First Test Kitchen Pies

[shack]

I just baked the first Neapolitan style pies in my test kitchen getting ready for the real deal when the Forno Bravo wood oven arrives in April and we open the pizzeria.  Many thanks to all on this board, esp Pete-zza, Bill SFNM and Tom Lehmann for helping me get my hands around this.

Bottom line up front, we cooked two 12in pies from 250gm doughballs.  Flour is 50/50 Caputo 00 and unbleached KABF.  Filtered water, sea salt, and Calmaldoli preferment for leavening are the only other ingredients.  Dough formulation is 63% hydration, 2% salt (which I am increasing to 2.4% next time), preferment 10% of dough weight @ 46% water in the preferment.

I used San Marzano DOP (medium can) hand-chopped with potato masher rather than immersion blender which can crush seeds and make sauce bitter.  I added two cloves of roasted garlic and a pinch of sea salt and black pepper to the tomatoes.  The sauce was superb.  Only thing I need to do is strain the tomatoes a bit more as the home oven is not hot enough to evaporate all the juice.  It will be perfect in the restaurant oven at 800-900 degrees.

Toppings on Pie 1 were fresh mozzarella, fresh baby portabellas, black truffle oil, one olive, and basil added for last 1 minute of bake.

Pie 2 was the same with the exception of four slices of lean pepperoni to differentiate them and the fact that I did not put the basil on until after baking which - as Bill SFNM advocates - is definitely the way to go.  Even in the home oven that basil will burn in a heartbeat and the residual pizza heat is plenty to sweat the oils/flavor out of the basil (and discolor it).

Now - as we all know - the oven is key.  I am running a Wolf on 550 convection with a two inch thick stone on the top rack.  With the IR thermometer I measured a stone/deck temp of 605 degrees which is the best I'm going to be able to do in a residential oven without resorting to Clean cycle craziness. 

Pie 1 was a 4 minute bake; pie 2 5 mins and was really nice and crisp but with a soft crumb.  What suffered at the lower temp was not getting a nice open crumb and high cornicione, but I'm sure that will come with higher temps...

I am pumped with the results and only know they will get better when I return from VPN Americas training next month.

And the best part is my wife thought me a great cook but said I would never be a baker, because it's "chemistry."

Many thanks to all -- the journey begins...

db

[shack]

Upskirt

[shack]

Pie 1

[shack]

Pie 2

[Amir]

Great looking Pie and nice write-up!  We are waiting for our woodfired oven also and will need to try your recipe.  Until then, our oven won't get as hot as yours so we are stuck with 8-9 minutes .  And the dough sure suffers from it....

[aeneas1]

I just baked the first Neapolitan style pies in my test kitchen getting ready for the real deal when the Forno Bravo wood oven arrives in April and we open the pizzeria.

last i checked forno bravo's "commercial" ovens were not nsf, etl or ul listed and approved for commercial use - this could be an expensive problem if your health department and/or insurance carrier ever has a need to take a close look at your oven. i know that forno bravo once had plans to go through the very expensive and lengthy process of procuring these certifications, so that they could offer their ovens commercially, but i wasn't aware that they finally did. just something to consider carefully...

for the record, the folks at forno bravo are probably the nicest group of people you would ever want to deal with - and their forum found at their website is an incredible resource for those with wood fire ovens or for those wanting to build a wood fire oven. great tips, great recipes, great information for wood fire oven owners.

[kiwipete]

for the record, the folks at forno bravo are probably the nicest group of people you would ever want to deal with - and their forum found at their website is an incredible resource for those with wood fire ovens or for those wanting to build a wood fire oven. great tips, great recipes, great information for wood fire oven owners.

I will wholeheartedly second that..

[Amir]

for the record, the folks at forno bravo are probably the nicest group of people you would ever want to deal with - and their forum found at their website is an incredible resource for those with wood fire ovens or for those wanting to build a wood fire oven. great tips, great recipes, great information for wood fire oven owners.

Their web site is great to be sure.  As is the forum.  However, they were the only people who never answered my email.  All other companies were not only prompt, but a number invited me to see the oven in operation and in two cases, we got to be part of the cooking process.  That made a world of difference. You can read the forums all you can, but tasting the pizza gives you data you just can't get any other way....

[aeneas1]

Their web site is great to be sure.  As is the forum.  However, they were the only people who never answered my email.  All other companies were not only prompt, but a number invited me to see the oven in operation and in two cases, we got to be part of the cooking process.  That made a world of difference. You can read the forums all you can, but tasting the pizza gives you data you just can't get any other way....

we certainly had different experiences dealing with forno bravo - when i first began looking at ovens, testing the waters as it were, i contacted quite a few distributors including forno bravo. knowing that i was in the "gathering information" stage and far from making a decision or committing to an oven, forno bravo recommended that i viist their location (an hour away). when i informed them that it was impossible for me to get away any time soon, they asked if i might be open to them coming to my place to get an idea of what i had in mind. i said of course and peter (i believe that was his name) of forno bravo showed up the next day with his young son in tow. he arrived with pamphlets and a tape measurer and spent two hours with me discussing which sort of oven would probably best meet my needs, measured and identified the best locations to install the oven, discussed installation options including finish possibilities and spent quite a deal of time talking to me about what i could expect operating such a oven. i was thoroughly impressed with his knowledge and willingness to help meet my needs. just a great guy, great young son. i eventually ended up going in a different direction with my choice of oven, in part because of what i mentioned above, but it had nothing to do with fb's customer service - far from it.

[Anis]

Only thing I need to do is strain the tomatoes a bit more as the home oven is not hot enough to evaporate all the juice.  It will be perfect in the restaurant oven at 800-900 degrees.

shack, I think it's the other way around.  A really hot WFO would not dry your sauce.  That's why they put so little sauce.  Your home oven would do a much better job of evaporating your sauce. 

I prefer WFO so goodluck with the restaurant!!!

[Finnegans Wake]

How do you keep commercial quantities of Camaldoli going?

[kiwipete]

I think its a lot harder to keep a starter going (whether its Camaldoli or any other wild yeast) in a "home" environment than in a commercial environment:

In most "home" settings people cook pizza in the weekend (in any case not every day) so you have to devise ways of keeping the starter going in between times (in the fridge / reviving etc). Maybe with the exception of Bill who uses it so often, he just keeps on the bench etc. 

Also keep in mind that for a fermentation period of 24 hours or so you only need about 2% of starter or less (as a % of dough weight)

So if you were going to cook 500 pizzas in a day, you'd need about 2-3 kg of starter. That fits easily in a 10ltr bucket....
Refresh it once a day.. piece of cake.

BTW: for 500 pizzas you also need about 50 ltrs of waters, 82kgs of flour and about 2kgs of salt.. and really big mixer....

Which leads me to this question: In Da Michele they probably do between 1000 and 1500 pizzas a day. How much dough can they do in their mixer?? 

[Pete-zza]

Which leads me to this question: In Da Michele they probably do between 1000 and 1500 pizzas a day. How much dough can they do in their mixer?? 

kiwipete,

See http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,1660.msg15289.html#msg15289 (Reply 6).

Peter

[kiwipete]

kiwipete,

See http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,1660.msg15289.html#msg15289 (Reply 6).

Peter

Jeez, Peter.. you continue to amaze with your encyclopaedic knowledge of the gems of information that is hidden in this forum as well as your willingnes to show people where they can be found. I salute you, Sir..

[Pete-zza]

kiwipete,

Having read Marco's posts several times, I recalled his having talked about the amount of dough made at DaMichele. From there, to find the post where he discussed that matter I just used the Advanced search feature using the keyword "Michele" (without the quotes) and Marco's name as the author. It was that easy.

Peter

[aeneas1]

1,000 - 1,500 pizzas a day boggles the mind, especially if the source is a single wood fire oven in a shop that appears to seat only 60 or so folks at a time; even when allowing for take out. and from the photos i've seen on the web, this seems to be da michele's setup.

assuming da michele's hours of operation, 10am-11pm, 1,500 pies would work out to 1 pie made per every 30 seconds the store was open for business. 30 seconds to shape the ball, dress it, cook it and plate it non-stop for 13 hours. further, based on an average check of $8.00 per person (4 euros per pie, 1.5 euros for soda = 5.5 euros = $8), we're looking at a shop that does $12,000 in sales per day, $72,000 in sales per week (closed sundays). annualized, that translates into $3.6 million in sales per year (being closed two weeks per year). now that's an operation!

speaking of fork mixers, here's a good looking one currently on ebay - price seems to be great, especially considering it's listd as "best offer"....

http://cgi.ebay.com/VMI-Dough-Mixer-Fork-Petrin-Bakery-Artisan-Bread_W0QQitemZ230217495621QQihZ013QQcategoryZ57091QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

also, the website "flickr" is a tremendous source for photos of neapolitan pizzas and neapolitan pizza operations. i found this photo taken at da michele's very interesting for two reasons - a) the bottom of the pizzas appear to be very "done" and b) the comments regarding the pizzas crusts left turned upside down on the plates was interesting - apparently this is a symbol for an unsatisfactory meal. is this true marco?

[Pete-zza]

1,000 - 1,500 pizzas a day boggles the mind

aeneas1,

On a couple of occasions, Marco mentioned a typical dough ball weight of 250 g. (see, for example, Reply 20 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,861.msg8907.html#msg8907). At 290 kilograms dough weight, that would come to 1160 dough balls (no doubt, there are some losses as in any pizza operation). That still translates into a lot of pizzas. It's also possible that the numbers have changed over the past few years.

Peter