As mentioned in a prior post, I always loved pizza but that was from a gastronomical perspective. I loved all kinds of pizza from thin to thick crust and everything in between. I recall making pizza with my grandmother when I was pretty young. She used an ingredients kit - I believe it was called Appian Way - that included dough, sauce, cheese. It was dreadful. Even at a young age, my far from discerning palate recognized this was the low bar in pizza. However, because it was time spent with my grandmother, it was a special event that I always appreciated and looked forward to.

When I was well into adulthood, I ventured into making pizza, first with a California style thin crust and then once I got into sourdough, deep dish. All "good" attempts, but nothing to really propel me into the art of pizza-making. That would change in the fall of 2011.

This lovely piece of masonry sat on a lower terrace at a house in Torca, Italy. As the property manager showed us around the house on our arrival, I asked about the oven and if we could use. "Oh no," he said. "You could ruin it." 

He did offer us the services of a pizza chef for a night. Fortunately, my family was all in and a few nights later, the chef arrived with prepared dough and the freshest of ingredients. I watched him set the fire in the oven and he explained an oven like this would take hours to get hot enough to cook in.

He got the fire going well and he and our property manager took off for the bar while we stayed at the house and drank wine. A couple hours later he returned and checking the oven, pointed out it was almost ready. The red bricks of the oven were almost white hot. The heat was significant.

I had the opportunity to make and cook the first pizza and surprisingly I handled the peel and process of turning the pizza pretty well. I would learn this was strictly beginners luck as there would be many pizza fails in the years to come. However, there was a visceral excitement to working a few feet from 1000° heat while delicately turning and moving a pizza. I didn't know it at the time, but I was hooked. I needed to develop my inner pizzaiolo.

Once home, I began making pizzas in my oven, but the 500° residential range failed on so many levels. I would move up to a small outdoor gas oven called the Pronto that at 700° inched me closer to my goal - which admittedly at the time was unknown. I knew hotter was better and the ultimate oven was that brick oven in Southern Italy. I was on a journey.

I will cover the different ovens I had and are available in a future post, but over the next few years I would work with the Pronto and then modify it to push its temp to the 800° range. That led to a Blackstone that got me up to a 900° range, but with a floor temp that was far below. Still not good enough.

Torca was just south of Naples, the home of Neapolitan pizza, and the key to this style of pizza is well hydrated dough (00 flour, water, yeast, salt) and a very hot oven. The dome temperature should be in the 1000° range with a floor temp in the 800° range. The pizza should cook in 60-90 seconds (some say no more than 60 and I would agree). Just for comparison sake, a pizza chain is cooking in a gas oven turning pies out in 8-10 minutes. 

I would learn about the Neapolitan (or Napoletana) style through forums and websites. The oven above was in Pompei in 79 AD. The pizza Napoletana has always been about fire. As my own skills advanced, I found the limitations of the gas ovens I was using. I wanted a brick oven like the one in Italy, but it was cost and location prohibitive. 

So, eventually I "settled" on a Pizza Party oven, a modern alternative to the brick oven that is much smaller and lighter while still capable of reaching temperatures in excess of 1100°. The oven would be a significant enough investment at nearly $1600 delivered, but still less expensive than a brick oven investment. As I opted for thicker firebricks on the floor, the floor temps are capable of temperatures in the mid 800's. 

I've had the oven cranked up to turn out 60 second pizzas on a number of occasions, but because it lacks the thermal mass of a brick oven, the fire is key to successful - and consistent - bakes. So, there's a lot more fire-tending going on to keep temperatures up. Fortunately, when you are cooking 6-8 pizzas, the total cooking time isn't that long so just being diligent on maintaining the fire isn't that big of a deal.

While I don't have the full brick oven experience, I do feel that I come pretty close. The blast of heat as I remove the oven door, the quick 60 second bakes, the rapid peel work to turn the pies. Ultimately though, while I always strive to perfect my pizzaiolo skills, it would all be for nought if I wasn't serving pizza to friends, family. Pizza night is not a sedentary event. It is interactive and engages everyone, the flames and heat providing entertainment and comfort that only fire can bring.

Ultimately, what I'm trying to rediscover is what I felt that warm evening in Italy and although some of it was the fire and the food, it was more about company. So, the quest now is to create the first part to let the rest follow...