FoodieSo

When making plans for backyard landscaping tasks, many families typically recollect adding wooden decks, flagstone patios, flower beds, or perhaps a hot bathtub or swimming pool. A uncommon few might construct a everlasting wooden-burning pizza oven. However, that’s precisely what Andrew Casey’s own family did.
Andrew, his spouse Nancy, and their son Flynn (thirteen) have lived in their Wellington Village home for about eleven years. The pizza oven was mounted seven years ago as part of a larger landscaping undertaking that also blanketed an in-floor pool.

Drainage issues and deep color had prevented an awful lot from growing, so the overhaul became a perfect answer for this circle of relatives. A blend of trees across the perimeter of the yard now creates a tranquil putting each for lazy dips in the pool in addition to backyard interesting, which they do frequently. So how did a permanent pizza oven come to be part of their landscaping plan? It is an uncommon fixture, in particular in Ottawa.

The solution is easy. “Cooking is my passion,” says Andrew. When he was in university, Andrew labored as a waiter on the Ritz within the Byward Market, which had a wood-fired pizza oven. “I used to hang out with the chef there,” he says. “I’d pass in early and watch them do the prep, so I may want to determine out how they have been cooking certain stuff, and I type of fell in love.”

This passion for cooking and a memorable night meal at a friend’s vicinity who had an indoor pizza oven basically fuelled the one’s landscaping plans. Their backyard wood-burning pizza oven, as he says, becomes a “dream come proper.”
He did some studies and purchased a kit online from a seller in Italy. The pizza oven package is an “igloo” created from the identical fabric as a pizza stone, handiest thicker. It was added in pieces and assembled on a cement base using the company that established their swimming pool.

Andrew guesstimates he makes five-6 pizzas every week, which can be in general ate up on Saturday nights. It’s a bit of a technique. However, he insists that it’s well worth it—first, the crust. A top pizza begins with a notable crust, and Andrew prefers sourdough for this step. Sourdough isn’t made with yeast. Alternatively, it makes use of a “starter” crafted from flour and water. Naturally happening yeast and bacteria ferment the dough, which leads to a tangy flavor. It takes approximately four days to make sourdough for the pizzas, even though Andrew has been known to shop for premade dough from Il Negozio Nicastro if he doesn’t have a batch equipped to move or has suffered a catastrophic sourdough failure.

Nicastro’s is not a sourdough, but Andrew insists it’s extraordinary pizza dough. “The dough is sincerely elastic… the correct size so they arrive out first-rate and skinny,” he says. It comes frozen, but it thaws in about an hour, which is good for a spontaneous pizza party. He admits that dough desire is a surely private issue – a few like a thicker, bready pizza whilst others decide on a crisper, thinner crust – however, thinner crusts are the first-class option for his pizza oven due to the fact the temperature is so high, and the pizzas cook in no time. You don’t need the crust to burn earlier than it chefs all of the manners through.

Pizza party planning certainly starts offevolved some days ahead because the sourdough starter because it has to be “reinvigorated” on a Tuesday or Wednesday. So he makes the dough Wednesday night. Then, after kneading it a few times, he divides it into smaller portions on Saturday morning and permits them to relax within the refrigerator till later that day. (Worth noting: He usually makes greater dough for calzones for Flynn’s lunches.)

The reason why pizza events take area on Saturday nights is as it takes a couple of hours to get the hearth burning and the temperature right. The timber is cut up into smaller pieces that could effortlessly be fed into the oven. The fire begins within the front and center, pushed to the back and facets before sliding within the uncooked pizza. (Andrew recommends apple and cherry woods because they burn well and may hold their heat for longer and impart a nice flavor. )
The pizzas bake for three minutes at a completely excessive temperature – 800-850F – and can be made simultaneously. The result is a first-rate skinny crust that comes out charred and bubbly, crisp at the out of doors, however soft on the interior.