pie pics

[brian0j0]

after many hours of studying and admiring others work, i decided to share my efforts.  here are some shots from last night. i'll post the details later.  long story short they were great.

[brian0j0]

here is another

[brian0j0]

my dough is a standard lehman with 63% hydration and minimal yeast.  i have a starter but didn't use it for these pizzas.  i'm still learning to use my oven as i've never really cooked with a live fire.  i'll try to post a pic of the oven later, but it's modeled after rado's ovens on traditionaloven.com.  it's not 100% complete, but it's functional now.  it still needs a chimney and a roof, but we couldn't resist firing it up.  it didn't get as hot as i wanted, my firewood suffered as a result of all the rain/snow in the fort worth area this past week.  my guess is around 650-700 degrees.

i used simple KA unbleached flour and need to try others.  am looking for slightly more puff, so i'm wondering if next time is should increase the temp AND the yeast? or just try firing it to 900+ to see if i get the spring i'm looking for.

any thoughts/suggestions are welcome. 

[addicted]

That looks like a good start to me. What kind of wood are you using? Do you have a whole pic of your oven?

[brian0j0]

this wood happens to be oak.  we have a lot of oak and pecan around these parts, so that's predominantly what is used in the oven.  i've got a shot of the oven, but the size is too big to upload here.  i'll post a pic when i complete the exterior.  again, i'm looking for a little more puff in the crust.  i think a hotter chamber will help with it.

[cd1168]

very nice..

[brian0j0]

btw the first pie was topped by a friend, is sliced chicken and pesto.  i liked it more than i thought.  the second is roasted garlic and shallot.  this turned out to be the gem of the bunch.  the garlic was very mild and worked great with the sauce, which isn't much more than crushed tomatoes and oregano (modeled after jeff v.)

[brian0j0]

thanks, always nice to get compliments.  i do like to cook, one of the reasons i built the oven was to bake better bread, and have an oven large enough with retained heat to cook all my meals for the week all at once.  it saved a lot of time during the week to do all the prep and cooking on one day and reheat the leftovers.

but firing the oven to that extent gives me a great excuse to bake some pizzas while the fire is furiously hot.  i'm still looking for tips on getting a little more puff in the crust without using more yeast if i can help it.  can anyone help me out?  would a longer rise time after the initial cold rise help?

[Pete-zza]

brian0j0,

Recently I referred another member to a post by Tom Lehmann at the PMQ Think Tank forum directed to ways of getting a more open and airy crust: http://thinktank.pmq.com/viewtopic.php?p=776&sid=bba27149cf47c90a84d10d421857c573#776.

If you don't find the answer in the above post, you might post your complete dough formulation and the steps you used to make and manage the dough.

Peter

[scott r]

I seriously doubt using more yeast will get you any more puff.  It really doesn't seem to work that way unless you are using something crazy small already like .1%