Author Topic: Up and Running w/Blodgett 1048 (Read 3051 times)

Pizza De Puta · « **on:** August 12, 2012, 01:59:54 AM »

After three weeks of repairs on my newly acquired (but old and ridden hard) Blodgett 1048, I am finally up and running!

The beast sports all new parts under the control panel, a new hood, and a few internal parts, too. The oven is hooked-up to propane on my covered patio and the learning process has officially begun. My goal is to develop a marketable pizza using this oven.

The oven is still missing a left flue plate which is essentially a 6" tall fence that sits on the deck stones and runs front to back. I have one on order and it will arrive next week. I ran the 1060 for five hours today and cooked five pies. My IR gun recorded stone temps (right side) of about 600 degrees with the thermostat maxed at 650. The left side could only manage about 560 so the flue plate should help some.

Cooking time was down to 7 minutes on this pie, the last one I made. These were my first attempts at 18-inchers as I've only made a handful of 12-inchers in the past. My first two stuck to the peel and the ingredients arrived in the oven a half-second ahead of the dough!

This one below, however, launched successfully and landed intact. It's a little on the small side and I used-up the toppings I had left, but I gave it away to some hungry neighbors and they seemed happy to get it! These folks said they'd rather have this than any made from the four chain stores in town. It's from the Lehman calculator and is 62% hydration, 1% sugar, salt, and oil, and .5% ADY. Cold fermentation time was only 20 hours which included a 2 warm up. I am already partial to 48 hours of proofing under normal circumstances, however.

Now I need to save for a mixer, this kneeding by hand is for the birds.

ThatsAmore · « **Reply #1 on:** August 12, 2012, 02:11:05 AM »

Pass me a slice and a cold one

scott123 · « **Reply #2 on:** August 12, 2012, 08:56:52 AM »

RE, that's great that you've been able to get the oven up and running.

I think the left flue plate will help, but, as I mentioned a while back, if you want ideal NY bake times from this oven, you're going to need to modify it. I've know you've already sunk a lot of time and money into this bad boy, but if you want the best return on your investment, I don't think you've got any choice but to line the ceiling with firebricks.

The flue plate might buy you a 6 minute bake, maybe, but the firebricks will take you down to 4 and 5. Firebricks + a 50 deg. thermostat mod will push you into the Marsal MB territory. Here's a video of what the Marsal MB gas oven can do:

http://www.history.com/shows/food-tech/videos/playlists/full-episodes#food-tech-pizza

The Marsal component is at the 36:45 point. The video sometimes has problems loading. If it does, keep clicking on the link to video on the bottom of the page. Unmodified, you should be able to bake the first pie Bruno makes. In your area, that pizza will be profitable. The second pie he makes in the MB, though- that's like printing money.

Next time, try and get an upskirt photo. Gas ovens can frequently be plagued with top bottom heat ratio issues. An upskirt will tell us where you stand in that regard.

The stretching and launching skills will come. It's just like getting to Carnegie Hall. Practice practice practice.

Any idea of the thickness factor on this?

Crider · « **Reply #3 on:** August 12, 2012, 01:18:49 PM »

Well done!

Mind telling me how long it takes to warm up?

I've got my eye on possibly getting an old Blodgett too. A pizza restaurant closed and now they've put the whole building up for sale. When it sells, maybe the new owners don't want a pizza joint?

Glutenboy · « **Reply #4 on:** August 12, 2012, 03:46:58 PM »

Pics of the oven please.

Pizza De Puta · « **Reply #5 on:** August 12, 2012, 08:50:31 PM »

Here's my new (old) baby. It's a bit of a beast and not much to look at but she's got new electronics, exhaust manifold, and a few interior parts. There should still be some life left!

I don't have a warm up time yet because I step Preheated over several hours just in case the deck stones had some moisture. The oven is in the back of the house out here in the country. The stucco covered ceiling is 12' tall and I monitored the temp of this ceiling constantly while cooking because I didn't know if the exhaust was going to be a problem. On the 105 degree day in which I was cooking, the ceiling only got to 112 so no problem here.

Pizza De Puta · « **Reply #6 on:** August 13, 2012, 03:35:40 PM »

I fired up my old but newly acquired Blodgett 1048 and continued today working on recipes and techniques.

Dough Used Smart and Final High Gluten
63% Hydration
2% Salt
2% Oil
1% Sugar
.5% ADY

Hand kneeded 12 minutes and proofed for 36 hours.

Oven took 80 minutes to reach a max temp of 600 degrees. I made a 4" wall of red bricks as a stand-in for the flue plate I have on order. Cooking time was 7 minutes with a half turn at 4 minutes. The pan in the pic is 18" and my pizza went oval as it left the peel, and it's hanging over the ends by about an inch and a half. This baby was HUGE! Toppings included fresh tomatoes, olives, mushrooms, red and green peppers, sausage, bay leaf and salami. Cheese blend of Cosco mozz (not my favorite), BelGioso fresh mozz, provolone, and white cheddar.

. . . getting closer . . .

Will get the technician over to mod the thermostat for a little more firepower. My biggest complaint on this pie was the center was just a little soggy because of all the high moisture toppings. More heat from the stones should solve the problem.

The rim of this crust was compared directly to a second pizza made today at 61%. The pictured pie is 63% and this crust rim was lighter and crunchier than the 61%.

Gosh I love being a scientist because you can't beat the perks!

wheelman · « **Reply #7 on:** August 13, 2012, 07:32:13 PM »

your oven is so cool.... i love the look. pizza looks good too!
bill

Andx0r · « **Reply #8 on:** August 13, 2012, 09:57:26 PM »

Cool! I wish I had my own pizzeria oven...

Did you have to change the orifices and/or make any changes to the gas valve to run it on propane? Or does Blodgett just make a propane version?

My experiences with the furnaces and boilers that I repair for a living is that propane is vicious to the metal surfaces it hits during combustion and precombustion compared to natural gas, so take good care of things in that oven!

Pizza De Puta · « **Reply #9 on:** August 14, 2012, 12:49:23 AM »

Propane conversion kits are available that are fairly inexpensive. My oven has been converted to propane but Blodgett also sells new ovens that are ready to go in either gas or propane. These ovens have been almost unchanged since 1961 and replacement oem parts are readily available. These units are very simply constructed and will last a lifetime if parts are replaced as needed.

Pizza De Puta · « **Reply #10 on:** August 15, 2012, 10:25:02 PM »

Made four more 18" pizzas today . . . practice, practice, practice . . . but probably took a step backward as the 48-hour dough over-fermented a little and was too extensible.

LH Flue plate arrived and was installed. Stone deck IRd at 625F and this resulted in a 6:30 bake time. As you can see, the crust was plenty brown and without an olive oil brushing. At this point the top bakes pretty evenly with the bottom. A thermostat mod should make the stones hotter.

What do you think? Another 50 degrees or so?

Pie shown has ham, linguica, red pepper, green pepper, olives, onions, fresh basil, fresh mozzarella, skim mozzarella, provolone, white cheddar . . . crunchy crust and had a nice, fresh taste. Mozz was rubbery though--need whole milk mozz.

Pizza De Puta · « **Reply #11 on:** August 18, 2012, 01:41:54 AM »

The tech came out this morning and did a minor thermostat modification. Where 625 in one spot in the back right of the oven was possible, now I have plenty of throttle for more. I pushed the stone deck temp up to 675 in several places and the bake time went just beneath 6:00 minutes. However, the bottoms are starting to burn before the top is done.

My only options are to back the temp off to 650 and live with about a 6:10 bake time. Or, build a "table" that will suspend fire brick from the oven ceiling . . . I'll have to think about this one.

kdefay · « **Reply #12 on:** August 18, 2012, 02:55:15 AM »

That's basically what I did in my gas oven. The photo below shows a stainless steel rack that I had made to suspend 1/2" thick cordierite tiles above to add more thermal mass. It made a huge difference in my top heat. When my deck is at about 675F, my top is well beyond that and I have no problem getting a 4 minute bake. I don't know what the top temp is because it was beyond the range of the IR thermometer I was using. You should also look at the state of the insulation in the top of your oven. When I opened up the top area of my oven, I was shocked to find that there was barely any insulation in there. I replaced it with industrial grade rockwool insulation and was able to boost my temp even more.

Kirk

scott123 · « **Reply #13 on:** August 18, 2012, 04:13:15 AM »

Kirk, nice job on the suspended ceiling. I remember talking about this with you a while back and was wondering how it went. I'm glad it's working out well.

RE, if the 1048 was going to be your production oven, then there would be no question what I'd say, but since it's just for testing, I wouldn't go crazy with the suspended ceiling.

When you go into production, you're most likely going to need to do some major tweaking to the recipe when you scale it up, so adjusting for a shorter bake at the same time shouldn't be the end of the world. Going from 6ish to 4 may not take many changes, if any.

In the mean time... you could crank the oven high and play around with some materials that will handicap the heat transfer on the bottom.

Screen
Cheap Walmart Stone
Quarry Tiles
Firebrick Splits

If you go with the splits, I'd increase the pre-heat time at least an hour.

The most important thing you can do right now is

zero in on a final flour choice (which I think you're doing)
stretch as many skins as you possible can (the thinner the better)
start building up as much data as you can regarding fermentation temps/times.

The last one is critical. You should have a book with temperatures of every ingredient and setting (and other data such as flour age and yeast age), with the time for each setting and the time it took for that specific formula to be ready. You can't have too much experience predicting yeast activity. You need to develop a same day, a 1 day, a 2 day and a 3 day dough, along with varying lengths of bulk. In addition, you want some practice with both room temps (at different temps) and cold ferments. You'll want to have data on a variety of formulas to see how modifications, such as more or less water, impact the fermentation time. You may not have every possible permutation in your book by the time you begin, but, you should have enough data to extrapolate a multitude of different scenarios.

For instance, let's say your flour shipment is late and you end up having to use it right off the truck and it's 10 degrees cooler outside than the temp you normally store flour. You need to be able to adjust your water temp or adjust your yeast quantity to hit the target time the dough needs to be ready. Or let's say your flour is really late, and instead of being able to do your normal 2 day ferment, the dough has to be ready the next day. You need to be able to be completely confident that the quantity of yeast you're adding will give you a dough that will be ready exactly when you need it. The more data you have collected, the easier it is to handled unexpected scenarios. The worst thing that can happen is that something happens that forces you to change your process in some way and the changed parameter is one that you've never experimented with before and you're flying blind.

Pizza De Puta · « **Reply #14 on:** August 18, 2012, 11:53:00 AM »

That's a neat set-up, Kirk, what brand and model oven do you have?

Pizza De Puta · « **Reply #15 on:** August 18, 2012, 12:12:32 PM »

Quote from: scott123 on August 18, 2012, 04:13:15 AM

The most important thing you can do right now is

zero in on a final flour choice (which I think you're doing)
stretch as many skins as you possible can (the thinner the better)
start building up as much data as you can regarding fermentation temps/times.

Good points, Scott. We are making excellent progress but the dough continues to be the biggest challenge, not surprisingly. Maria's sauce is da bomb. My blend of cheeses is solid. The Pendleton flour(s) are showing potential to take us where we need to go. And the oven, along with its relationship to the dough, is coming along.

The biggest obstacle I'm trying fix now is soggy centers. My crust has the consistency of thin, wet, droopy cardboard in the middle of the pie, especially with pizzas that have lots of toppings.

scott123 · « **Reply #16 on:** August 18, 2012, 01:52:32 PM »

RE, there's an old joke about a guy that goes to the doctor and tells him that it hurts when he moves his arm a certain way and the doctor tells him 'it's simple, don't move your arm that way.'

If lots of toppings are causing you problems, don't use lots of toppings.

The concept that lots of toppings enhance a pizza is a fraud perpetuated on the American public by the chains to hide their pitiful excuses for a crust. Don't buy into it.

Once you start piling on the toppings, in order for everything not to fall off when you pick up a slice, you've got to both increase the thickness factor and extend the bake time to attain a more rigid undercrust. Once you do that, it's crap.

Toppings- sparse and few. And if you're using high water content veggies, such as mushrooms, you might want to think about pre-cooking them.

kdefay · « **Reply #17 on:** August 18, 2012, 02:10:06 PM »

I've been reading more about pre-cooking the mushrooms lately. It's a reasonable thing to do in a home environment, but commercially, it's a difficult thing to think about.

When we started, we are more concerned with cost, and went with a mushroom that seemed to fit our price point. It turned out that this mushroom had a very high water content, and while it worked for us (at first glance), it was not usable the following day, so we had to throw away a lot of product every day. We changed to a domestically grown shitake mushroom that costs 2x the price to buy, but has a low water content. We ended up reducing out cost because we never had to throw away spoiled product. It also doesn't leech much water out onto the pizza, but cooks sufficiently in the short time that it's in the oven.

Not all mushrooms are leechers, but it's important to choose wisely so that you have a mushroom that gives you the desired result that you are looking for.

Kirk

Pizza De Puta · « **Reply #18 on:** August 22, 2012, 06:31:39 PM »

We had another test bake today and produced 4x 18" pizzas for our taste-testing guinea pig friends! All have survived . . . so far. The first two featured simple cheese pizzas in a blind test checking the reaction to beer in the dough mixture. Pizza #3 was a more traditional pepperoni, salami, mushroom pie which was well-liked. The first three pizzas only had a 24 hour cold ferment. These three pizzas used 50/50 Pendleton Power/Monkato flour at 64% hydration.

Pizza #4, shown in all the pics here was a bit of an odd-ball orphan but it was by far the most popular. It consisted of Pendleton Power, about 75%, and the remaining S&F flour I had in a jar, about 25%. Hydration was 65% and about tsp of IDY was used. This ball was about 6 days old. It overproofed and I knocked it down and reballed after 48 hours, it blew-up again and I reballed a second time at 96 hours, this was the third rise with the yeast gobbling-up what was left of a tsp of sugar originally. Bake time 5:00 ! It almost went into the garbage.

However, the crust was light, airy and the tasters were wild over the texture and flavor. Dubbed "Smokey and the Bandit", it featured thick sliced bacon cubed and added pre-fried on top of the sauce. Cheese followed with a blend of smoked mozz, aged mozz, fresh mozz, provolone, and sharp white cheddar. The pie was then garnished with ham and linguica, then topped with freshly picked and sliced beefsteak tomatoes. Even though it was the last pie produced today, it was literally inhaled. Tasters left stating:

"That's the best crust I've ever had!"
"You HAVE to put this on your menu!"
"When you open, I will order this pizza every time!"
"Whatever you did to this one, do it again and again!"
"I'd glady pay $30 for this pizza!"

And I almost threw this ball out . . . we may be on to something, here.

pythonic · « **Reply #19 on:** September 08, 2012, 02:59:18 PM »

Pizza de puta,

I would love to try one of these beer pizzas with long fermentations you seen to be having very good luck with. Do u have a formulation and baking details?

Nate