2/21/21 - My Ooni Karu 12 (12 inch) arrives from Dick's Sporting Goods Online. I had one on order from Ooni since early January, with an estimated arrival date of early April. I found this one online at Dicks on Tuesday, 2/16 and it arrived 5 days later!!! I could not be happier. Got myself a 12 inch peel. The peel is what you use to launch the pizza into the oven. Also grabbed a cover for it. Still waiting for my infrared thermometer, which measures surface temperature up to 1000 degrees Fahrenheit, which is important, because from my research, the optimal cooking temperature in this thing is between 900 and 950 degrees - cooking a pizza in 1-2 minutes. I also need to order myself a turning peel, which is what you use to turn the pizza inside the oven during cooking, since you can not leave it in one position the whole time, due to the fact that one side will get overcooked. Anyway, here I am with the unopened new equipment upon arrival.
Next, it's time to take it out. I took my time and took all the pieces out, one at a time. I actually took a video of it, but I think it was kinda boring, so I'm not doing anything with it. Anyway, it came with the main oven, which has 3 folding legs as a stand. There is a cover (door) to the front of the oven and a chimney which basically screws in with less than a 1/4 turn. There is a 2 piece basket for the wood or charcoal what is designed to hold the fuel at an angle, letting the embers fall through and not hinder the new wood from doing it's job. There is also a cover for the fuel area and a piece on the back of the oven that from what I understand sometimes needs to be installed, but it was attached on mine. Lastly was the stone which is pretty heavy and had to be slid into the oven.
Now it's time to cook, so let's fast forward to Tuesday night. I had hoped to try on Sunday and again on Monday, but the timing did not work out for me, so here we are on Tuesday night. Let me start by saying that I was very intimidated by all the people who make their own pizza talking about homemade dough and sauce and what flour to use and what tomatoes to use and how they do certain things. I am not ready for all that yet. First, I need to learn how to use the oven. There is a process to getting the right flame. I needed to find the right fuel (I was using wood for this first try, which I grabbed at Lowes. I used wood chunks and firestarter as seen below. But just getting the fire up, building the pizza, launching, turning, timing and removing the pizza was enough new material for me the first time around. We'll get to to the whole making dough and sauce thing eventually, but not yet.
I grabbed a pound of fresh Mozzarella and two different pizza sauces from ShopRite. I used the sauce on the left and saved the one on the right for next time. Now I have never actually used a cheese grater before. Even this was a learning experience for me. One thing I realized is that my cheese ended up a little too fine. Instead of longer strings, I was getting crumbles. I think it's because I was going up and down against the grates instead of just down. I realized this later and the very end of my cheese work was better. I'll know how to do this better next time.
Next, it's time to set up the oven. I did not really think about the surface I would set this up on. Turns out, after a million snow storms and considering the fact that I'm using my biggest and best outdoor folding table in the basement as my computer desk, I was not set up all that well. So I ended up using an old wooden picnic table in the backyard that we almost did not even keep! So I went out the kitchen to the deck, down the stairs and into the ice/snow. I shoveled off the table and popped the oven on top of it. This will do for now, until I get a better set up.
AND NOW . . . . . . to start the fire. From what I understand, it would be best to start with some lump charcoal on the bottom to help sustain some sort of heat source - not really sure how that works - need to read more about it. Don't even know the difference between lump charcoal and briquettes, but apparently, you should NOT use briquettes. But anyway, some people recommend the lump charcoal and then small wood chunks on top. The wood that is in here, I believe, should probably be sliced in half. I think they are a little too thick for what is recommended, but I did not have my thermometer to measure whether the temperature every got up as high as desired, so I don't know if it was a problem or not. Managing the fire was tricky for sure, especially having no idea how hot it was getting in there. But that wood would flare up some pretty serious fire pretty quickly but you sort of needed to add a new piece to it very often to keep the flame and heat up. I didn't realize how quickly the flame would go away once the wood was dead. Anyway, here is a photo of the first pieces of wood and firestarter that were put into the oven.
And here was the first pizza I put in the oven. I prepared it on top of the 12 inch pizza peel. I THOUGHT I was putting light sauce and cheese on it, but it turns out that I think I put way too much on there. The center of the pie was pretty heavy and I did not have any extra semolina, flour or cornmeal (the 3 things people have told me to use) on the peel. Once I loaded up the pizza, it sort of stuck to the peel. I was worried that I totally was screwed, but I was able to shimmy it off and into the oven. Of course, not after I shimmied a bunch of the cheese off the pizza onto the stone, which left a little bit of a mess, but that's no big deal. Here's the pizza before it went in.
And here I am with the first pizza that came out. Now again, I had no idea what I was really doing, but I didn't want to overcook the first one. That is why I cut my dough into 4 pieces, to give myself 4 shots at victory. This one came out undercooked. The dough did not fluff out at all, the cheese was melted, but could have been cooked more . . . . it was extremely floppy. As I learned later, I really just needed to cook it longer. I also think that my oven's temperature was not quite up high enough at the moment. Still, not bad for my first one (with 2-3 bites taken out already.)
This was my 2nd one. I gotta say that the crust was better on this one, but the cheese was weirder - not as cooked and a little thicker than I meant. I cut this one in half so Kristyn could give it a try fresh out of the oven.
And here is the 3rd one! I learned a little bit! Kept it in the oven longer - I did four 30 second chunks, turning it in between each timer. The other ones I did either a total of 60 or 90 seconds. But I wanted to see what would happen with more cook time, and it came out MUCH better. This one was really good. I brought it right up to Kristyn so she can try a good one, nice and fresh, and if I screwed up the 4th one, then she would have at least gotten a good one.
Before finishing up, I wanted to get some photos of the pizza in action! Here are a couple of shots with the pizza in the oven with the flame rockin and rollin! You can see the dough and cheese bubbling up a little bit. (This got me excited)
Here is the 4th of 4 pizzas that came out. This one, I sat down for and enjoyed like it was an actual meal, not me eating like an animal while trying to cook. Again, the outer edge of the crust came out really nice. The cheese was good. GREAT choice in sauce, by the way. Highly recommended if you don't want to do any work to the sauce at all. The main issue for me was that the center of the pizza dough was pretty soft and chewy. I'd like it to be a little more fluffy and crispy. I think i loaded it up too heavy on the sauce and cheese. These pies need to be lighter on everything to get the proper consistency throughout the crust.
Clean up was interesting. Had to let the fire go out and then the whole oven had to cool off. I was able to carry the oven up to the kitchen after about 30 minutes, but could not take the fuel tray out until another half hour or so. A quick dump of the wood was plenty and a rinse in the sink. As far as the stone, That had to be scraped down to get the excess remnants off of it, but everyone says that to "clean the stone," just run the oven at high temperature and it "cleans itself." The Ooni website recommends flipping the stone each time you cook and the high temperatures will kill whatever needs to be killed on the bottom of the stone (last time's crap" while you cook on the top. So just getting the gunk off and then cooking again does the trick. This concept is a hard one to feel comfortable with. "Really - just do basically nothing? Just cook again and it will magically be clean, in spite of the fact that it looks like a pile of trash now?" But I guess that is how it works. Sadly, the stone will never look pretty again, but that's the way the cookie crumbles, right?
So overall, I'd say that the experience was a homerun for the first time out. I was nervous because I really had no idea what I was doing, but I learned a lot from pizza 1 to pizza 4. What do I have to do differently next time? Let me count the things:
- Get a smaller "turning peel" that I can use to turn the pizza inside the oven without taking it all the way out, while using the larger peel to build my next pizza on while the first one is cooking.
- Use something on the actual peel to help with the pizza sliding off it more easily into the oven
- Use the new Infrared Thermometer to be sure of the temperature inside the oven (arrived today!)
- Have a more organized set up where I'm going to work - hopefully closer to the kitchen - once the deck is clear of snow
- Get something to temporarily use as my pizza cooking table
- When I shred the cheese, only shred in the downward direction, not upwards, to get longer shreds of cheese and less crumbles
- Lighten up on the sauce and cheese
- Cut the wood pieces in half
- Add some spices on top of the cheese (or mixed in)
- Use my new knowledge of managing the fire to make sure the fire doesn't go out!
I think that is it for now. Lots of work to do before I consider making my own sauce and/or dough. I want to make sure I have learned the right way to use the oven before I spend time working on creating my own ingredients. And even after I learn how to do that, there is no shame in using a pizzeria's dough and a solid jar of sauce. BUT I will have fun working on making my own on days where I have lots of time.
For those of you who like to make pizza, if you want to come over on the weekend and experiment with your recipes in my oven, let's do it!
#3 looked good.
ReplyDelete#3 looked good.
ReplyDelete