This thread is an offshoot of one in the Class A motorhome section called
"What Grill to go with?"
Where to start???
Obviously you need a heat source, a very hot heat source. The cooking surface temperature recommendation is between 550ºF and 800ºF. I recommend doing it out of doors because the cornmeal, more on that later, makes a pretty acrid smoke indoors. A pizza stone is important and if your oven top is far from the bottom stone possibly a second pizza stone or steel to reflect heat back to the pizza’s top surface may be necessary. I use a
Pfaltzgraff 13" stone I purchased decades ago. It fits like a glove inside my Davey Crockett Green Mountain Grill. Thirdly, you will need a Pizza Peel. I purchased a
folding one by Cuisinart to make stowing easier. Lastly, you need coarse corn meal in addition to the pizza dough ingredients. I have gone all in and purchased the
real Italian pizza flour. I have also used bread flour with equal success.
I have been making
no knead bread for quite a long time because it was the only way I could come up with to make bread in the limited space of my former Class B motorhome. It made sense to go with no knead Pizza dough since it makes the process simple and especially delicious.
Baking Steel just happened to have a great recipe. No knead bread dough is so forgiving don’t get real excited about anything other than the ingredients and their weights. You can keep the dough in the refrigerator for up to five days. It continues to become more sour in flavor.
Before beginning to pound your dough out I recommend you get all your ingredients laid out. I mean chopped and measured out so there is no guess work as you will need to work quick.
Everything I know about shaping pizza dough besides what I have learned from experience came from
this video. What I will add is to pound the daylights out of your dough. Also I can’t stress enough if you want a round pizza keep forcing it to be round and especially to start with a round lump of dough. I would continue pounding your dough until it nearly the size you want before picking it up to stretch it. I don’t toss, although I have, but simply pick the dough up to find and stretch out unusually thick spots. This stretching seems to really cause the dough to understand you are its master. I put it down on the floured board one final time for inspection and shaping before putting it on a pizza peel heavily covered with coarse cornmeal . You don’t need to completely cover the peel with cornmeal mostly you will still see the peel.
Now it is time to dress the pizza with your favorite ingredients. You have all the ingredients laid out on the table in advance, right?
At this stage you are working against the clock. You have somewhere between 3 and 5 minutes before the dough starts sticking to the peel. Many well directed hands makes quick work and adds to the fun and excitement. If you dally too long the pizza will stick to the peel and you are in trouble. As you work occasionally shake the pizza side to side to keep the pizza from sticking. Begin with the pizza sauce, we love
Classico Traditional Pizza sauce that comes in one pint mason jars. Spread it fairly thin because if you use too much you will see moisture on the board when you cut the pizza. Too much moisture leads to non-crispy crust. We use 5 ounces of Mozzarella cheese, finely chopped sweet onion, sliced black olives and a covering of pepperoni. We lay the pepperoni out on a dinner plate to facilitate quick and even placement. Obviously use what ever ingredients you enjoy.
Now head to the oven and slide the pizza off with a quick but gentle jerk. We expect our heavily loaded pizzas to cook in about seven minutes with a beginning surface temp of 650ºF. If there were less ingredients like Pizza Neapolitana it would cook in much less time.
We divide the Baking steel recipe in half and this produces two 11” pies. We split one and have a salad on the side. We each could easily eat a whole one but also enjoy having it for a second dinner. I reheat in my preheated Green Mountain Grill set at 400ºF for around 10 minutes. Reheated in this manner it tastes almost as good and surprisingly almost better the second night. Maybe it just is easier to savor the flavor without the excitement.
Bon Appetiti! But watch out, the mozzarella is really, really hot. I mean hotter than anything I have ever bitten into.
While I was finalizing this post I heard a vehicle drive up, it's nearly 8PM, it was the USPS delivering my latest piece of pizza gear, a
pizza stone cleaning brush. It will help to sweep off the pizza stone between pies. A lot of the cornmeal actually ends up falling off.
Please feel free to chime in with corrections, omissions or your favorite recipes and techniques.
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