some thoughts about the videos:
1. in the first vid the sandwich bread he is making is definitely from a pizza dough ball, he simply cuts it in half and reshapes it. interesting to note is the oven spring of the "sandwich" bread despite the fact that he's spends a great deal of time flattening it prior to sliding into the oven. it's been my experience that the same holds true for pizza skins - you really don't have to worry about being careful with them, handling them gently, for fear they will not rise well when they hit the oven. properly risen dough balls will spring when they hit high heat whether they are handled gently or not.
2. when these rolls rise in the oven, as can be seen in the first vid (far left roll), they form a huge void in the middle which makes for an excellent sandwich bread - the crust is very thin, light and crispy, almost pita-style and is surprisingly very different than a pizza skin/crust (especially given that's what was started with) although the flavor remains.
3. in the scene where he is cutting the rolls, they have obviously been set aside to cool for some time - they are just too hot to handle when first removed from the oven and even maintain their high heat for quite a while given the amount of hot steam/air in the pocket. btw it appears that he didn't add olive oil to the rolls prior to baking - using a small amount of oil gives the rolls quite a different look, a more appealing look/color for sandwiches imo.
4. consistent, pronounced leoparding has often been discussed on the board and is something i struggle with daily. a hot oven with a roaring flame is often key but there's obviously much more to it than that - in the second video the oven has the type of flame you would like to see yet his pizzas aren't achieving the type of leoparding one might expect (or hope for) imo.
5. so many fantastic videos out there in cyberspace of neapolitan pizzas being cooked in a wood fire ovens but so few, so very few, shots of the bottom of the pizzas when done. imho lots can be gleaned from looking at shots of a finished pizza but even more can be gleaned by looking at the bottom.
btw i joined the forum towards the end of 2007 and mentioned at the time that i intended to change my cafe's concept to that of neapolitan wood fire pizza. i suggested that it might be a fun/educational forum exercise if i photo-documented the entire process, posted the progress, and during the training phase worked with the publicly discussed recipes forum members had been experimenting with at the time. well that idea went over like a lead balloon!
anyway i'm happy to report that we stayed on course, more importantly on schedule, and completed the changeover at the start of 2008. now, 16 months later, we are still going strong, have had some nice things written about us, and it has been a great deal of fun. so many folks were tremendously helpful but no one was more helpful that the forum's own bill/sfnm. what can you say about bill? i could easily fill a book singing his praises. just an absolutely great person who is, as everyone here already knows, just a tremendous asset to this great forum!
btw i learned something rather interesting during this process: very few (if any) chefs have secrets. i spoke to several very well known owners/operators of highly successful neapolitan pizza operations in the u.s., several of the guys that are discussed here frequently, and each and everyone i spoke with was unbelievably helpful and tremendously generous with their time - every single one. and it finally occurred to me - tiger woods could spend the day explaining how he hits his one wood and, guess what, you're not going to be able to hit your one wood a thing like tiger the following day! the same holds true for these great culinarians - they could spend the day explaining how they achieve their great pizzas and, guess what, you're not going to be able to start turning out anything like their great neapolitans pizzas the following day! the bottom line, something we all know all to well, is there's simply zero substitute for practice, practice, practice. now, tens of thousands of pizzas later, the practicing continues at my cafe - each and every day.
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