Neapolitan Style Pizza Dough
When we moved to Italy 3
1/2 years ago. Our new house (500 year old farmhouse)
came with a HUGE wood fired pizza oven.
It hadn't been used in many years. We asked the
neighbors for help and decided to make an bread and
pizza day the following weekend. We bought some pizza
tools and the neighbors showed us a stock of hazelnut
wood behind the oven. The farm has many acres of
vineyards and hazelnut orchards that 2 Piemontese
brothers look after.
The following weekend we got up early and lighted the
pizza oven. Lorenzo, our neighbor said it had to burn
for many hours to get all the dampness out since it
hadn't been used in a long time. Later in the morning
we made a big batch of bread dough.
Thankfully the neighbors had a BIG mixer that he got
from Ferrero, that was used to mix chocolate.
Our normal batch ended up being about 40 big rounds
of bread, similar to ciabatta. The 40 rounds fit in
the all at the same time (that's how big the oven
is)! The fire burned for many hours, the ceiling
became all white, which is what you want, extremely
hot, then we had to let it cool down a little for the
bread, for pizza, the hotter the better (around 700
degrees F).
We took out all the coals and saved them in a metal
container, cleaned the floor of the oven by brush and
then a mop with water.
When the oven was a good temperature (about 375 F),
the bread went in. It turned out perfect! Everybody
had fun. This started a routine to make bread every
other Sunday afternoon, followed by pizza dinner.
Later, for dinner, we put the coals back in, added
more wood and got the oven back up to pizza
temperature.
We assembled our pizzas "Pizza Prosciutto", dough,
tomato sauce, proscuitto cotto, mozzarella and
oregano and put them in the oven.
They cooked in about 3-4 minutes and turned out good!
It was now mid October, a little too cold to eat
dinner outside, so we put all the pizzas on big pasta
boards and drove them next door to their winery,
Vigin, and we ate them in the
winery on a big temporary table.
A very fun day working together.
The pizza dough was good but I started that day on a
quest to find a great pizza dough recipe that took
many tries, after about 8 bread baking days, this
recipe was finally the winner. This pizza dough
recipe also makes a really good
foccaccia.