Mike, pies look great!
Couple of things I've discovered that might be helpful to others on this thread, regarding the Bosch Universal Plus Mixer and the WPO-500 oven...
When making dough:
Add 100% of the water to the bosch bowl.
Add the yeast (I use IDY) and mix with dough hook for 1 minute
Add 1/2 the flour slowly over a couple of minutes little by little on speed 1
Shut mixer. Cover and let rest for 20 minutes
Turn mixer on speed 1 and add SALT by distributing all around the dough
Add remaining 1/2 of the flour over a 5 minute period... Again, little by little.
Mix an additional 7 minutes and turn machine off
Cover and let sit for 15 minutes.
Remove dough... cut... ball... into lightly oiled (few drops) glad plastic bowls
Place dough in fridge but don't cover completely. Slide the cover off the top of the bowl about 1/2" or so.
After about an hour, cover tightly.
Let sit minimum 24hrs. Preferably 3 days!
Next. My NY style works perfectly at 550F. You need to play with the bottom heating element. I find that after the oven has been on a while and is level at 550F, Shutting the bottom element for 1.5 - 2 minutes out of a total of around 6 minutes works pretty good.
That said, this is NOT an exact science. You WILL develop a feel through osmosis
I set the timer for 3 minutes, shut the bottom element after 1 minute. When the bell goes off I turn the bottom element back on then rotate the pie 180 and cook another 3 minutes during which I play with rotation to brown evenly.
You'll get the feel for when to raise the temp (for recovery) if making multiple pies.
I should note... I use the 2" California pizza stone (remove the one that comes with the wpo). The thing ROCKS!
So far I've put about 40 or 50 pizzas through that thing.
One other thing I've noticed. It's COLD even here in California. Room temp around 69. If the dough is used at that temp, I get bubbles everywhere. If however I use the oven light technique and warm the dough, it's perfect. I'm sure this will all depend on lots of other variables so your results may vary. Just a FWIW.
Happy New Year everyone!
