First Pizza's from the new oven

Had some friends last night – the ones that helped me build the foundation/base of the oven – and we fired the oven up and made the first pizza’s!  We also had some tasty bourbon and beers 🙂
first-pizzas2

first pizza'sFor toppings, I put out bowls of :

  • fresh basil
  • fresh rosemary
  • hot chorizo sausage
  • bacon
  • oven roasted red onion
  • oven roasted red pepper
  • smoked gruyere
  • pecorino
  • bocconcini
  • a tomato sauce (with olive oil, salt & pepper, garlic)
  • and some olive oil to drizzle over the pizzas prior to sliding them into the oven.

pizza-toppings
Worked great having a few wooden pizza peels for everyone to prepare their pizza’s on.
Learnt a few things :

  • Be fairly liberal with the cornmeal on the pizza peels.
  • Don’t prepare the pizza’s too far in advance of getting them into the oven.
  • Keep your eye on the edges closest to the coals.
  • I need some more tools to manage the fire and coals, as well as manipulate the pizza’s while in the oven. Tools with longer handles!
  • Need to set up some sort of rack/shelf near the oven to keep tools and heat proof gloves handy.

Also, I think that I’ll be reworking the oven entrance, and remove the 3 fire bricks.  In their place, I want to put in a larger, single slab of granite or soapstone.