THE COOKING: WHEN IS THE PIZZA READY?

Published on March 12, 2012 in Cooking. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

WHEN IS THE PIZZA READY?

This is the ultimate decision, one from which there is no turning back.

Your pizza is ready when both top and bottom are cooked.

1. We said that you have to start turning your pizza when the part facing the flame has formed a light crust, and you have to continue turning it until it has reached a uniform colour.

2. Lift the crust and check the base: don’t worry if you see some dark marks as long as there aren’t too many and have covered entire portions, which means your oven is too hot. The colour of the base should be a golden colour all over.

3. When your pizza has a golden colour on top and on the bottom then it is ready.

Try to lift the pizza with the small blade to take it out of the oven. This is the first sign of a cooked pizza, very useful because the pizza is still inside the oven. It is well cooked if it stays on the blade without breaking up with the weight of the toppings.

How many times have we said to be careful because raw dough won’t hold the weight of the toppings? Once the pizza is cooked the dough starts to stiffen and therefore can hold the weight. If it doesn’t or tends to flop on one side or take on an umbrella shape then it is obviously not ready and needs more cooking – if the colour is correct then you risk over-cooking the pizza, the best answer here is to leave the pizza in the mouth of the oven. Obviously it is not necessary that the pizza is perfectly shaped and straight like a piece of wood, if so the risk is that it will become too hard.

If you still aren’t convinced, there is one more test you can do.

Whatever type of pizza, even a soft one if cooked correctly should make a “cracking” sound when cut (I apologise for the definition but I have used it because I found it the most representative and suitable). It isn’t always possible to cut all pizzas, some you have to lift the crust hoping to hear the sound. It’s enough to just lift a small corner to check if it is cooked, possibly the lighter part or the part that seems most at risk. If this part is not cooked it means that you observations were not correct and you have missed a detail along the way. All that is left to do is leave the pizza for a very short time in the oven, or leave it in the mouth of the oven.

Another test is to flatten the crust or edge which should always make the same sound. This test, even if only a guideline, doesn’t tell you if the inside of the pizza is cooked, only the cooking point of the surface.

In short we can say that our pizza, the one we make with our dough and cook in our oven, which finally we have learnt to work with, takes a certain time.

We know it instinctively. There’s no need to use any instrument or timers.

This knowledge is the sum of all the signs that we have come to recognise, like the colour of the pizza, the colour of the dome, the time it takes to cook and an interior clock we have developed, our experience that tells us what to do and when to do it.

If we lift a pizza to turn it or take it out of the oven we know with certainty that it will be cooked, or how much time is needed still, how many blasts of heat or if it needs just a quick moment in the hottest part of the oven. These will be automatic movements, spontaneous, and we will be able to cook any kind of pizza with any kind of dough in any kind of oven.

In a pizzeria the best added value determining the final result is the human factor, the complete opposite of industrialized and mechanized systems where technology is predominant. There are no fixed standards or rules to which you must adhere because there is no need or reason to have them, giving many results all excellent and diverse.

This is how the Grand Master pizza chefs, of which there are a lot but not many, work – always producing perfectly stretched, light and fragrant pizzas, or soft and fluffy ones, always the same and always the best. Apart from a particular or specific dough that is used to exalt the flavour, using their own personal doses, ingredients and recipes that are often the result of many experiments and tests, there are also years of experience in each component of the pizza, not least the cooking method, and often a genuine passion that produces only their best efforts, the research in finding and supplying only the best quality products for their customers.

And sometimes this becomes art.

Share|

THE COOKING: HOW TO TURN THE PIZZA

Published on March 9, 2012 in Cooking. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

How to turn the pizza

Now the pizzas are in the oven you have to keep turning them to cook well and give them an all-over golden colour. You can practice the turning method on your worktop with a piece of carton the size of your pizzas, or by cooking a plain pizza without any sauce or toppings so that there is no danger of any toppings overflowing.

It is of no importance whether you turn the pizza clockwise or anti-clockwise, what is important is that you are careful at the beginning because the pizza base is still raw and can break easily.

Using the small shovel, slide it carefully under the cooked part of the pizza, the part facing the flame, lift it 45° and by rotating the tips turn the pizza: if you start with the right hand side you’ll have to finish with the left hand side and vice versa. After a few test runs you’ll find the movements become automatic and you will do them without thinking. You just have to pay attention to your overstretched pizzas as they are thinner and break easier – try to move them with the reverse side of your oven shovel.

Share|

THE COOKING: PROBLEMS

Published on March 7, 2012 in Cooking. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

There are times when the pizza is difficult to lift because it has been left on the worktop too long. Using the spatula and sprinkling it with flour, pass it under the edge of the pizza at the point where you would normally pick it up with your well-floured shovel.

Usually you don’t need to sprinkle the shovel with flour for every pizza, but sometimes it is necessary especially if there is a lot of humidity, the dough is too soft, the tomato watery or the toppings have a lot of liquid content and so it is difficult to slide it into the oven. In these cases it can help to sprinkle lightly also your worktop.

If you can’t get the pizza onto the shovel, if it crinkles up or seems glued to the worktop, there’s nothing else to do but recuperate the toppings and make another pizza, but make sure you have cleaned your worktop by drying it off with flour.

If there is a problem getting your pizza onto the shovel then there will probably be a problem getting it off as well. Raise the tilt of your shovel a little – it’s important that it is well covered in flour – making sure your toppings don’t slide off into the oven, and help it along with little taps.

It can happen sometimes that the pizza slides off badly or a piece of raw dough stays stuck on the shovel giving it a strange shape: this happens if it the person topping it has dropped tomato or liquid near the edge and hasn’t dried it properly.

If the pizza was round before it went into the oven and now is oval or crooked but sticks to the oven, you can try to cook it anyway, but it’s a different story if the pizza won’t slide off the shovel at all and if it finally does, it twists out of shape or crumples. If this is the case it will not cook well, it will be uncooked between the folds and your customer will not be very happy. In my opinion it costs less to make a new pizza. Yes it makes the waiting time longer but it is better to produce a perfect pizza.

***

What to do with a pizza already in the oven? There are two possibilities.

With your shovel upside down (easier for beginners), delicately go under the edge of the pizza and repeat everything you have learnt in how to pick up your pizza and take it out of the oven so you can at least recuperate the toppings.

This seems something to be taken for granted but is actually very complicated and risky because it could make things worse: the shrewdest thing to do is cook it anyway. It’s easier to pick up a cooked pizza than an uncooked one, even if you won’t be able to sell it and so you can cook it without worrying about it too much.

The problem you have to absolutely avoid is dirtying your oven.
This can happen in different situations but the most common are:

1. Error by the person who does the stretching by using too much floor that stays on the oven floor; a burnt circle is visible when you turn the pizza.

2. Error by the person who does the topping by putting the ingredients too close to the edge and it overflows when turning the pizza.

3. Error by the person who cooks the pizza by turning the pizza too soon, before the part near the flame is cooked, or with clumsy and inexpert gestures.

4. Normal staining caused by daily work which can be eliminated by simple daily cleaning, brushing with the right tools when the oven is empty, or by scraping with the shovel upside-down, showing that you have been working because ending the evening shift with a clean oven is not a good sign.

Let’s see what we can do when the toppings have spilt onto the oven floor dirtying it.

Obviously it depends on how much has spilt. If it is only something small such as a piece of mozzarella or ham the best thing to do is leave it there and when it is cooked scrape it off and throw in into the fire. Every time it happened to me it reminded me of the times I have scraped mud off my children’s shoes. If you try to scrape it off when it’s still wet you only make things worse but if you wait until it dries it’ll wipe off in a few seconds.

It’s different if the stain is bigger, a pizza which has overflowed completely limits you in how you place the rest of your pizzas. The principle is the same: wait until the spillage has cooked then get rid of it but at times this can limit your work.

It has only happened to me once but I still remember it.

I don’t know what caused the disaster that day, probably a run of mistakes that came to a head when a pizza overflowed in a full oven. Probably it all started with a pizza that was too thin, or closed badly that morning and had the classic thin circle, but the girl didn’t make a Margherita, added to the fact that I also made a mistake. Seeing that the pizza had broken up and to recuperate at least the toppings, I tried to take it out of the oven using a small shovel thinking it was quicker and as it was a Sunday we had been working very hard and were very tired. The pizza ripped apart and, while I was taking it out of the oven, all the toppings fell onto the oven floor and started smoking like a toxic cloud. We quickly pulled all the other pizzas that were ready out of the oven, abandoning those on the worktop and we opened the windows and doors. There was nothing left to do but apologise to the customers, inventing an excuse and I, as soon as I could, ran to get a wet cloth to clean the oven but not until the mozzarella and all the rest of the ingredients had cooked.

To be sure that the oven was properly cleaned we put some strips of dough on to the oven floor to cook and pulled them along so anything left on the floor would stick to them and would be easier removed. In the end we had to wait until the oven returned to its correct temperature before we could restart work.

It was an extremely distressing experience and not one I would wish on anyone but at the end of the evening looking back on it with a clear head we all took responsibility for our own mistakes and we concluded that we should have thrown the offending pizza onto the flames, a shrewd remedy used by many experienced pizza chefs. If we had done that, we had kept the secret and no one would have noticed. A new pizza would have been made and no one would have been the wiser. Instead, even the neighbours, stunned by the tragedy, and excited about spreading the news knew what had happened…

Share|