Pizza

Thanks for the heads up. Just need a pizza one now!

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Don’t think I’ve ever flipped a stone, not that you can do it on any ovens I’ve had.

Always just turned the oven to max and gave it a brush

This was in the box that the Ooni Koda arrived in. What is?

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Flour worked out alright. Easy to work with and didn’t burn on the edges too quickly. Got experimental with one, using up some pork gyoza filling and pairing it with picked red onion and soured cream. Firm favourite with the crowd

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Matchstick holder, mentioned in the manual. I guess as a fallback option for if the spark generator doesn't work for some reason

Flour worked out alright.

Those look amazing 🙂

Thing for reigniting the burner with a match or burning piece of paper - it’s actually what I always have to light mine with as the ignition has stopped working.

I need to find the old hag that has hexed me because fucking hell how is it this hard.

Every time, crust burns, cheese doesn't melt in time, base is undercooked. inedible.

can someone please give me their entire step by step process for cooking on the karu 16 with gas because I think a couple of my variables are off and if i don't get a single edible pizza out of this motherfucker soon I am gonna go on a rampage. I just need to throw out everything I'm doing and try a different approach altogether.

I've ordered 20 frozen dough balls and I am just going to fucking bang them out one after the other next weekend until I figure it out.

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Serious Eats have a pretty lengthy article of tips
https://www.seriouseats.com/how-to-make-great-pizza-in-an-outdoor-pizza-oven-5212389

from a completely uninformed point of view, it looks as though the base stone isn't hot enough.

All this pizza chat made me fire up the oven the other night, I always forget to take photos but got a couple.

Dough has been in the freezer since last year, wasn't expecting much. I usually get cobble lane pepperoni but had to make do with salami from m&s.

The first pizza I launch is always cheese and marmite, I can't recommend it enough.

What temp is your stone? I average 430c and it will cook my pizza in about 30-60 seconds.

I have a turning peel and I turn the pizza every 5 seconds roughly to even out the spotting. I then dome (lift the pizza to near the oven roof) the pizza before taking it out.

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As I said to @Cazakstan it's a journey so you got to chill. I turned out so much shit for ages. So many ruined dinners. People here just either have it dialed or only post their best. So don't sweat it, enjoy the journey and alway have a backup dinner for now!

When I’ve had pizzas with very defined leopard spots but no real rise like that it’s been because the dough is on the down-slope in it’s proving. Either use less yeast or less time.

Edit
Also I make 6 pizzas for 4 of us - 2 of them being “practice pizzas” that we eat another day, gives you a chance to see what’s going on and make adjustments for the good ones. There’s not much you can do if your dough is dead but other than that it’s a good contingency. Wanging a pizza off the peel at the garage wall is quite therapeutic, and one other thing it took me about a year of 6 pizzas most weekends to get to making consistent restaurant quality pizzas and as others said you just figure it out along the way.

I don’t have an Ooni, mine is a big old clay one. I don’t use a thermometer, all of the soot falls away from the walls when mine is ready to cook. But I suspect my temperature is lower than 400 degrees as it takes about 1.5-2 minutes to cook the pizza. I turn it every 20 seconds or so and then move it towards the mouth of the oven if the cheese isn’t quite melted enough, which doesn’t usually happen but the cheese I used yesterday had been in the freezer all winter so that might explain its reluctance to melt easily.

sorry but something looks quite wrong with your dough... over or underproved? potentially too much cheese on there too

i would download the ooni app on your phone and watch the videos on there. that is how i got started before playing with hydration levels etc

some key things to remember:

• proving temperatures have a massive impact on dough. how warm is the area they are proving in? (1st prove and balled 2nd prove)
  
• dont use old yeast. buy sachets. open one and keep in fridge for 2-3 weeks then toss it. it costs so little and so much hinges on the yeast being in decent shape
  
• dont use crap flour. order a 10 pack of caputo pizzeria from amazon or di maria
  
• mozzarella works best when you buy the hard blocks. or make sure you drain the mozzarella balls loads to remove water (chop them up and leave out on a towel)... Or even better use fior de latte
  
• when transferring balls out of tray to make pizza, be very careful on how you handle them. watch videos on the ooni app; but the aim is the force all the air from the middle into the crusts. DO NOT overwork the dough here. this shouldn't be a re-kneading step
  
• when in the oven, the moment you see the crust nearest the 'heat' start puffing up, it is time to rotate the pizza
  

2 of them being “practice pizzas”

this is also the way!

I think my next attempt will be thus:

Use frozen dough balls from a di maria link that Haggis posted to eliminate my shit dough making skills from the equation.

Use a different mozarella. I have some 10mm cubed fior di latte coming from a di maria as well so hopefully that resolves that issue.

as far as resolving the burned crust soggy bottom issue I will experiment with firing up to 450c at the stone and then turn the flames to 50% just before launching to hopefully give a bigger time window for the base to cook in.

and have plenty of backup dough balls. making 3 at a time following the recipe just wasn't enough to recover from any mistakes. I managed to accidentally stick the final one to itself folded over after I'd put it on the semolina dusted peel so it never even got to the assembly stage which is on me and 100% just an issue of practice, but after 2 disappointing cooks on the first 2 attempts it was the worst outcome to finish on.

i'm also going to practice when there's no one else expecting feeding. that was easily the biggest point of stress both times.

sounds like a solid plan. you'll get there. i remember the first time i made pizzas with my ooni (had invited the in-laws round). was a complete disaster.... you live and learn!

some key things to remember:

proving temperatures have a massive impact on dough. how warm is the area they are proving in? (1st prove and balled 2nd prove)

they were proved in a proving tray in our kitchen. it's on the north side of the house so not the warmest of places.

dont use old yeast. buy sachets. open one and keep in fridge for 2-3 weeks then toss it. it costs so little and so much hinges on the yeast being in decent shape

brand new tin of caputo instant yeast.

dont use crap flour. order a 10 pack of caputo pizzeria from amazon or di maria

was using caputo pizzeria also brand new pack

mozzarella works best when you buy the hard blocks. or make sure you drain the mozzarella balls loads to remove water (chop them up and leave out on a towel)... Or even better use fior de latte

I went with galbani mozzarella in the big dry blocks, tried cubed and sliced (as thinly as I could cut it. it worked lovely for my frying pan pizzas but i think i need to something more forgiving while i experiment.

when transferring balls out of tray to make pizza, be very careful on how you handle them. watch videos on the ooni app; but the aim is the force all the air from the middle into the crusts. DO NOT overwork the dough here. this shouldn't be a re-kneading step

this was what caused my launching issues on the first day, was just being too rough with it and it was stretching weird just being picked up, once i was pulling them up gently by lifting the edge and working my hands underneath it was a lot better but needed a fair amount of flour to make them properly handleable though so am sure dough issues were a factor. probably too wet of a dough for a beginner like myself.

when in the oven, the moment you see the crust nearest the 'heat' start puffing up, it is time to rotate the pizza

part of the issue was the dough just wanted to shrink all the time and meant that too much of the crust was in the hot zone at any given time so rotating didn't get it far away enough.

Not much to add to @swedeee above, but something else that I found really helps the launch is using fine ground semolina instead of flour.

https://www.adimaria.co.uk/rice-flower/caputo-semola-di-grano-duro-rimacinata-1kg

what recipe did you use for the dough? or did you use a calculator? i use pizzaapp and add +25% more yeast. always better to over prove slightly vs underprove.. as if they are rising too quick you can always knock the dough back (re-knead) before balling. not ideal but 100 times better than underproved

I think i read you made biga before, as much as you can get a nice flavour from it i think something its a bit more advanced and a wee bit trial and error to get right.

I make biga on the odd time when ive got nothing to do but most I just make standard Neapolitan dough. Flour, water, sea salt and fresh yeast and all done at RT.

As long as you get the times roughly right you'll be grand.

Not much to add to @swedeee above, but something else that I found really helps the launch is using fine ground semolina instead of flour.

was using semolina too. :'(

https://recipes.oregonlive.com/recipes/saturday-pizza-dough

that's a ~70% hydration dough. definitely too high for a beginner imo

either use this - https://uk.ooni.com/blogs/recipes/classic-pizza-dough with the associated video on their app/youtube channel

or use this - foolproof and great tasting pizza! - https://mypizzacorner.com/pizza-dough/easy-poolish-pizza-dough-recipe-neapolitan-poolish-pizza/