Beautiful pizza! I just baked three days ago but you make me feel like firing up the oven again! Argh, my wife and kids are gonna get tired of pizza soon.
Lessons learned:
1) I switched over to semolina flour for the opening of the dough. That worked better and was easy on the marble surface.
Me too. I happened upon a place in Nagoya(Japan) that sold me a couple of bags Caputo Semola just a month ago, and I love it for my work surface.
3) Trust the oven. I did not respread coals over the oven floor to reheat it this time. I just let the oven sit with the flame and coals on the side the whole time. This seemed to work just fine as I had no uneven cooking issues. I love my oven.
I too have recently learned this. I've only had my oven since November last year and I was even moving the fire from the left to the right when the floor appeared to be dropping in temperature. Now, instead of that, I fire up the oven about 3 1/2 hours before first bake instead of 2. That seems to be perfect for getting the masonry saturated with heat and the floor stays hot and gets hotter between pies.
4) I was having problems getting the formed pizza on the peel, so I ended up opening the dough, then placing it on the peel, then topping and loading.
Me too. So I put a bit of a wood edge that protrudes about a half-inch out, and a half-inch lower, from under the front of my marble counter top. This serves as a lip for me to rest my metal launching peel on. I place one of my outdoor tables behind me, just so, where the handle of the peel can be supported. Then I have both hands free to drag my topped pizza directly onto it. This saves me from the horror of my pie sticking to my peel from me letting it sit too long...which has happened to me!
