My wife loves Sally’s Baking Addiction and uses it all the time. She told me once she never got a bad recipe from there 
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May 1st is Labor Day here and so we are having a long week-end. “Traditionally” one would go on a Maiwanderung (May Hike) not too far with lots of beer either during or at the end of the hike. We decided to invite some friends over for a very short hike onto our terrace for a pizza party.
This was our first truly big outing for the Ooni oven we acquired last year.
Previous attempts had seen quite a few burned crusts and so I consulted with @Captbnut and some youtube videos how to improve the quota of edible pizza. We did a trial run of new technique and new recipe last Monday and we got zero leftovers yesterday. Well not quite, we only made 14 pizzas not the full 16 dough balls I had prepared.
I found this recipe in this video from the local TV Station. This is pizza dough made from 2kg of “00” Italian pizza flour. I had to make it in two batches. Otherwise it would be too difficult to handle. Here’s the amount for 1 batch
- 1kg flour
- 650ml water
- 5g fresh yeast (or 2.5g dried)
- 32g salt
- some olive oil.
Knead the flour, the yeast and most of the water (500ml) in the machine until it comes together. Add salt and some more water, keep the machine running, slowly add the rest of the water and keep it in the machine until it sticks to the hook instead of the bowl.
Now comes the fun part. As shown in the video I put on some (leftover pandemic) plastic gloves to help and it was a revelation how much easier things got with them. Take the dough onto a flat surface and rub both dough and surface with some olive oil and “fold” it for 5-10 minutes until it becomes stretchy. When the dough has absorbed the olive oil re-apply.
Once you think you folded enough transfer the dough into a container with a lid that you then either let sit at room temperature if it is for use on the same day or put in the fridge for up to 24 hours. 2-3 hours before you want to make the pizza take the dough from wherever it is and divide into pizza sized portions. The size of the portion depends on the oven. Ours wants 200-220g which makes ~8 portions from a batch. Bigger ovens will have 270g portions. Use scales to weigh the dough.
Roll each portion into a nice ball–I used a tiny bit of flour to assist at this point but I tried to avoid it as much as possible to keep the 65% hydration.
I have a special container for letting the portions rest until use, it stacks up and has a loose lid on it. One layer can be seen with the dough above. Luckily this fit our fridge for the over night usage. On Monday we used the dough on the same day and it was also very good.
Yesterday, my timing was off by 2 hours because we ate later than anticipated so my dough was out of the fridge far longer and it became quite sticky and difficult to handle but still managable. The resulting pizza was very good.
The sauce recipe was taken from the pizza bible but obviously it is only loosely related at this point. I made 2 batches of this which was just the right amount (a bit is left over now) for the dough above. 1 batch:
- 1 can (400g) of tomatoes “stückig” (already diced)
- 1 half container (140g?) of concentrated tomato paste (Tomatenmark)
- some salt
- some oregano
- some olive oil
- 3 fresh tomatoes (not San Marzano but similar looking), removed the kernels and then diced into small pieces)
Puree everything but the fresh tomatoes then add those, keep at room temperature until used if made the same day. Over night it should be in the fridge but take it out on time to get it back to room temperature before use.
Toppings:
- Pecorino Romana
- Mozzarella (bought shredded, because for the amount of pizza we made everything else would be too stressful to handle)
- For the meat eaters: Salami from Tuscany with some spicyness
- For the veggies: red peppers (Spitzpaprika have less water content) and some champignons
- Some basil on top for everyone
Here’s the prep station for the pizzas:
I forgot to take more pictures of the pizza we made yesterday but here’s one from our trial run on Monday:
We made a total of 14 pizzas yesterday only one of which we ended up having to make into Calzone because we messed up the dough before transport to the oven.
Except for the Calzone nothing got burned.
We had 2 leftover portions of dough because even with 12 hungry mouths to feed we had some leftovers from the 14 pizzas for #13 who turned up later. Of course we had cake, snacks and dessert that our friends brought 
Good times.
PS: my non-alcoholic aperitif (migraine meds and alcohol don’t mesh well) was Sanbitter, Angostura, Orange Slice and some good non-alcoholic sparkling wine (we finally found a type I like)
PPS: I totally forgot to mention what helped us avoid burned crusts! It was two things really:
- we used the gas unit to power the oven because it gives more consistent heat and is easier to handle than the wood for large amounts of pizzas (my partner added a bit of wood in a metal container for some smoky flavor)
- instead of trying to turn the pizza with the fancy Ooni tool for turning we did what most of the videos I saw did and pulled the pizza out of the oven, turned with hand and put it back in. Do this twice with 30 second bake time in between for a total of 90-120 seconds of bake time and voilà no burned crusts!
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I had some overripe bananas and a weekend of long walks coming up, so it was time for chocolate banana bread.
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