Pizza Napoletana tends to be soupy, with the use of fresh tomato sauce, fresh mozzarella and olive oil, and it always soft – to that the crust can be folded without
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WARNING Read this before you light a fire inside your ovenNo warranties of any kind, either expressed or implied, as to the accuracy of this information or its suitability for a particular purpose, are made. Forno Bravo hereby expressly disclaims any and all express or implied warranties, and does not make any warranty or guaranty, or make any representation whatsoever, express or implied, regarding the use or result of any information or services provided by this document. Forno Bravo will not assume any liability for any loss or damage of any kind, arising out of or caused by, directly or indirectly, the use of this information. Failure to heed this warning may result in damage to property, bodily injury or death. Keep children and pets away from hot oven.Use firewood for burning only. DO NOT use charcoal, pressure treated lumber, chipped wood products, sappy wood such as pine, laminated wood or any material other than dry medium or hard firewood.DO NOT USE liquid fuel (firelighter fluid, gasoline, lantern oil, kerosene or similar liquids) to start or maintain a fire. BEWARE of very high temperatures in the oven and use long oven gloves and mitts to handle pots and tools. DO NOT put unprotected hands or arms inside oven while it is lit.Dispose of ashes using a metal shovel and place in a metal bin with a tightly fitting lid. The container should be stored on a non-combustible surface, away from all combustible materials. Ensure ashes are completely cold before disposing of them appropriately. BEWARE of flying sparks from mouth of oven. Ensure that no combustible materials are within range of oven at any time. DO NOT close the oven door fully while a fire is in the oven. Closing the door fully will cut off oxygen to the fire, causing the fire to erupt suddenly when the door is removed. Always keep door tilted to allow air to circulate in the oven. DO NOT use water to dampen or extinguish fire in the oven. FIRE can result from incorrect installation or use of this oven. It is essential to use only building and insulation materials designed for the purpose. DO NOT use wood, or any other combustible materials in the installation of your oven. © Forno Bravo, LLC 2007. All Rights Reserved. Ver. 1.1 2
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AcknowledgementsAs with everything related to Forno Bravo, we want to thank the wonderful community of wood-fired oven owners and builders who are cooking, eating, talking, having fun, and helping their neighbors make great pizza ovens and great pizza Ð not to mention bread. We are spread all around the globe, but we are a true community in every sense of the word. We also want to thank Jim Wills, of Mary GÕs Bakery, for his help in editing this document, John Lemos, who helped with editing and provided some great photos, and everyone who has contributed photos, recipes and advice to the community. We hope you enjoy our newest e-Book. Saluti,James BaireyFlorence, ItalyJune 2007© Forno Bravo, LLC 2007. All Rights Reserved. Ver. 1.1 3
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Contents..Forward: 5..A Very Brief History of Pizza 51. Introduction: 7..Making Great Pizza at Home 7.2. Why Wood-Fired Pizza Is Better 83. Different Styles of Pizza 10..4. Tools and Accessories 14.5. Flour Basics 18..6. Using and Controlling Yeast 19.7. Preparing Your Pizza Dough 21.8. Dough Ball Preparation 24..9. Pizza Dough in a Hurry 26..10. Shaping Your Pizza Base 27.11. Tomatoes and Tomato Sauce 2812. Cheese Basics and Preparation 29.14. Oven Management 32..15. Using Pizza Peels 34..16. Pizza Baking 3617. The Finished Pizza 4118. Beauty Shots 4319. Pizza Recipes 47.20. Dessert Pizzas 50Appendix 1. Vera Pizza Napoletana 55..Notes 63© Forno Bravo, LLC 2007. All Rights Reserved. Ver. 1.1 4
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Forward:A Very Brief History of Pizza Wood-fired brick ovens and pizza have been with us since the dawn of civilization. Both have been discovered in the excavations of virtually every ancient community, and there are mentions of flat breads cooked on a hot stone throughout antiquity. The excavations in Pompeii have wonderful brick ovens and food bars with stylish decorative granite counters, and there is evidence that flat bread was a staple.The hearth bread found in the excavations in Pompeii is very impressive. The loaves were perfectly shaped and risen boule, with the seal of the bakery imprinted in the crust. Clearly the bakers had great skill working with flour, water, salt, yeast and dough. These skills, combined with the ready availability of both brick ovens and traditional pizza ingredients, including cured meats, olive oil, pine nuts, capers, garlic, onion, cheese and herbs leads me to imagine that they also made good pizza. They had everything but the tomatoes. With the fall of the Roman Empire, skill and knowledge in many pursuits were lost, including cooking. I have trouble imagining the Duke eating a good, hot medieval pizza somewhere off in his drafty castle. Nonetheless, round brick ovens were a critical component of food and cooking in the Middle Ages, as evidenced by the large numbers of surviving ovens, mentions in literature and many depictions in art. Who knows? Perhaps the papal court in Avignon enjoyed pizza after all. The term pizza was first used in an Italian cookbook in 997. The tomato arrived in Europe from the New World in the 16th century, and the word pizzaiolo was first mentioned in the 17th century. Naples wins the award for doing the best job of laying claim to being the birthplace of pizza, though some in the Italian restaurant business believe that Venice actually invented pizza, and that they just got out-marketed. As an aside, Venice banned wood- burning furnaces in the city in the 13th century after they © Forno Bravo, LLC 2007. All Rights Reserved. Ver. 1.1 5
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got tired of burning the city down, and glass production was moved to the island of Murano. To this day, there are no wood-fired pizzerias in Venice. Regardless, pizzerias started appearing in Naples in the early 18th century, with the world’s first true pizzeria, Antica Pizzeria Port ‘Alba, opening in Naples in 1830. The story of the “Margherita” pizza being created as an offering to the Queen of Italy during her visit to Naples took place in 1889. The colors of the Margherita pizza (tomato, mozzarella and basil) are the colors of the Italian flag. As another aside, the Italian national soccer team is called the Azzurre, or blue. Until the late 1800Õs pizzerias could only be found in Naples. Many of the best pizzerias in Naples can trace their roots back multiple generations, including Trianon da Ciro, shown below. Today in modern Italy, pizza is inseparable from daily life. From humble pizza by the slice (pizza a taglio) to the most sophisticated restaurants, pizza is eaten at sit down lunch (pizza a pranzo), on foot, and at dinner Ð as an appetizer (antipasto), first course (primo piatto) or main course (secundo piatto). Everybody eats pizza, not just kids and college students. Restaurants that have both impeccable white linen tablecloth service and a wood-fired oven do take out Ð hopefully your appetizer pizza doesnÕt fall behind someoneÕs party and the 20 pizza boxes going out the front door. And then there are the ubiquitous pizza delivery scooters Ð often seen driving on the sidewalk in order to make a fast delivery. The first pizzeria in the U.S. opened in 1905, and in the aftermath of WW II, returning American GIs created what has become an insatiable appetite for pizza Ð first in America, and then around the globe. Today, pizza has grown to become a $30+billion business, with millions of pizzas consumed daily. Sadly, most of them are not very good, or very good for you.Which is where we come in.© Forno Bravo, LLC 2007. All Rights Reserved. Ver. 1.1 6
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2. Why Wood-Fired Pizza Is Better Your Forno Bravo wood-fired oven is the perfect pizza making machine. ItÕs a miracle of nature. It operates in a completely different way than any other oven, including a pizza stone in a conventional oven, a commercial deck oven, pizza on a grill, or any of the fantastic things many of us have done to try to convert gas and electric ovens and grills into brick ovens.The difference is that wood-fired ovens bake a pizza three different ways Ð all at the same time. They use reflected heat, convection and conductive heat to bake the perfect pizza in about 90 seconds. The three cooking components work together in harmony so that the crust, the cheese, the sauce, the topping and the olive oil are all perfectly cooked Ð at exactly the same time.How does it work?First, the flame from a live fire is bounced off the dome onto your pizza, baking the pizza from above, and fusing the sauce, cheese and oil to a wonderful rich brown color and deep flavor. This reflective heat is hot enough to ÒcookÓ a fresh tomato sauce on top of the pizza.This heat not only cooks your pizza, it also recharges the oven floor, putting heat back into the floor to replace the heat that is lost through cooking.Second, because your Forno Bravo oven breathes, drawing in cold air through the lower half of the oven opening and exhausting hot air out the top half of the opening, it is constantly moving hot, moist air across the top of your food. While modern convection ovens use fans and heat coils to move hot, dry air within the oven, nothing can compare with natural convection.Convection helps cook the top of your pizza evenly, and the moist cooking environment gives your pizzaÕs cornicione (outer rim) some of the steam it needs to spring (or puff up) while cooking. And finally, the heat stored in the cooking floor is transferred directly into the moist pizza dough base. The hot cooking floor extracts moisture from the dough to create steam that literally lifts the pizza slightly in the air Ð off the cooking floor. The hot surface and steam give wood-fired pizza its unique crisp crust and moist, delicate crumb.It is this unique cooking ability that makes your wood-fired oven so perfectly suited for pizza. And try as we might, there is no substitute for a real brick oven.Still, take care. Just having a wood-fired oven does not mean that you will automatically make good pizza. If you are like us, you have probably eaten in a wood-fired © Forno Bravo, LLC 2007. All Rights Reserved. Ver. 1.1 8
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pizzeria that makes terrible pizza. IÕve done it far too many times.You still have to pay attention to the basics, including good fire management technique, proper dough preparation and handling, and accurate pizza baking.So while itÕs possible to make a bad pizza in a brick oven, it is equally impossible to make a really great pizza without a brick oven. So you are on your way. © Forno Bravo, LLC 2007. All Rights Reserved. Ver. 1.1 9
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3. Different Styles of Pizza There is wide range of different styles of pizza, many of which are truly excellent. There really is no right or wrong style of pizza. Pizza can bring back childhood memories, evoke feelings from vacations and seeing new places, or bring back a sense of connection to a place where you no longer live. Pizza gives us a close connection to our feelings, which I think is why pizza is so passionately discussed, analyzed and eaten.There are a number of archetypal pizzas, most of which you can make in a wood-fired oven. We are listing these in no particular order, or without any implied rank of importance.Pizza NapoletanaPizza Napoletana is a thin pizza, characterized by a large rim, or cornicione. The main components are Italian Tipo 00 flour (preferably Molino Caputo), San Marzano tomatoes, fresh mozzarella cheese, and extra virgin olive oil (though the type of oil is debated). There is wide consensus that Pizza Napoletana must be baked in a hot, wood-fired oven and that cooking times should be around 90 seconds to two minutes. The tomato sauce is little more than smashed peeled tomato, so the quality of the tomatoes really matters. Pizza Napoletana tends to be soupy, with the use of fresh tomato sauce, fresh mozzarella and olive oil, and it always soft Ð to that the crust can be folded without cracking.The typical Pizza Napoletana is made using a 250-280 gram dough ball, and some are as large as 300 grams, shaped into an 11Ó-12Ó pizza. (DonÕt worry, we provide a lot more information on pizza dough weights later in the e-Book.) While the Pizza Napoletana method states that the dough should be made each morning, many Naples pizzerias make their dough the night before, and refrigerate it overnight. In fact, that is what Antimo Caputo, the head of Molino Caputo recommends, and thatÕs a pretty good source of advice.Pizza Napoletana is supported by the Verace Pizza Napoletana association, who received a good deal of attention a few years ago when they published the VPN specification and presented it to the European Union to be considered as a food product controlled by the DOC (Denominazione dÕOrigine Controllata) system. They also provide VPN branding for restaurants. The Pizza Napoletana style is also found in Puglia, though residents of other regions of Italy typically say that it is too doughy and difficult to digest. It is not fair to say that Pizza Napoletana is a national style of pizza.Artisan Italian PizzaOutside Naples, there is a traditional ÒItalianÓ style pizza that you will find in most wood-fired oven pizzerias (Forno a Legna). It is also a thin crust pizza, but it does not have the large, puffy cornicione of Pizza Napoletana, and the crust is not as soft or doughy. It is a lighter pizza that is made to be eaten with a knife and fork Ð unlike Pizza Napoletana whose roots lie more with the poorer classes, and can be eaten on foot.© Forno Bravo, LLC 2007. All Rights Reserved. Ver. 1.1 10
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Italian artisan pizza is characterized by a small number of ingredients, both in terms of range and amount. You can see the pizza base through the sauce, and the mozzarella does not cover the entire base of the pizza. Many pizzas come with either zero other ingredients, such as the Margherita, or with just one, including olive, artichoke, potato, zucchini, sausage, pepperoni or ham (Prosciutto Cotto).The typical Italian artisan pizza is made using a 250 gram dough ball, made that morning, and shaped into an 11Ó pizza.NY Style Pizza Some people think of NY style pizza as the original American adaptation of the Italian artisan thin crust pizza. While it is still a thin crust pizza, it is thicker than the traditional Italian pizza, and it is larger and more muscular as well. The NY pizza can be 18Ó or larger, and it has more sauce and more cheese. The sauce itself is often cooked and is thicker than traditional Italian sauce, and it is made with domestic mozzarella, which is drier, and has more body than fresh mozzarella.NY style pizza can be made with either bread flour, a mix of bread flour and general-purpose flour, a mix of bread flour and Italian Tipo 00 flour, and even with 100% Italian Tipo 00 flour. Each will give the pizza a different texture and crust. A NY style pizza dough ball can weigh as much as 650-700 grams. The slices are so large that you have to fold one over to pick it up. NY style pizza works wonderfully in a wood-fired oven operating at high temperatures Ð though the pizza takes a little longer than 90 seconds to bake.Chicago Deep Dish PizzaThe Chicago deep dish pizza doesnÕt really have an extremely thick crust, but the crust is pushed up the sides of a pan to hold in lots of sauce, cheese and toppings. One old-fashioned Chicago pizzeria claims that the recipe comes from an Italian grandmother in Torino (in the North of Italy) who made a type of ricotta pie. Another says the Chicago pizza grew up in Chicago during the 1940s, where WWII made food tight, and a pizza casserole was an inexpensive way to make food stretch.While deep dish pizza is famous in Chicago, a recent newspaper article noted that there has been an influx of Pizza Napoletana restaurants in the city. Perhaps tastes are changing.Nouveau PizzaThink Thai Chicken pizza, or Mango Chicken Tandoori pizza. Made popular by California Pizza Kitchen, which started business in Beverly Hills, CA, and now has more than 180 restaurants in 6 countries, Nouveau Pizza is characterized by exotic and international flavors. While the pizza itself has some problems Ð it is baked slowly in a cool gas-fired oven and the dough is questionable Ð the concept is an exciting one. There is nothing to keep us from making exotic pizzas using authentic pizza dough in a real wood-fired pizza oven.Cracker Crust PizzaAlso a Chicago phenomenon, cracker crust pizza has a very thin, crunchy crust, but it is still pliable. ItÕs a very light pizza, in the mold of the traditional Italian artisan pizza. On occasion you can find a cracker crust style pizza in Italy, though it is somewhat random. If you look around Italy long enough, you will find a pizzaiolo who learned to make pizza with a smaller dough ball and a rolling pin, and he will bang out a very light pizza. In the best cases, it can be light and delicate, with some crunch, where in the worst cases it is simply overworked, brittle and tough.© Forno Bravo, LLC 2007. All Rights Reserved. Ver. 1.1 11
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