With yesterday being Independence Day in the United States, there were multiple chemically induced patriotic arrays blasted across our North American sky. Another type of array was also created, and it involved the inaugural firing of our recently constructed outdoor oven!
Most happenings on our farm, especially get togethers, are spontaneous and laid back in scope. As I had to walk in front of the library's bookmobile in our local parade on the morning of the 4th(a post on that adventure is forthcoming!), and had promised to take our offspring to our town’s lovely little lake for the afternoon, I really didn’t feel like going anywhere that evening. That said, I have the most amazing, generous neighbors, and thought to myself:
“Hmmm….I should invite them over and try out the outdoor oven.”
My neighbors grew up in upstate New York, and we frequently have lack of quality baked goods availability in North Idaho laments together. You know, classics such as “Lack of Bagel Bawling” and “No Rye, Plenty Of Cry.” It’s a baked good desert around here.
To say that my neighbors were excited about our upcoming pizza bakeout would be doing their enthusiasm a descriptive injustice, we both texted back and forth regarding what toppings we would be bringing to our gluten and cheese buffet. We also both decided to experiment with some dough. By the time the fourth rolled around I had a five pound pack of pepperoni in my refrigerator. I have to admit I was rather fascinated by the pepperoni pillow. There was also a number ten can of pizza sauce, olives, green onions, Cremini mushrooms, “artisan” parmesan, a five pound bag of shredded whole milk mozzarella, olive oil for drizzling, and a large jar of red pepper flakes. My kitchen counter was a cornucopia of potential pizza perfection!!
As I had a schedule that resembled a shampoo hair model’s luxurious locks in fullness, I prepped the pizza dough the night before. I used my standard pizza dough recipe:
Pizza Dough
2 ¼ Cups of Flour (I used unbleached all purpose)
1 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar
2 Tbsp Olive Oil
2 ¼ tsp yeast
1 cup warm water (100-110 degrees Fahrenheit)*Note: I usually triple this recipe as the little Polynesians can pack away the pizza, plus they like it for breakfast. A tripled recipe yields two restaurant sized pizza pans plus a 12 inch pan of pizza perfection and digestive enjoyment. Also, I never really measure anything when I bake and cook, so I did my best to accurately relay this recipe. Be prepared to throw in a few extra handfuls of flour here and there!
Dissolve the yeast in the warm water in a large mixing bowl, next stir in the sugar until dissolved and set the mixing bowl somewhere warm for about ten minutes until your mixture is a bubbling with happy yeasties eating sugar gaseous joy. Next add the flour, oil, and salt to the bowl and mix until the dough comes together. Lightly flour your kitchen counter or some other work surface. Plop your dough out onto the counter, sprinkle with flour, and begin kneading the dough, adding flour as it is needed. You can also use a stand mixer and dough hook attachment to complete this step, but I find kneading dough to be a bit of an enjoyable task. My triceps always need work.
You are supposed to knead the dough until it is nice and stretchy and not sticky. I never get there. If you want to use the dough the same day, plop it in an oiled boil and let it rise in a warm place for an hour. Punch it down again and proceed to make your crusts. Or, if you are in a hurry you can use it right after you knead it. I won’t judge, for I have been guilty of doing the same thing myself.
Another option, and what I did for our pizza bakeout, is to wrap the dough in plastic wrap and throw it in a zipper top plastic bag in the fridge overnight. Just make sure you stop by the fridge a couple of times and punch the living daylights out of the dough. That insolent pre-crust will try to escape its plastic confines and spread its blobby self all around your refrigerator. It kind looks cool, like a gluten and yeast lava flow, but it’s not really fun to clean up, so you have been warned! The overnight proofing yields a chewy, crisp, and slightly sourdough type of crust that I adore!
Happy crusting!!!
However, as I was craving a bit of sourdoughness in my life, I made the dough the day before, making sure that I threw it in the fridge and stopped by the chillbox a couple of times to punch down those gaseous little yeasties. That dough smelled sourer than the look on a twitter obsessed celebrity’s publicity handler’s face.
@jacobtothe brought his trash panda puppet to entertain us with as we waited around the oven for pizzas to emerge.After an afternoon basking and swimming at the lake, my neighbor and I began to assemble pizzas. A note of disclosure should be added here. I have never made a pizza and cooked it in an outdoor oven. Here are some of my most impressive meathead moments:
We rolled and tossed out crusts, but as my husband hasn’t finished my pizza peel yet, we decided to place them on parchment paper to transport the pies to the oven outside. However, we then wondered how the heck we were going to get the darn things into the oven. I really wanted to eat the pizza after it had cooked right on top of the firebrick. After some discussion, I ran inside and grabbed a pizza pan that I have that is perforated with holes. Happy medium moment of achievement! We carefully slid the first pie onto that pan and using a BBQ spatula tool, slid the whole thing into the oven. We shut the wooden door that my husband had made, and observed the temperature gauge that he had installed in the door read 475 degrees. About ten minutes later we removed the first pie, and I am not ashamed, well, maybe a little bit, to admit that we all devoured that first pizza like a bunch of black bears at a used diaper convention.
Words of sufficient description fail me. Seriously, that first bite of pizza slayed my taste buds. It also slightly burned the roof of my mouth as I didn’t give the pie sufficient cooling time. I don’t care either, because for the next couple hours, my husband, neighbors, and
Here are a couple of things that I learned and an assessment of some outdoor oven skills that we need to perfect:
Even if you are tired, go into your pantry and get out another roll of parchment paper instead using the wax paper. You will ruin your pizza if you set it on wax paper. I know, because we ended up eating a pizza-cano that looked like something that my dog once vomited onto our living room floor. It still tasted amazing, but it suffered a little in the visual department.
Cornmeal and a pizza peel are must have items. Unless you like comedy with your cooking. The accidental calzone, while amazing in taste and visual appeal, was not intended. It was however inhaled like cannabis as a vaping convention.
We just used some chunks of our firewood to get the coals going in the oven. While we did get up to temperature, I feel that some hardwood would be a better choice for an overall more consistent temperature and baking experience. Pine burns quickly and the pine coals dissipated rather more quickly. I have some applewood that I am going to give a try next baking session.
Give your baked goods sufficient time to cool upon oven removal, unless you want the roof of your mouth and tongue to resemble the Sahara Desert under infrared light.
All in all, the outdoor oven is a smashing success! I can’t wait to glean little bits of old school oven cooking wisdom over the next few months and years. There are sourdough loaves to be constructed, corn to roast, pizza to be devoured, and un-discovered bits of culinary joy to unearth! I’m so happy to be exploring this avenue of cooking and self-sufficiency and extremely tickled to have such a wonderful audience to share our baking progress and findings with!
And as always, all of the images in this post were taken on the author's pizza dough encrusted and slightly amused by the state the obvious tag on the trash panda puppet iPhone.
