Baking Steel for Pizza

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Overshoot who?

(Not every time is a winner but I'm doing better than 50/50 now)

2015-05-17%2015.22.38.jpg
 
Overshoot who?

(Not every time is a winner but I'm doing better than 50/50 now)

2015-05-17%2015.22.38.jpg

Very nice!

Sometimes I would nail it and sometimes the bottom was smoking BAD before the top was even close.

There were times that mine seemed like it was a million degrees hotter than the surface of the sun. LOL
 
I used to use my BGE for pizza but I had a tendency to overshoot the target. I recently went to a steel shop and had them cut a piece of 1/4" plate to fit my oven - it was about $24 out the door.

Did you clean the plate in any way? season it? I think I just got inspired to buy a large metal plate for my oven too! :)

Also, I'm a little envious of everyone that has a BGE on here. When I move out of my apartment I'll need to look into getting one of those. I make pizza more frequently than just about any other meal, and I think the biggest "Ahh Ha!" moment for me was reading in Ken Forkishs' book "Flour Water Salt Yeast" where he mentions superheating your pizza stone with the broiler for 5 minutes or so before adding the pizza in. I always suffered from gooey bottom in the middle and this solved it.

Also I read in Ken's new book on pizza "The Art of Pizza" that depending on your oven temp the hydration of you dough should be different. He mentions that wood fired pizza ovens which reach 900 degrees or more use a much more hydrated dough (80% hydration or so) while for the home cook that has a standard oven, a lower hydration should be used since the pizza isn't cooking as quickly. I found this to be true while making pizza from bread doughs that were highly hydrated.
 
I washed it with warm soapy water and called it good. Nothing sticks to it.
 
Here's mine, I only use Cast Iron.

Add activated yeast, 1 tablespoon of bread making flour and 100ml of 30C water in a bowl, mix, leave for a few minutes.

Mix together 4 tablespoons of olive oil, pinch of salt, another 150ml of 30C water in a bowl, throw the yeast mixture in

Keep adding flour until you get a nice not-sticky dough, put it on the bench top, knead it for 5 minutes, put it back into the bowl, cover and let rest for 8 hours.

2 hours before cooking, oil up a cast iron skillet and place the now risen dough into it. Punch the dough down, let rise for a further two hours.

Blast the oven up to 250C. Punch the dough down into the skillet, add your toppings (Usually a Creme Fraiche base works best here but that's because I prefer it), place the skillet, cold, into the oven and blast that sucker for 10 minutes.

Serve. Have never had a issue with unbaked centres.
 
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