Pizza Night!

Something we've missed very much over the last few years is having a pizza oven. Spike installed one in the garden of our first house in France and we often used it for the cooking holidays we used to run there.

In our last house we always planned to get one but never got around to it but once you have cooked and tasted a home-made pizza from a wood fired oven you'll come to realise that a pizza cooked in a standard kitchen oven is really not the same. 

One of the wonderful things about having a wood fired oven is that the pizzas cook in a matter of just a few minutes and then you can put in a casserole/tajine/curry and let it slow cook overnight or if you wan't a desert you could go for one of my favourites 'pain perdu'.  

We were chatting over dinner the other night trying to think of all the different things we could cook in one from baked apples to chestnuts, fish en papillote, baked potatoes and ooh yes pommes boulangère, roasts and of course... how could I forget... bread! 

Spike particularly enjoyed having an outside oven (as you can clearly see from this old photo) although he could be lethal with that big paddle (he's the same with anything long like copper pipes or ladders and it would pay for anyone in the vicinity to watch out lest they fall fowl of a rather painful, albeit amusing for anyone else watching, Laurel and Hardy moment).

Anyway, the point of this rather long story is that we have found a replacement for our trusty pizza oven in the form of this big old Portuguese oven found on, you may have already guessed, Le Bon Coin.

I was looking for a traditional oven when I came across this monster.  I thought for a town house courtyard it would look better than the normal rustic type and it comes on a stand with wheels so it is easy to move around.  

Like a normal pizza oven it has a terracotta interior which is ideal.  The only problem we had is that it was so heavy we could only slowly inch the thing out the back of our van onto some palettes so we are waiting for an army of men to help us lift it up onto the stand at some point.  It could do with a bit of a facelift but that's nothing a tin of black heat resistant paint can't fix. 

It's lucky that we save all kinds of silly things because Spike found a thermometer that came off our old boiler and retro fitted it onto the door.  It works a treat and looks really cool (or maybe that should be hot!??!?)

Once off the van we really couldn't wait so I knocked up some pizza dough (I had already made the sauce a couple of days before when we knew we were going to pick it up) and we were in business.  I have included the recipes that I used below in case you want to give it a go.

MARINARA SAUCE

  

200ml of olive oil

3 large onions (roughly chopped)

3 large garlic cloves (minced)

3kg of tomatoes ( 4 large tins sieved)

1 tablespoon of sugar

2 tablespoons of dried oregano

Salt and ground black pepper

Fry-off the onions until softened and add the garlic and fry for a further two minutes.  Add the tomatoes, sugar and oregano and cook for approximately 1 hour.

Place the mixture into a blender and blitz until smooth.  Season with salt and pepper to taste and allow the sauce to cool before using.  If storing the sauce for later use, place into sterilised jars when hot and once opened store in the refrigerator (or freeze).

PIZZA DOUGH

2 teaspoons of dried yeast

½ a teaspoon of sugar

150ml of warm water

350g of plain flour

4 tablespoons of olive oil

1 teaspoon of salt

Place the yeast and sugar into the warm water, stir until dissolved and leave until frothy.

Sieve the flour and add the yeast solution, olive oil and salt.  Work the dough with your fingers and then knead on a floured board until the dough becomes smooth and elastic (about 10 minutes).  If the dough is too wet add some flour or if too dry add a little more water.

Roll the mixture into a ball, dust with flour, and leave in a covered bowl in a warm place away from draughts until it has doubled in volume (about 1½ hours).  Knead for a further minute then roll out into a circle and raise the edge with the thumbs to form a rim.  The pizza is ready for filling and baking in a hot oven (approx. 220°C).

Our long awaited home-made pizzas ready to be cooked (oh bum... we should have done garlic bread!)

  

Number 12 took no time at all to heat (we have named it that for obvious reasons and have speculated that the previous owner - also from Portugal - may have liberated it from a campsite or somewhere similar or perhaps everyone in Portugal has one and they put their house numbers on them like we do with dustbins!)  

Our yummy pizzas cooking away (accompanied by some sweetcorn... but tragically no garlic bread... boo hoo!)

We are so happy with Number 12 and can't recommend highly enough getting an outside wood oven, of any variety, for your garden.  So if you have a little corner to spare it's well worth installing one (I'll be off now... very very hungry!)