Kettle Pizza.. Small but effective.. that’s what she said

I’ve been making homemade dough, pizza and bread for quite some time now. I recently converted an old Weber into a wood fired by using the kettle pizza insert. What’s everyone else using and what are you making?

 

what your dough recipe? I also have a pizza kettle.

 

There's a thread for everything here...

https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/anything-pizza.488785/



I have a sourdough starter that I have not used yet, started it a few months ago now. Might make me a pizza with that. Been killing it with the focaccias lately though, need to make one Saturday for an early thanksgiving get together.

 

I pretty much go 4 cups of bread flour, salt, Luke warm water, yeast.. I let my
Dough cold proof though for like 3 days I’m the fridge.. best flavor in my opinion

 

I did the same but added dough improver to make the dough stretch better and not rip

 

Damn, I even searched before I made this. Maybe I can’t read….

 

There we go, I changed the vibe

 

That bread loaf looks great!

 

Right now I do a quick rise for the focaccia, and I'm going to do that with my Saturday focaccia, but after that I might start experimenting with both sourdough and other proofs. But I am not tempting fate this week, sticking to the old tried and true. It's king arthur, I make it into seasalt and rosemary.

I did jack it up from memory though. 420g flour, 380g water. Made 2 while I was away for a couple weeks.

Got home, had the recipe written down and glanced at it......... 340g water

it felt jacked up but I chalked it up to being not in my normal kitchen, not having a stand mixer, etc etc.

 

Yeah I only use King Arthur. For Neapolitan style I use 00

 

Funny enough my recipe is king arthur. But I'm not picky about the flour for focaccia and sourdough starter. I just grab whatever AP. usually pillsbury is the cheapest and I just use that.

 

I use to work in an Italian bakery and they only used King Arthur. I think I’ve been brain washed.. but I will say it does make good dough.

 

I have one of those Kettle Pizza inserts. Works well but pretty expensive for what it is. Are you using anything above the insert to reflect the heat down? I have a kettle grate that I covered with heavy foil that goes on top of the insert before putting the lid on. Seems to help.

 

No, I was thinking about that before I made my first pizza. But I’m able to get this thing up to 1000 degrees, and have had no problem with just the lid

 

Copper

 

The reflector may be overkill. Seems to help though esp when doing more than one pizza, each one cooks faster so I don't have to reload. I don’t use it much though. Seeing this thread makes me want to dust it off

 

In case this helps (I was a chef in Newport, RI for a few years and did all our breads/pastries/desserts in-house). King Arthur flour has a higher gluten content than other "all purpose" flour, such as Pillsbury, Gold Medal, etc.

It's because King Arthur is a Vermont brand, and formulates their all purpose with more gluten because the primary use for AP flour in the New England area has traditionally been for bread. Other AP flours are formulated more for other parts of the country (ie. the rest of the country) where AP has traditionally been used for uses that require a flour with less gluten - biscuits, etc.

00 flour is similar to the higher gluten content of bread flour, but is ground to a much finer degree. Not sure about the exact gluten content, but I recall it has a higher gluten content than most bread flours as well. 00 flour is the finest grind flour you can get, which leads to a somewhat "soft" texture but still "stretchy" because of use of soft durham wheat exclusively (versus AP flour that combines hard and soft wheat). This is what produces crust that is "crisp but stretchy."

Using a high gluten flour like bread flour would give a dough a good stretch, but cannot cannot duplicate the "soft" texture and crispness that 00 will give because of the finer grind of 00.

 

Yeah, and protein content. For dough and bread I won’t use anything under 12%.

 

For anyone who may have difficulty finding King Arthur, but does not want to go full bread flour, you can buy wheat gluten online from sources like Amazon and fortify AP yourself. You would have to experiment on what works best for you as far as proportion.

Adding wheat gluten is also helpful if you're trying to make "stretchy" noodles like ramen (with the addition of an alkaline such as sodium carbonate)

 

I discovered King Arthur Flour during the work from home 2020 era. It's definitely great for pizza dough and bread. Then I started ordering bread mixes from The Prepared Pantry. Everything including the yeast is already in the bag just add water and put it in the Hamilton Beach Bread Maker Machine.

I would like to try an Ooni Koda 16" Gas powered Pizza oven from Costco if they get more in stock though.

What's everyone's favorite pizza sauce or do you make it from scratch? I've been using the pizza sauce from Trader Joe's or Contadina in the squeeze bottles.