3/8" 6061 aluminum

[deb415611]

those are looking great marc, looking forward to watching your progress with them

[norma427]

Marc,

I also find your experiments with an aluminum plate interesting.  Nice job and will watch what you post about in the future.

Norma

[scott123]

scott - do you think this might be true with 1/2" steel also ?  I have done my first pies on steel and need to find time to write up and post them

Deb, 1/2" steel should have enough thermal mass for a pretty large number of successive pies.  I know Jeff (Shuboyje)  did 12 pies in 1 hour on his 1/2" plate:

http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,17147.msg169027.html#msg169027

[scott123]

Marc, after taking another look at your setup, I noticed what appears to be a convection fan on the back wall.  Are you using convection for the pre-heat?  If not, that should shrink your time considerably.

Also, and this gets a bit subjective, but I have found that I slightly prefer the more even top browning that I've been able to get from bake+convection as opposed to the more contrasty top that I get from broiling. I've been playing around with cycling the broiler on and off so that it never glows bright red and provides more even top heat, but it's too early to see if this method is viable.  Bake+convection for top browning has one catch, though.  If you pre-heat the plate too high and decrease the bottom bake time too far, it most likely won't be able to keep up with the top browning.  It really depends on the power of the bake element/burner, but I think 5 minutes is pretty safe.  The other really nice thing about bake+convection is that, once you get everything dialed in, you can pretty much ignore the pizza during the bake (maybe one turn), unlike standing there and repeatedly turning the broiler on and off.

[deb415611]

Deb, 1/2" steel should have enough thermal mass for a pretty large number of successive pies.  I know Jeff (Shuboyje)  did 12 pies in 1 hour on his 1/2" plate:

http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,17147.msg169027.html#msg169027

thanks Scott,  I figured as much but wasn't sure.  I missed that thread , thanks for bringing it up for me. 

sorry for the OT marc

[Seven]

Some ovens have a broiler convection setting, sometimes called convection roast. Wonder if I should buy a steel or aluminum sheet and see what effect it has...

[scott123]

Some ovens have a broiler convection setting, sometimes called convection roast. Wonder if I should buy a steel or aluminum sheet and see what effect it has...

John, broiler convection may be good for roasting meats, but, for our needs, I don't think it's all that useful.  Broilers pump out IR radiation and IR is line of sight/unaffected by air flow. The heat rising from the bake element is far more convective in nature- when you circulate that with a fan, that's when the party begins.

[widespreadpizza]

Scott,  good call,  it is a convection oven,  I have had some good results using the oven for pizza in convection mode,  very good in fact,  but have not used it in combination with the plate.  I will and will report back.  Will be a couple weeks.  Thanks for the heads up.  -marc

[widespreadpizza]

Couple more tweaks.  60% hydration/1%sugar/3%oil/.5ADY/rex royal,  1.5 day cold ferment.  Preheated to 550 with convection.  launched @ 575.  first pie,  4 minutes with a late touch of broil,  actually hat to slide a screen under this to stop the bottom from burning,  had good coloration at 2 minutes.  Second pie started broiler at launch,  and was out of the oven @ 3 minutes.  Pretty nice outer crisp yet soft moist center.  Good stuff.  Just figured I would report back.

[scott123]

Looking good, Marc. The undercrust is just a tiny bit too much color for me, but that's totally subjective.  What are your feelings on the extra oil?  It looks like it might have helped a bit with the rim coloration, but I can't tell much of a difference with the undercrust.

[widespreadpizza]

Scott,  I agree on the top browning,  the bottom is still a little more mottled than I am looking for.  It is cerainly taking on color quicker with the additional oil.  I am getting really nice spring out of this plate,  but at the expense of the dough slightly sticking,  almost like searing at the beginning of the bake.  I do like what the oil does especially for next day cold eating,  but at the end of the day,  I may have to dial back the temps to get what I am looking for out of my NY style,  meaning some wore crisp,  and a bit dryer of an interior.  I feel like maybe an unmalted flour test is in order.  No sugar, no malt maybe just a bit of oil.  might get me back out to 4 minutes or so with a little more crisp.  -Marc

[scott123]

Marc, I don't think you notice this as much in a WFO, but anywhere a dough burns, it will liquefy and stick like crazy. I notice you have a couple tiny spots where the dough burned.

Your 500 deg. 7 minute bake from the previous page looked very crispy and fairly evenly browned, while this was contrast-y and finished in 2-3 minutes on the bottom on 550.  You could obviously try an unmalted flour (I wouldn't go 100% unmalted, though), but 525 might be that happy medium with this malted formula.  With my own soapstone hearth, 550 gives me a 2.5 minute bake with a little too much contrast, while 525 is just right.

I would also add that, from a crispy perspective, the 500 deg. 7 minute pie was 55% hydration.  If you want some of that crispiness with a shorter bake time, it might be worth while playing around with less water. We're getting into a very subjective area here, but if I were working with your flour and your plate, I'd probably go 58% hydration and a 525 pre-heat with the 1% sugar and 3% oil that you're using now.