Pizza Party

I held a pizza party for the students that scored above a 50% on the end of term exam for any of my classes. 

I will give an overview of the process for those of you that have not cooked in a wood-fired pizza oven before.

First, you make the dough, sauce, and toppings.  I use normal bread dough for my pizza, although I do not use a recipe, so it may not actually be so normal given the number of iterations that I have gone through.

While one person is making the dough, another person can light the fire in the oven.  The fire stays for about an hour and a half.  Then, you have to remove the coals.  I have had all sorts of accessories made for the oven, including my most recent addition, which is a metal pizza paddle.  The pizza paddle was well worth the $4 I paid for it, because it keeps me from burning all of the hair off of my arms each time I reach into the 600 degree Farenheit oven to add or remove a pizza.  The way that I used to do it was not good at all.

Then the coals are removed using another locally made tool.  I put the coals in a box in order to save them for later use and keep them from smoking all over the place.

Then the pizza is put into the oven.  Most people do not use pizza pans, and I may try this one day, but so far I have used aluminum pans that I bought at the local super-store.

The pizza is put into the oven and the first batch only takes about 5 minutes to cook due to the extreme heat.  My oven uses locally available materials and does not retain heat very well, but if I wanted to I could cook 3 or 4 rounds of pizza and bread.  Although so far I have only made enough dough for 2 rounds.

Then you cut the pizza, let it cool, and enjoy.  This pizza is topped with homemade sauce (fresh tomatoes, rosemary, oregano, basil, garlic, ground pepper, hot peppers, salt, a little sugar, etc), onions, squash, potatoes, carrots, and cheese.