I had watched volunteers at SFN stomp in the mud and cobble together an oven in two days, and I couldn’t stop dreaming about the pizzas, thin and crisp with a blistered bubbly edge, that emerged from that wood-fired oven. After doing a little research, I made a list of supplies and stuck it to my fridge. I even bought a book: How to Build Your Own Hearth Oven. It was going to happen. I would get my wood-fired oven. But a few weeks passed, and I never got around to building it. And before I knew it, a few years passed. And then a few children appeared. And then a few dreams disappeared. Friends, guess what? It’s never going to happen. I am nev-er going to build that mud oven nor am I going to drop ten grand on a more professional wood-fired oven. But guess what? It’s OK, because there is a product that will make all desires for acquiring these high-speed tools disappear. I had read about the Baking Steel in the Wall Street Journal and then in Food and Wine, but it was this post on Serious Eats that convinced me I had to buy one immediately. The story of the Baking Steel begins with Andris Lagsdin, a passionate cook, who, after reading about the conductive properties of steel in Nathan Myhyrvold’s Modernist Cuisine, began baking pizzas at home on steel plates made at his family-run steel company, Stoughton Steel. Pleased to discover that what he had read proved true — that because “steel is a more conductive cooking surface than stone,” pizza “cooks faster and more evenly at a lower temperature, resulting in a beautiful, thin, crispy crust” — Lagsdin initiated a Kickstarter campaign. And so was born the Baking Steel. Serious Eats’ Kenji Lopez-Alt, describes the tool as “the most impressive home pizza product [he’s] ever tested.” About a year ago I discovered tipo 00 flour, which, when used in the Lahey pizza dough recipe, produced the best pizzas I had ever made. Learning to shape the rounds with a delicate hand, moreover, created great bubbles throughout the pie as well as that ballooned and blistered outer edge characteristic of Neopolitan pizzas. The Baking Steel takes these bubbles to another level. Kenji offers this explanation:
For the past month, I have been making some sort of pizza or flatbread nearly every day, and they have never tasted so good. A few pictures below capture the “oven spring” as well as the crispy, speckled “undercarriage,” the two traits that separate Baking Steel pizzas from the sheetpan pizzas I have been making for years. There are other virtues to the steel as well — it’s lighter and more durable than stone; it doesn’t require a supply of wood — and again, you can read a thorough and more scientific analysis of the steel on Serious Eats. Below are recipes for two of my favorite pizzas: margherita made with a barely cooked tomato sauce; and caramelized onion and burrata. So, am I telling you that the next $79 you spend should be on a Baking Steel? Yes, I am. But this is the way I see it: with the Baking Steel now a permanent fixture in my oven, I have no use for any backyard wood-fired apparatus, which means I basically just earned $10,000, which will pay for what, a week (maybe two?) of one child’s college tuition? I know, I know, you can thank me later. Go on, order that steel and while you’re at it, crack open a few bottles of champagne. There’s never been more reason to celebrate. Oven spring: Making the sauce: Lahey pizza dough: I noted last week in the za’atar flatbread recipe that using parchment paper on a pizza peel is kind of wimpy. A nicely floured or cornmeal-sprinkled peel should allow a pizza to slide gracefully onto that heated surface, right? Well, in my experience, this doesn’t always happen. And pies that stick to peels can make a mess both on the steel or stone and on the floor of your oven. Moreover, flour or cornmeal that is left on a steel or a stone burns, which might fill your kitchen with smoke and cause your fire alarm to sound. And think about it: at the best pizza restaurants with those magnificent wood-fired ovens, the pizza maker is equipped with both a peel and a broom, which he/she uses to sweep away any flour, toppings, etc. left in the main cooking area. Home cooks can’t really do this. Parchment paper has solved this issue for me. The pizza-topped parchment paper slides effortlessly onto the heated stone. The presence of the paper does not affect how the pizza is cooked, and the paper can be removed (if desired) after a minute or two. Caramelized onion & burrata pizza: Oven spring: Undercarriage: 5 from 1 review If you buy this Tipo 00 flour, this recipe comes together in seconds — each bag conveniently weighs 1000g, which is what the recipe calls for. If you use the Lahey pizza dough, you need to plan ahead: the dough sits at room temperature for 18 hours before it can be used. Moreover, after the 18 hours, it benefits from some cold fermentation in the fridge. The 6 rounds of dough can be used over the course of three days. Equipment: Baking Steel, pizza peel, parchment paper (optional) 5 from 2 reviews 5 from 1 review
