Didn’t par bake the crusts @ebethsdad but heating the stone for 40 minutes seemed to do the trick. Much better results. Thanks everybody for the tip. Rookie mistake.
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I would recommend a infrared thermometer to check your deck temperatures. for NYC style you can bake around 600, for neo style, higher 700 and higher.
This what i do to maximize the oven. I actually cook more brassicas and fish in it then pizzas. while preheating, stick a cast iron pan that fits inside. While that’s preheating cut up some caulifower, brocolli, brocollini, brussel sprouts of whatever with oil and seasoning. after 20 min, toss those in and within 10 minutes, you’ll have the best roasted veggies (you may need to pull out and turn). Finish by tossing in some shaved parm.
Similarly with fish-- yellow tail collars or oily fishes like mackerel… preheat, cook and minutes later you’ll have izakaya quality broiled fish with the bubbliest and charred skin. Baste with some miso part way for amazing caramelization. Cook Same way with octopus. Same with steak for that matter.
Then after 40 minutes i do my pizzas or pita or whatever. Use the dough that will get you cooking most. Doesn’t matter if you make your own or not, just keep on doing and the more you do it the better you’ll get. also, a cheap turning peel is great.
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With the burners above the stone, that won’t tell you whether it is fully preheated, unless there’s some way to shoot the laser at the bottom of the stone.
If you put a cast iron pan on top, that would further slow preheating.
my oven and the roccboxes and ooni, all have openings directly to shoot the infrared at the stone. deck temp and and ambient temps are different. doesn’t slow anything for me.
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There are holes in the bottom of the Ooni and Roccbox so you can check the temperature of the bottom of the stone? Because that’s what will tell you whether it’s preheated.
do you cook on the bottom of the pizza stone? because that would be quite the feat.
just because you own the pizzacraft PC6000 doesn’t make you an expert at all pizza ovens. Obviously you don’t have a roccbox or ooni style oven so why are you questioning my advice to @js76wisco on the best practices of such ovens?
i’'ll prob be banned for this. good bye everyone!
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Physics 101: With a heat source above the stone, it’s fully preheated when the bottom is the target temperature. The top will reach that temperature much sooner. When the top is first at the target temperature, the stone may not have stored enough heat to cook a single pizza optimally.
Hey, I’m the one who told @js76wisco to preheat longer, which produced better results. If your approach works well, fine, but, again physics 101, the stone will preheat faster without a cast-iron pan on top of it.
I’ve been trying to get my pizza game going before trying other items but that octopus and saba look great. Good ideas and thanks for the inspiration.
I’m out of propane but veggies and seafood are definitely next up in the Ooni.
The only thing I noticed is that the 1st and 2nd pizza out of the oven had the best undercarriage. The 3rd and 4th pizzas didn’t crunch up as much but thats probably expected. I was thinking of cranking up the heat to high for ~10 minutes in between pizzas but seems like a lot of extra work.
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yes, that’s right. it may take a few minutes to come back up to temp esp if you turned it down during the cook. i keep mine full blast so that as soon as i’m done and by time prep the next one its ready to go.
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Love this post.
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Lovely pizza! Here’s a video that helped me make a more even crust, How to Stretch Your Pizza Dough & How To Use a Pizza Peel - YouTube. Shape doesn’t matter, but having a uniform thickness is a good thing.
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Between the roccbox, ooni or other wood fired oven what do people recommend.
I want to use it to cook not only pizzas but other items like @hppzz
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Ooni has several models varying mainly on size and fuel. The newer ones are all well reviewed, i would look at the 16 inch size. Gozney has the roccbox and now the dome. The dome sounds amazing but unproven and right now delivery’s aren’t happening til summer and fall. Though the company itself has developed good rep with the roccbox.
Those two Companies are market leaders for the mid to lower end home pizza ovens. There maybe few others out there if you due diligence but can’t go wrong with either.
Personally I love the convenience of gas. Most people I know with wood fired pizza ovens don’t notice much of a difference since it’s only cooked for 2 minutes.
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Doing a little cursory research it looks like some models have both gas and wood options for both ooni and roccbox. Anyone have one of those?
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I have the Roccbox with the new wood burner. I love the oven, but the wood burner sucks. I even bought the wood fuel which is kiln dried oak cut to fit into the wood burner. 90 minutes preheating doesn’t even get to 600 degrees.
Fueling it with propane in no problem. Its a great oven but the wood burning aspect is useless.
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Off-topic question: do you oven broil the fish in a dry pan?
the collar and saba have plenty of natural oil so i don’t add any extra and have no issues sticking. plus the cast iron is screaming hot so it sears pretty instantly. that’s the nice thing bout this method of cooking it in a pizza oven–flames on top creates the char and bubbles, but the heat from the pan from below gives a great sear.
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Cooked two parcooked pies last night. Put them in at 700 instead of 600 and they came out with perfectly crisp crusts. Only took a picture of the first one. I brushed it with garlic oil which is visible on the peel.
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Thanks for the tips. What temperature do you cook at when you put the cheese and toppings on?
My crust looks awful in that picture because I’ve been using metal tongs to move the pizza around. Do you use the wooden Ooni pizza peel to move the pizza around in the oven? I usually rotate the pie 90 degrees 3 times to get 1/4 of the crust closest to the fire.
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I have a Roccbox so I use their peel to pull the crust out and turn it either by hand or with tongs. I may eventually buy Gozney’s turning peel. I turn by sight; if the edge closest to the flame is getting too dark I turn. Depending on temp that’s generally every 30 to 40 seconds.
I have been parcooking at 600, then topping and cooking at 700.
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