If you ask a real pizza lover what really makes the difference between a good and an excellent pizza, other than the ingredients, they will have no doubt: the oven is what makes the difference. Only a wood-fired oven can give pizza its full deep flavour.
The typical pizza wood-oven is dome shaped, tiled with special tiles, and designed to resist very high temperatures. In Maiano, a small village near Naples, there is a strong tradition of hand-made clay wood-ovens.
The particularity of a wood-oven, as opposed to a normal gas or electric oven, is that the dough cooks directly on the baking surface. Temperatures are very high in a wood-fired oven, reaching 400ºC (750ºF). With such a high temperature, the think base of the dough takes less than a minute to cook, and in such a short time, the tomatoes and other vegetables won’t get too dry, the mozzarella cheese melts at the right point, and the olive oil won’t burn its healthy fatty acids. In order to reduce smoke to the minimum, cherry or olive wood is used.
Unfortunately, for a home-baked pizza (my all time favorite, although not traditionally Italian, would be pepperoni pizza), having an wood-fired oven available is a rarity. To get as close as possible with an electric oven, the trick is to set the temperature as high as possible.
If you have never baked a piza at home, why not start from a basic pizza dough recipe?
- 40g / 1½ oz compressed fresh yeast or 2 sachets of easy-blend dried yeast
- ½ tsp sugar
- 400g / 14oz flour, plus extra for dusting
- 1 tsp salt
- 3 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
- 125ml / 4 fl oz lukewarm water
Pour the water and the sugar into a small bowl, crumble the yeast and stir to dissolve. Cover with a clean cloth and Let it prove for 30 minutes in a warm spot for 30 minutes. In the meantime, sift the flour into a larger bowl. Pour the yeast, salt and oil, and knead everything into a smooth dough. Shape it into a ball, dust it with a little flour, and set aside in a warm place to rise for an additional hour or until doubled in volume.
Visit my Italian recipes blog, for more delicious examples of how you can bring a bit of Italy at home.
