Poor man's pizza oven: the BBQ

Fresh, out of the oven pizzas, without the oven. Just a charcoal grill with a lid, and all the fixings for a pizza. Possible? Edible? Practical?

The theme: Chicago. The event: a rowing club get-together. So, Chicago without pizza is like San Francisco without sourdough. Right? But how to make pizzas at a venue with no oven, nor even any cooking facilities whatsoever?

There's a lot of buzz on the web about pizzas on the grill. No doubt, they're expecting this to happen in summer, not when the temperature is hovering around freezing. Yet, nothing ventured nothing gained.

All the pizza stuff was standard: a sourdough-infused pizza dough with cornmeal, olive oil and honey added to the basic flour, salt and instant yeast. The sauce, basic tomato-basil vegetarian. Some roasted fennel, onions, mushrooms and roasted red pepper for toppings.

Doing pizzas outdoors in freezing weather is definitely sailing into uncharted territory. I had various equipment options for baking: a 12" steel comal, a 16" steel paella pan, or the bare grill. I opted out of using a pizza stone, since the last one cracked into five pieces when placed too close to incandescent coals.

Finding a workable technique

First try: the comal.
A comal is a round, thin steel pan typically used for tortillas (they also come in a ceramic version, but I don't have one). The idea was that the comal would heat quickly, crisping the bottom crust while the top baked in the hot air of the grill. I did indeed get a very crisp bottom crust. Black, but crisp. Too hot. Not enough heat on top, so insufficient bubble on the cheese.

Second try: paella pan.
The idea was to to diffuse the heat a bit with the paella pan, place the pizza on the comal on top of the paella pan. This created an air gap between the comal and the paella pan, hopefully something that would stop the burning. It did, up to a point. However, the paella pan blocked too much hot air, so the toppings didn't bubble as intended. By the time the toppings bubbled, the crust was scorched beneath. Worse, it took about 10 minutes to get the pie ready.

Third try: flipping. 
Perhaps the dough could be heated first, crisped enough to flip, then finished on the previous setup. The shaped pizza slid without toppings on the grill to pre-bake the pie a bit, then add toppings and finish on the combined pans. This didn't work much better than the previous effort, and was still slow.

Fourth try: reconfigure, cook on grill.
This was my reluctant last resort. Reconfigure the grill to provide hot-as-possible indirect heat. I placed all the coals at one side of the grill, in front of a lower side vent, then blocked the opposite vent with aluminum foil. I skewed the lid for better air circulation (and more heat). The pizza went directly on the wire grill as far from the coals as possible. Success! The pie browned slowly enough that it could be turned to avoid scorching on the side facing the charcoal. Improved air air circulation melted the cheese and baked the toppings, and the crust came out crunchy and browned, with only a bit of scorch due to a delay in turning the pie. Total time was still a bit long at about eight minutes, but the dough was thoroughly cooked with bubbly cheese, hot sauce and cooked mushrooms.

Bling factor: great. 
These pizzas are tossed for maximum showmanship and photo ops. The fire, smoke, pizza tossing, lined up toppings and sauce, board for cutting all combine for a fun outdoor show. Being next to a blazing grill even makes doing this outdoors bearable as long as there's no wind.

Weather: not so great.
The disadvantage is that the dough cools, extending cooking time. This dough has a great oven spring, so the pies weren't heavy, doughy manhole covers, but when cold dough meets high heat, things have to be managed carefully to avoid scorching.

Things to improve

Top heat
The whole setup would work better if there were more radiant heat coming from the top of the grill. However, the thin metal just doesn't stay hot enough once there's a pie beneath blocking heat from the coals. I had hoped that convection currents would be enough, but it really lacks radiant, top-down heat like a real, stone pizza oven. The trouble here is that grills with heavy, heat-radiating lids are heavy and not very portable. A round grill is light enough to carry in one hand, so maybe this is where I need to invent something new that's perfect for the task.

Cooking time
This thing is slow. A bigger grill would yield bigger pies, and the air circulation would let them cook in the same time. Multiple grills would work too, but that's just more junk to carry around. Still, perhaps there is a way to get more intense, wood-burning pizza oven type temperatures. More charcoal would just scorch the crust... but maybe some kind of vertical wire cage and a half-size grill... maybe a metal heat reflector over the pie, attached to the lid?

Dough temperature
Dough temperature needs to be higher, say 80° for the dough to be worked. This can probably be fixed with an ice chest outfitted with bottles of warm water. Dough at forty degrees is stiff and needs to be kneaded and tossed carefully to avoid tearing the center.

Pizza with seminola flour. Huh?

Pizza dough from a box? Yep. Just add water.

Cognitive dissonance. It's what happens when you thought you knew something and someone (or something) comes along and tells you something significantly different.

I like learning new cooking techniques. I like it much better when it seems the person teaching the class actually knows what he's talking about.

One of our local cooking stores held a class on pizza making. I assumed that the class would be led by someone from a local pizzeria, someone who makes pizza dough, tosses pies, tops them and bakes them on a daily or almost daily basis. A seasoned expert in all things pizza. This did not seem to be the case. Far from it, in fact. 

Professional chefs have confidence. They don't waste movement. Their hands move to precisely the right place, their motions precise and accurate. When they snap the bowl into the mixer, there's no fishing around: their hands move, the bowl clacks into place. Removing the bowl is equally precise. The dough hook goes on or off with a deft lift and twist that's done so fast it's almost invisible. Hand kneading dough is like some kind of sleight of hand where an irregular mass comes out of the mixer and after a couple passes of the hands becomes a smooth, uniform ball. When chefs chop ingredients, the knife moves in rhythmic uniform arcs. The knife moves away, leaving perfectly sliced product on the bench. They use bench scrapers to lift the dough as they work it, leaving no trace on the work surface.

This didn't happen.

Mispronouncing "semolina" as "seminola" was not a great way to start. When people in the class start repeating the word, it becomes comedic. When they pass the box of semolina flour with the word clearly spelled right on the label, and people still say "seminola" it becomes surreal. Even my spell checker knows it's "semolina"!

It was kind of scary watching him chop ingredients, using what looked like a $200 knife, the kind that can be sharpened to the point where it will slice through a fingernail with virtually no resistance.

He was slicing stuff without even bending his fingers down. There are two reasons for bending your fingers down, as he would have learned in cooking school. One is to keep from chopping the tips of your fingers off, as this is bad form and can spoil your sauce. The other is that your bent fingers guide the knife, making for more accurate cuts. No cognitive dissonance here, since finger bending has been repeatedly stressed at ARC, along with using a rocking motion on the knife. He did more of a vertical chop, slightly bent fingers. Scary, but his fingertips did look intact. For now.

He tossed the onions and mushrooms in the oil at the same time, instead of sweating the onions first and then adding the mushrooms. Not a big deal. Unless... don't onions have a longer cooking time than mushrooms? Or could this be the right method? Cognitive dissonance. He did pre-heat the pan before adding the oil, so everything's in sync there.

According to my mixer's manual, you're not supposed to use the dough hook above speed two. More to the point, a high speed would probably result in the mixer throwing flour all over the counter. A mess. Yet, he said setting four was OK. Maybe the speeds on mixers of the same brand aren't the same across models? Cognitive dissonance, again.

He made up about a quart of sauce. A pinch of salt, about four fresh basil leaves cut up, about one clove of garlic. To one quart of canned crushed tomatoes. One lousy pinch of sea salt. Throw it all in the blender, give it a whirl and it's ready to go. No cooking required. No oregano, either. I guess it's OK if the pizza is going to get spiced with pepperoni and chili flakes later, but it seems that this sauce would have tasted like raw canned tomatoes prior to getting spread on the pizza. Cognitive dissonance again - but I'm thinking that if the sauce were reduced down a bit, the garlic cooked and maybe a bit more herbs and spice then it would just give that much more flavor to the pizza.

They heat their oven to 425° for pizza. Another attack of cognitive dissonance. Don't you want to max out the oven for pizza? Professional ovens are 600° - 700° F or even hotter, so I would have thought the procedure would be to preheat to maximum with the pizza stone inside, slide the pizza onto the stone with a peel, wait about ten minutes, remove the pizza with a peel, slice and serve on a wood serving board. They removed the entire stone with the pizza on top. Now, maybe I'm crazy but if that stone stores heat and was over 400° F, isn't that pizza going to keep cooking on the stone? Is that a good thing? Cognitive dissonance again. Wait... slicing pizza on a stone will dull your fancy knife, too. Won't it? Isn't that why you slice on wood or a plastic cutting board?

Then, there's the whole peel thing. They only used wood. Wood peels are great for sliding the pies into the oven, since pizza doesn't stick to them if they've been floured properly. You can make up the pizza on the peel, slide it onto a hot stone in the oven, and ready the peel for your next pie. You use a metal peel to remove the pie, since a cooked pizza won't stick to it, the blade is thinner and the peel won't scorch from contact with the hot stone (the wood peel has less contact with the stone since the pizza slides off the inclined peel). Yet, there there were: wood peels. That dissonance thing again, but not so much. Wood peels with short handles? Pretty, but I want some distance between my knuckles and a 500° oven. Give me a long handle, please!

This is a store that likes "starters" and "mixes". One of the pizzas came from a box of pizza dough mix. I don't really know what's in the box, except that there are two packets. Each will make a pizza. So, presumably they contain yeast, flour, salt and probably other things that I'd know if I'd bothered to read and note the ingredients. So, if they're all into fine cooking, what's with this "pizza crust in a box"? You might think the idea would be to sell the fancy mixer, a scale, some herbs, a pizza stone, a brush for cleaning, a peel or two and have people make their own dough. It's really not that hard if you do your formulas by weight.

Speaking of which, their formula for flour was in cups, not ounces. Depending on how firmly it's packed, there can be a couple of ounces difference in the amount of flour in each person's "cup". Weighing the flour removes this inconsistency, so why not mention it? They sell scales, after all, and this could generate even more revenue on top of pizza stones, pizza stone cleaners, box mixes, doodads, cheese slicers, gadgets, herbs and whatnot.

They made one pizza with a stand mixer. Equal parts all-purpose flour to semolina flour (a.k.a. seminola). Add salt, water. Not surprisingly, when we got to taste the pizzas after the class, the from-scratch dough version won. In my opinion, at least. The crust had better rise, and seemed a lot more tender. Maybe mixing to develop gluten and fresher yeast do make a difference. The semolina flour gave it a different texture and changed the flavor a bit, so it might be worth a try to experiment with the stuff.

They also mentioned "fresh yeast". This seemed to imply cake yeast, sold in cubes for professional bakers. So I asked if they sold cake yeast. No, it's not cake yeast. Fresh means that the yeast has not yet reached its expiration date. No mention of SAF Instant, so I guess they don't sell that, either.

He never tossed a pizza, nor did he shape one by hand. Everything was done with a rolling pin. When he wanted a border, he formed it by hand. Funny, when tossing the pie would have given him the thicker border automatically. Tossing was not even mentioned. Perhaps it doesn't work with the box mix dough? Still, tossing pizzas is a lot more dramatic and impresses your friends more than going over a ball of dough with a rolling pin. Unless you drop it on the floor. Or your head.

So, in the end I came away with the idea of adding semolina flour to some future pizza, if I want to add a second formula to my repertoire. I just didn't feel like I was in the presence of a master. Worse, I felt like I could have given this talk and covered the subject better, thanks to my training at ARC (pizzas, calzones and piegatas* with Chef Teresa) and my experiments with pizza dough and formula development.

* This blog now comes to the top of the search heap for "pizza piegata". Maybe it's a milestone, but I'm still light years away from getting a zillion hits per day. Click here for more on pizza piegata.

Stromboli

This was the last of the pizza-like things that can be done with pizza dough. It was also our least favorite, perhaps because it's got the least amount of browned, crispy crust among the four pizzoids tested. The filling was not at fault, since it had lots of flavor. In fact, part of the filling was left over from the piegata so it's identical to what went into that dish.

Since the dough is rolled into the center in a spiral, there's less browning going on. Where a calzone would have the outside browned, a piegata would have two sides browned, and a pizza would have one side (the bottom), this thing has lots of bread in the center where browning just isn't going to happen. So, more sponginess and less crunch.

This was almost an ovo-lacto vegetarian version of something that normally would be stuffed full of cured meats, saturated fats and sodium. A bit of uncured bacon did find its way into the mix, but simply as a subtle nuance. Not that I have anything against cured meats, fat or sodium; it's just that I happen to be out of most of them at the moment. I do have lots of peppers and tomatoes, thanks to the garden - so might as well take advantage of summer's offerings.

There were two fillings: the bell pepper/bacon/onion/garlic from the piegata, a tomato/onion/garlic/oregano filling made for these things, all with a blend of goat cheese and sheep pecorino romano. The coup de grâce was some fennel seeds sprinkled over the top and pressed into the dough. Those little seeds gave depth to the dish, yanking it back from the precipice of ordinary to create a more dynamic flavor profile.

Although I would hesitate to eat either a piegata or a calzone cold, I wouldn't have the same issues with a stromboli. This is really more a spiral-stuffed bread than anything, and does not remind me of pizza at all. So, I could imagine myself somewhere in an Italian olive orchard, a red and white checkered picnic blanket spread on the ground, a bottle of Chianti in the center, some cheese, some salami, a few oil-cured olives and some stromboli. Yes, definitely upscale picnic food. Ants optional.

Pizza piegata

Toss a pizza, but don't put anything on it. Just slide it into the oven, bare. Naked crust meets hot oven, the end result can only be crispy, and that's the whole point. Four surfaces (top & bottom, folded), all tanned and crunchy. Not one like a pizza (bottom) or two like a calzone (top and bottom). Better yet, you can keep raw things raw. Like basil, or maybe smoked salmon, or sushi... nah. That would be strange. Although...

This piegata used finely diced onions, sautéed until transparent, mixed with some garlic, smoked sea salt, a bit of finely chopped uncured bacon and finely diced bell beppers from the garden. This mix then cooled while the cheese mix was prepared and the basil picked. We had some leftover blue cheese, so in it went, along with a generous amount of fresh goat cheese. Some roasted pine nuts joined the cheese. The basil got a chiffonnade and was set aside.

When the piegata came out of the oven, rippling with heat, half was immediately slammed with the diced cheese and pine nut mixture. Then the lukewarm onion/pepper mix, then the basil. The pie was folded in half, sliced, sprinkled with more basil, some olive oil, a dash of pecorino Romano and served.

There's no risk of a soggy layer under the ingredients here. Since the crust bakes separately from the toppings, there are four crispy layers: two bread-like layers and the filling in the middle.

_____

Note: We made these in professional cooking, under the name "piagata". Curious, I searched the web for "piagatta" then "piagata" (one "t") to see who makes these and how they're prepared. No results. Nothing related to food anyway, although one dictionary said it was "something covered in sores". Not appetizing. Beurk!

I vote for a new name: pizza piegata, or simply piegata ("folded"). Better spell it right, though! Even better, pizza piegata actually yields culinary information when searched on the net, albeit mostly in Italian.

Some more digging revealed that folded pizzas are indeed served in the historic quarter of Naples, but they're called a libretto ("booklet") or a portafoglio ("wallet style"). Or maybe pizza a fazzoletto ("handkerchief"). With so many different names, I doubt anyone will mind me calling it piegata.

Peppers. Eggplant. Peppers. Calzone!

Future calzone. No Papa Whozits here!

Courses 1, 2 and 3

Look at those peppers, right from the garden!

Pimientos de padrón

Aubergines du jardin!

Calzone

Calzone, ready to eat!

Our eggplant was ready! So were the more interesting peppers. Our eggplant hung on the plant, months in the making, finally ready to be cut from the bush and devoured after some culinary transmogrification from pasty, greenish pith to a succulent luscious melt-in-your mouth wonder. OK, it's not the biggest eggplant ever grown, but it's ours. It grew from a violet flower, week by week, despite cool nights and hordes of whiteflies. It was everything I expected from a vegetable anticipated for weeks then slowly braised in water, Vermouth, olive oil, garlic, salt, pepper and oregano : a tender, succulent, melt in your mouth, wish for more extravagance. The other ingredients stepped in to play supporting roles to the eggplant's main note, adding layers of flavor and complexity like a jazz band laying down overlapping rhythms.

The eggplant wasn't the starter, though. Another plate needed to titillate the audience while the aubergine was being prepped backstage. That role went to the padrón peppers. These peppers can be blazingly, painfully hot. Or not. We were spared the burn this year, perhaps due to the cooler than normal weather - although drinking wine with the peppers set off a tip-of-the-tongue fireball that only ignited in the presence of wine.

Padron peppers are fast. Just a quick sauté and they're ready to plate. Heat some olive oil, throw in the peppers, add finely chopped garlic, dried oregano from the garden and a splash of dry vermouth. Let it simmer and reduce a bit, adjust the salt and serve. I added a bit of butter at the end for a nice finish.

Then for the prime attraction: a calzone bursting with goat cheese, pecorino romano, parmesan, fresh basil, and the star attraction, some red sweet Italian peppers plucked from the bush at their prime. Toss the dough, lay it out, put down a layer of fresh goat cheese, pecorino Romano, a bit of Parmesan, the sautéed peppers, some fresh basil. Throw in a few pine nuts, pour the pan sauce redolent of garlic and the essence of fresh summer peppers over the mixture, fold the dough over the top, seal and put it on a pizza stone in a 550° oven for 10-12 minutes. Find that the oil leaked out and smoke is pouring from the oven. Turn off the oven and open all the windows before the smoke alarm goes off. When the smoke has cleared somewhat, add fresh basil over the top and serve.

Another nice summer dinner al fresco, accompanied with some lightly chilled low tannin red wine. By the time we went back in the house, all the smoke had cleared without a trace.

A birthday dinner under the stars

 

Now I know why restaurants have different chefs for different things. Although it sounds simple, this menu needed bread for the aigo bolido, pizza dough and pate sucrée for the pies. Plus prep on all the pizza ingredients - one of which was eggplant that had to be slow cooked in garlic and olive oil so it would melt into the other ingredients on the pizzas. Pastry cream for the pie... glaze... getting everything in advance either from our garden or the farmers' market. 

The aigo bolido is simple - fresh thyme, sage and bay leaves thrown into some chopped garlic and boiled with some salt and pepper. At the end, the herbs come out, the garlic is blended and the broth is thickened with an egg yolk. This is then poured over French bread that's been liberally doused in olive oil, salted and peppered. Normally this would be more of a soup, but it works great as an appetizer this way, with the broth soaking into the bread and the olive oil giving richness and depth.

There was no meat in anything - only eggs and dairy. This made the pizzas different since I couldn't just load on pepperoni or sausage for flavor. Everything had to be fresh and at its peak. Once you've had a pizza made with heirloom tomatoes,  you won't want to settle for that stuff out of a can. There was a quick sauce made with San Marzano tomatoes, garlic, oregano, salt and pepper with a bit of fresh grassy extra virgin olive oil poured over the top, then on went the toppings: braised eggplant, bell peppers, garlic (heirloom from Corti Brothers), sliced onions, fresh basil, pine nuts, mozzarella, goat cheese, and even some thinly sliced squash.

Funny, but nobody wanted to try tossing a pie - although one person was interested in the process.

The party started at 5:30. All the prep was done at 5:29, and the only thing left was plating and putting the pizzas together as needed. Why couldn't my timing be that good in Pro Cooking?

Pizza, a great way to use fresh vegetables

Tomatoes, basil, eggplant, heirloom summer squash, dried oregano... all from the garden. Add garlic, onion, olive oil and you've got something healthy and tasty. Add pepperoni and you lose the healthy aspect but gain some extra flavor. A bit of goat cheese doesn't hurt, either. For extra gooeyness, Mozzarella is a must.

I didn't want to make tomato sauce - for one thing, this isn't the best year for tomatoes and yields are low. For another, a 550° oven makes the kitchen hot enough without adding bubbling pots of sauce to the thermal mix. So, after shaping the 'za, I added olive oil, sliced red, ripe garden tomatoes, fine strips of basil, julienned onions, garlic, and goat cheese. Then I decided that was too healthy and threw on some pepperoni and olives.

A quick transfer to the pizza stone in the oven, a bit of bubbling and rising and eccolo! A home made pizza. Nobody missed the tomato sauce since the garlic, oil, oregano, tomato and basil pretty much created the sauce right on the pie.

Since the dough is prepared in advance and pizzas bake very quickly, this is the perfect light summer meal with friends.

Pizza Dough
This is still a work in progress, so it's subject to change, and I've been playing with a mixed grain version, too. Yes, it's a metric recipe. It's so much easier to scale up and down when everything is in grams. Digital scales and measuring cups normally have metric capability, so no whining. No conversion necessary - that's a pain!

Ingredients

• 7g instant (SAF) yeast
• 18g honey
• 300g bread flour
• 100g high gluten flour (Giusto's Vital Wheat)
• 5g kosher salt
• 40g extra-virgin olive oil

Method

1. Combine dry ingredients: flours, salt, yeast. Mix well.
2. Mix the honey into the water,  stir well.
3. Mix the water into the flour, briefly
4. Mix the oil into the dough, then knead well.
5. Form into a ball and let proof until it rises
6. Divide into two pieces, form into balls and refrigerate until ready
7. Take the balls out before use to let them warm up. Place a pizza stone in your oven, preheat oven to max (550 works).
8. Toss if you're good at that kind of thing, or form with your hands.
9. Coat with olive oil, toppings, etc. I'm assuming you're not from Betelgeuse and know what a pizza looks like.
10. Using a peel, slide the pie onto the stone and close the oven door quickly.
11. Your pie should be ready quickly, depending on how thick you made the crust and how hot your oven gets.
12. Turn onto pizza pan if you're really well-equipped, or onto a metal baking sheet if not, cut and eat.

This method is set up for a food processor since I don't have a fancy stand mixer. The idea is still to mix all the ingredients in the flour very well and knead enough to develop the gluten. Do NOT, EVER, add more high gluten flour than this or you will get something more resembling a sticky, fibrous, elastic ball than dough. It won't taste as good, either.

One more thing: if you want to add an egg to your pizza, crack it over the hot pizza as it comes out of the oven, so the yolk will run all over your pie but the white will be set up. They do this in Europe. Not really an American thing, but if you have too many eggs or like the flavor combination, give it a try.

Pizza!

up, up and...

Never, ever take pizza for granted. You thought it was simple? Some flour, yeast, salt, olive oil for the crust. Some tomato sauce or whatever over that, then whatever you want.

Easy? Yeah? Hey, Pal. Tell ya what. Try makin' one some time and tell me all abouddit.

First, the dough. A perfect harmony of springiness and elasticity, capable of being stretched, thrown in the air and shaped to the perfect thin crust shape. Not enough stretchiness and it tears, leaving sauce-leaking holes. Too much elasticity and it shrinks back as soon as you shape it. Worse, it has to taste good, too.

The crust needs to taste wheaty, toasty, crunchy and chewy all at once. It should not taste yeasty. It has to be cooked all the way through, no raw doughy line - despite the detail where it can go from wafer thin Neapolitan to thick and bready, or anything in between.

Shaping it can be easy or... whoops! A pizza can be completely hand shaped. Tossing is optional. But what fun is a pizza that you can't toss? Of course, it works much better as a pizza than a hat. Place the partially shaped dough on your knuckles, the fingers of both hands curled down. With a deft crossing/twisting movement, the dough is propelled skyward, perfectly vertically, spinning rapidly and widening. If any unwanted vectors emerge, the dough veers perilously off course where it must be intercepted before it hits a solid object or, worse, the floor. The catch must be correct, too. A bad catch leads to folded over dough and more work.

The sauce is relatively simple. Just the right stock base, tomatoes, herbs, etc. in the right proportion. Or pesto, cream or oil based. Well, not simple exactly but at least something I'm familiar with.

If all this is good, the thing still has to be baked. If you have a 650° F stone lined pizza oven, this will probably not be a problem. If you have a wood-burning oven, even better. If you're at home, you'll probably be OK if you get your pizza stone hot enough.

So, my first attempt to make my own pizza from scratch basically rose to the level of your average supermarket frozen pizza. The sauce was better. The toppings were about the same. The crust, however, just didn't make me want to sing like Caruso. It was too dry, too crunchy. Not that wonderful mix of bubbly, chewy and crispy that I was looking for. Back to formula.

The next time I go to a great pizza place, I'll certainly be much more appreciative!