apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

gosh, that looks fantastic!

are you sure you are not a pizzaiolo?

I had a pizza recently that I'm planning to recreate (maybe tonight): pureed squash (I'll use some delicata that I have all roasted in the fridge) and walnuts, over really good cheese. The sweet squash and slightly bitter walnuts were amazing together.

I read somewhere (on the internet) about a guy turning his oven to self-clean in order to get the ultra-high temperatures for doing good pizza. Are there actually ovens that you can dial up to 600 degrees?

I read the same thing about the self-cleaning oven from Jeffrey Steingarten (food writer at Vogue) but the self clean function is automatic and the oven locks for the duration of the cycle and there's no way to stop it. Consequently his pizza was trapped in a 600 degree oven for 30 minutes, setting off every smoke detector in the house. Needless to say nothing was left of the pizza.

Tampering with the self-cleaning option to cook pizza may be dangerous.

Home ovens do not get that hot, however, an investment in a good pizza stone and preheating it should do the trick.

I'm still impressed with that pizza above. It's looks so damn good.

The guy who reverse-engineered the pizza in new york is who I most often see credited with the self-cleaning idea. But he actually had to cut or break through the lock on the oven in order to avoid the Steingarten problem. Not a trick for everyone.

I would suggest an alternative to the pizza stone: a rectangular cast iron griddle. It's multipurpose (great for steaks or shrimp--on skewers for rapid flipping), can stay in the oven but also go on the stove top, and functions similarly: gets hot and stays hot.

I prefer it to stone because it's stronger, less sensitive to thermal shock, and much more sanely priced; mine was under $10 (I know you an get unglazed ceramic tiles for chips, but those are not as easy to find as I expected).

Plus, if you rub it lightly with oil once a week or so, and just leave it in the oven all the time, it seasons itself.

good tip renata!
i've got one that i'm going to put to work making pizza this weekend!

ooh that looks fantastic
I actually made a pizza recently, with local pizzeria dough, homemade pesto, mozzerella parmesan gorgonzola, and chicken. It really impressed my friends (not difficult, they are college students) who told me it brought back parts of their childhood :)
i'm going to try thsee combinations for my harvest dinner party!

My family gets together for pizza night on a semi-regular basis - pizza night being where we make the pizzas. We do personal sized pizzas, and everyone comes out with their own little masterpiece. We use ceramic tiles, which have tended to hold up better than the pizza stones.

If you have a bread machine, don't forget that you can use those to make the dough - so simple!

I usually use whole wheat pitas for the shell, but this is inspiring me to make my own dough.