Started today with the objective of following the flow chart in the box to the lettter (major thanks for making the startup process so straight forward.)
Step 1: 30 minutes => Get the over to 550’ with the shelf in the oven. This took my Bosch oven 30-ish minutes (rough estimate as I know when asked my wife to turn in on and the oven ready went off 30’ after that)
Step 2: Wait 10 minutes. Elapsed time 40’
Step 3: Turn off oven and wait 2 minutes. ET -> 42’
Step 4: Turn on broiler and peek in to make sure it is turned in fact, on. About 5’. ET -> 47’
Step 5: Peek in about 2’ - 3‘. ET -> 50’
Step 6: It’s ‘ZA time!
I took a standard Trader Joe’s plain pre-made dough package and divided it in to four portions so i could experiment without too much waste.
Cooking process:
Raw dough to pre-cook, pullout top, cook to final for all four runs
Results Table: (format as you can add tables to this section -> Experiment number : 1st Cook time : Results : 2nd Cook time : Results)
Exp #1 ->
1st Cook Time: 3 minutes (‘)
Results: A bit under cooked no brown spots
2nd Cook Time 5’
Results: Way too much time, need to reduce (no pics until the end as didn’t want mess up my flow)
Exp #2 ->
CT1: 4‘
Results: A bit uneven carbonizing on the front and back of the ‘za
CT2: 4’
Results: Too much time, need to reduce, (no pics)
Exp #3 ->
CT1: 2’30”
Results: Got it right dough bubbled and has a good look :
CT2: 2’ + 30”*
Results: Just right, cheese and meat properly cooked/melted.
Exp #4 ->
CT1: 2’
Results: Perfectly brown/black dime spots and raised dough puffs
CT2: 2’ +30”
Results: The dough bubbles from the first cook deflated and made a really good finished product. This looks to be the right combo for my oven.
- - Made procuitto arugula pizza and wilt the arugula after the second cook for 30” as a pseudo 3rd cook.
Learnings from this first run:
Give yourself 1 hour for the pre-heat process
Proof your bread while the steel preheats.
If you are going to use parchment paper and not polenta/maize/corn, make sure the sheet is just a bit less than the size of the dough round as anything outside the dough will brown and start to stink.
I have pics of the fourth pizza coming out as well as the steel after four pizzas.
Going to follow the directions for cleaning it up on the 26th as I’m making 10 ‘zas for the day of basketball 😀