of providing a unique culinary experience for guests where they witness the entire process of transforming simple ingredients into a magnificent meal, pulled right from the impressive wood fired oven. Spice It Up is unique in that we bring what others cannot, freshly prepared food.
A few days before an event, we start with the dough making process using 00 flour, a very fine Italian flour. The flour is combined with water, yeast and Kosher salt using a mixer and dough hook for 5 minutes. The dough is allowed to rest and rise for 24-48 hours in a refrigerator.
To explain more about 00 flour from Italy:
Here in the US, we categorize flours by how much protein they contain, which directly affects the gluten formation in whatever we're making. They do it a little differently in Italy and other parts of Europe by categorizing flours based on how finely the flour has been ground. Coarsely-ground type "2" flour is at one end of the spectrum with powder-fine "00" flour at the other.
[...]the protein content of "00" flour can range quite a bit depending on what kind of wheat it's ground from. Most "00" flour that we see in the United States is ground from durum wheat and has a mid-range protein content of about 11-12%, similar to all-purpose white flour.
Besides the level of the grind, the other big difference between "00" flour and all-purpose flour is how the gluten in each flour behaves. The gluten from durum wheat flour tends to be strong but not very elastic, while the gluten in red wheat flour is both strong and elastic. This means that with durum wheat, we'll get a nice bite on our breads and pasta, but not as much chew. - Emma Christensen Feb 10, 2010
The day of the party, we pull the dough out and let it come up to room temperature. Then we begin dividing the dough into 250 gram balls 2-3 hours before the pizza will be made. If it’s less than 70 degrees out we place the dough balls in dough proofing trays which are large enough to hold 12 dough balls. If it’s over 70 degrees out, we use individual dough ball containers so that we can store them in a cooler to keep them relatively cool.
Timing is everything with the dough based on the weather. Typically we pull the dough out of the cooler 30-60 minutes before the pizza will be made. When we work with the dough to stretch it out by hand to 10” in diameter, we are looking for a warm enough dough ball that has rested (not been handled for at least 30 minutes). The dough should be very easy to handle and should not require much pulling or stretching.
We use a marble board that has been lightly dusted with semolina flour to top the pizza with ingredients. Then a metal pizza peel with holes (which allows excess flour to be shaken off) is used to transfer the pizza from the marble to the pizza oven. I will discuss the setup and use of the wood fired pizza oven, as well as great pizza toppings in a future post.
Pizza dough is a blank canvas for any cuisine, savory or sweet. The possibilities are endless!
This is our traveling pizza oven. Thanks for reading, I look forward to talking more about the catering process in my next post!