2Stone pizza pics

[ringkingpin]

Paul,
Great looking pies! Keep posting!  we all have our threads to keep track of our goodies, builds and various adventures ...  so please keep it going! they look wonderful I am guessing 250-260 Grams. Any Plans to take her to 850 +?
Mike  - where is sourdough girl ? MIA
John

I'd be willing to bet that over the burner the stone is actually 850 for a short period.

[parallei]

Tonight was another attempt with 100% Capto 00 (62% HR) on the 2Stone.  Too low a temp (about 750) I guess as I cooked them too long!  However, the bottoms didn't burn.  Shrooms were roasted with garlic, olive oil and thyme.

[parallei]

50/50 KASL/Caputo 00, 70% HR, 20% leaven (made w/Ischia), 2.5% Salt.  The Tartine Method with the usual exploding crumb.  About 800 deg.

[ringkingpin]

nice looking Par...

I made some dough tonight that I'm going to bake tomorrow.  I never use anything but 100% Caputo 00.  I like to bake around 775 up front which on my 2 stone translates to around 850 over the burner.  I think my hydration is a little more than yours.  I got away from measuring and the calculator and just make the dough by volume and then adjust according to feel.

I've posted it before i think but my starters are kept around pancake batter consistency...

I use two cups of starter, two cups of H2O, two heaping tablespoons of kosher salt
8 cups of flour

mix for a minute, let it sit for around 15 or 20 then mix for around 8-10 minutes...  then proof accordingly, depending on when I want to bake it. 
If I'm not having too much fun tomorrow night, I'll try to take some pics with a real camera for once. 

I did speak with WIllard not too long ago who told me he's developed some more "tweaks" for the oven that I'm interested in, namely a tighter back baffle and a gas control for the front.

[ringkingpin]

Some pics from last nights pies.  I made some dough Friday and I hadn't used my starters for a while, I knew that the dough was going to be rather sour.  Well, it was too sour for my liking.  So, I wound up "washing" my starters and made some dough yesterday morning that would be used 8 hours later.  That's not a lot of time for a naturally leavened dough, or at least not for the way I usually make it but with careful monitoring, the dough turned out excellent!  I used warm water with the starter, mixed the dough a little longer than I normally would to help warm it up and then kept it in my kitchen in bulk from 9am until noon.  After 12 noon, I balled the dough up and left four in a stainless tray which I wrapped in saran wrap and put in to an 80 degree oven.  The dough was very nice by 5:30.

[ringkingpin]

Not really glamour shots, these were taken with my iPhone but man were they tasty.  The one is a simple Marg, what I consider the benchmark for a good pizza.  I always make one as my first pie so my 16 month old can get his fix.  The first pizza is always the worst it seems as the first one absorbs all of the surface energy from the stone.  After the first one, they always seem to come out better.
I was making different clam pizzas, I acually made two of them last night.  The first one was a very traditional white pizza with Clams, garlic and olive oil.  Man was that a good pizza!  I was using a product called Monty's clams, they're frozen in a pint and are really great for this application.  I tried to find a link to the product but to no avail.  I have been buying them from Bill at the Fishguy in Chicago, www.thefishguy.com
This last pizza is a picture of a raw pizza. This was just like the white pizza with clams and garlic but I added some sauteed shitake shrooms. 

[a pizza cu a Pumarola]

Hello, thought I'd chime in since I've been using the 2Stone for a few years now and have gotten to the point where I can get some consistant pies.............100% Caputo Pizzeria - stone temp in the 900 range with a dome temp of 1000+.
Bake time roughly 90 sec.

[ringkingpin]

nice work A pizza!  Wow, I'm impressed that you're cooking at those heats.  Can you tell me more about your dough?  I keep the front of my stone around 750ish and over the flame I get readings that are 100 degrees higher.  The upper stone is usually 50 degrees hotter than that.  I use a starter, around 68-70% hydration.  When I use temps that you're dealing with, I invariably burn the bottom of the pie.  Thanks for sharing the pics. 

[a pizza cu a Pumarola]

Thanks - my hydration is 60% using 100% Caputo Pizzeria and Ichia starter. I try to take 4 temp readings (front/back/side/side) and average them out. Once I get around the 900 mark I start to bake. I keep my flame all the way to the back for the most part during the baking (once the stone has reached full temp) and I noticed that if I use too much flour when opening up the dough ball I end up getting the bottom slightly burnt. The less flour on the bottom of the pizza or your peel the less chance of buring the bottom.
Hope this helps

[pizzablogger]

a pizza...for your picture files. those snaps look a little better with some more light to see those pies in their true glory! 

[Pete-zza]

Robert,

You have come a long way. Congratulations.

Peter

[a pizza cu a Pumarola]

Pizzablogger: adding some light really does do them justice, they now look much closer to the way they did when they came out of the oven………thanks for your help.


Pete-zza: thanks for the vote of confidence. I have plowed through many pizzas since we last spoke but in all honesty I owe a lot of my progress to Matthew. He really helped guide me along and I’ve bombarded him with a ton of questions, if it weren’t for him I would not be at this point.

[parallei]

Nice pies folks!  900 deg still freaks me out on my 2Stone.....

[toddster63]

Gorgeous pies, but what a frustrating thread... 2stone makes a few models—ranging from $300 griil to the $5K Commercial unit...

You really have to go back and make a point to remember which model each member is using; it would be a delight if the various 2stone users could make a note on their posts stating which model they are using, particularly on the posts with pics...!

[parallei]

toddster63,

Mine (look for the Airedale avatar) is a 2Stone Pizza Pro.  I'm at this thread thinking about firing it this weekend up for the first time this spring.....

[RobynB]

That's an AIREDALE.     Parellei, I have looked at your avatar a zillion times, vaguely wondering what it was.  I kind of thought it was some obscure art thing involving an animal head...  NOW I see it 

[parallei]

I kind of thought it was some obscure art thing involving an animal head...  

He is saying "Do I smell pizza?"

He loved pizza, but I'm afraid he didn't like cats!

[Bigfoot21075]

I have to say, all these 2 Stone Pies look AMAZING! I can see where simply having to light the burner would lead to more pizzas than having to light a fire each time.

[ringkingpin]

Gorgeous pies, but what a frustrating thread... 2stone makes a few models—ranging from $300 griil to the $5K Commercial unit...

You really have to go back and make a point to remember which model each member is using; it would be a delight if the various 2stone users could make a note on their posts stating which model they are using, particularly on the posts with pics...!

Hey Toddster, I hear ya.  I'm pretty sure that the three different models, the Commercial, the Inferno and the pro all work identically.  I think the commercial might have a slightly larger stone but I'm not totally sure.  I can see in the pics that the PRO and the INFERNO are basically the same thing but the pro you can wheel around, i.e. push it in and out of the garage. 

I have an Inferno and I really like it.  I'd be willing to bet most of these pies were done on Inferno's.

RKP

[ringkingpin]

I have to say, all these 2 Stone Pies look AMAZING! I can see where simply having to light the burner would lead to more pizzas than having to light a fire each time.

Bigfoot, I love my 2stone!  I'm a pretty handy guy and enjoy "projects."  For years and years I dreamed about making a wood fired oven.  I'm interested in all sorts of food and I'm also a PYRO lol so I thought a WFO would be awesome.  So one day, I hopped online and started looking for a WFO.  I figured I might make one, might buy one, might have a mason make one or whatever, I was just out there exploring.  Then I stumbled across the TwoStone Site: http://www.2stonepg.com/  and read the owners story.  I'm pretty sure he grew up in Ethiopia which was an Italian colony so he grew up eating and making VPN style pizza.  I was just trying to find the article because it was pretty funny and it was the impetus for me to call him up and inquire about the 2stone.  The gist of it was:

"My Dad came over from Norway and we decided to make some pizzas.  I fired up my WFO, took a couple of hours to get it up to temp and then made three pizzas for my father and myself which cooked in 90 seconds each.  My Dad looked at me and said, wasn't that a lot of work for three pizzas?"

That is when he started developing the 2stone oven and after reading that, it really started to get the wheels in my head turning.  So the next thing I thought was back to my BBQ world, well, doesn't the wood impart a certain flavor on the pizza?  I think at these temps, the wood or propane is simply a FUEL and imparts no flavor at all in the pizza, look at the smoke stack of a WFO, you won't see any smoke, it's burning totally clean.  Anyhew, that's how and why I wound up getting a TwoStone and I've been very, very pleased with it.  It took me a while to get my dough dialed in but I finally did.  I've been told or read (maybe here) that you need to make at least 3,000 pizzas to really have things dialed in.  Well, I'm working diligently to hit that 3,000 mark, lol.  In a year and a half, I've gone through 10, 55lb bags of Caputo 00 flour.  That's a lot of PIZZAS!
FYI, the oven in stainless and I've used and abused mine and I've had ZERO problems.  No broken stones, no bad burners, nothing.  To boot, I leave it outside on my patio in NW Indiana year round, uncovered, exposed to the elements and it doesn't look any worse for the wear.  It's built very, very well (and I'm in metal fabrication) and I imagine it will last my lifetime.