About that pizza oven I was talking about the other day….
One of the upgrades that we had budgeted for, before the crap hit the wind with regards to Paul’s employment, was for a backyard pizza oven. I had fallen in love with Bill Yerkes’ wood fried pizzas at BonoPizza, and went into contract for him to build us one for our backyard kitchen. Lucky for us, part of the purchase price included a hands on demonstration by Bill himself, back in the summer.
You really wouldn’t believe how hot this thing gets. A brand new pizza oven requires a considerable breaking in period, where you start out building small fires, and over the course of a week or two, build progressively bigger fires that burn for longer and longer. On this particular day, the oven had been going strong pretty much all day, and was so hot that it pretty much singes the hair off your arm if you get within a foot or so from the opening. Occupational hazard, I suppose.
So here’s the first pizza in the oven, a simple pizza with tomato sauce, fresh mozzarella and basil, and mushrooms. Less is more when it comes to making pizza – weigh it down too much and it won’t cook correctly.
And it does cook quickly – this is about 30 seconds in, on the first turn, and you can already see the crust starting to puff up and lightly brown. There’s a pretty big learning curve, too – I’m still trying to get the hang of it.
Doesn’t it look great? There’s not anything else quite like cooking your own pizza. I mean, we’ve made grill pizza, but that’s not nearly the same.
Here’s Bill posing with the oven. We’re planning on building up a permanent enclosure this summer, so it blends in better with the backyard and insulates it some.
I really can’t wait until it warms up enough for us to use it again.
One of the funnest things about that evening was making up topping combinations with stuff we had in the house. One of my favorite combinations was pesto, fresh mozzarella, and heirloom tomatoes.
One of things I wanted to pull off last summer was a “bring your own topping” pizza party for some local friends and acquaintances, but unfortunately I ran out of time to pull it all together. I’m hoping to be able to do it this year, and hope some of you will be able to come. What combinations would you put on a pizza?
If you want to build a pizza oven of your own, Bill Yerkes is the person to see. If anyone is interested, email me at columbusfoodieATgmailDOTcom, and I’ll get Bill’s information to you so he can give you a quote. Even if I don’t get daily (or even weekly) use out of it, it’s a fantastic addition to my outdoor kitchen.