On Time & Temperature

In essence, food is a defined by two central elements: flavour and texture. Both flavour and texture have been copiously researched and developed ever since the act of eating went from being a necessity to a form of entertainment. I’d like to dive deeper into an intrinsic element of texture, the time-temperature ratio and how it helps me understand food, from the perspective of a pizza guy.

There is something beautiful about making bread. While the flavour is achieved by the amount of salt and the type of fermentation, it is the texture that makes the bread stand out, it’s that crunchy feeling followed by the softness created by thousands of air bubbles trapped in the web stretched out inside the dough. Achieving the right texture takes longer and requires a lot more effort, and the ratio between time and temperature plays a critical role.

In fact, it seems that the ratio between temperature and time is at the core of many textures. For instance, simmering a pot of stew for hours; tenderness is achieved in 4-6 hours at a temperature close to 100°C, whereas in a pressure cooker, where temperatures get to 120°C, one hour, sometime less, is enough to achieve the same degree of tenderness.

On the other end of the spectrum, prawns should cook in a hot pan (200°C -300°C) for a few minutes only, or in my case a pizza is baked in 90-120 seconds in an oven ranging between 350°C  - 400°C. In all these cases, it is the ratio of temperature to time that creates the tenderness of the stew, the bittiness of the prawn and the crispy-softness of the pizza crust.

This ratio can be divided into categories in terms of cooking time as opposed to temperature, each with its own effect on texture: brief, short, medium, and long

·        Brief (crisp) - measured in minutes with high heat, used for sauteing, boiling, and baking;

·        Short (soft) - with temperature between 90°C-180°C and 1-4 hours, that would include roasting, some sorts of stocks;

·        Medium (tender) – 4-24 hours, with temperatures varying from 25°C to 90°C, including simmering, stewing and light fermentation;

·        Long (stretchy) - 1 day to 1 week at 4°C-25°C, that would include mainly fermenting.

There are of course exceptions, namely smoking, which can be between medium and short, but each ratio would give a different type of smoke. The same goes with preservatives like olives or aged beef that take a few weeks, all the way to the 18 months aging process for prosciutto.

In much the same way, this ratio determines the texture of one element; it is the play on this ratio that brings forth a good dish. When a few elements that carry different ratios meet, they become a classic element of cuisine, and an example is most pasta dishes:

Making pasta is a very long process, from making the dough to resting, rolling and cutting. This lengthy process is then combined with the brief process of cooking the pasta (boiling). These two ratios meet into a balanced element, itself coupled with a ragu cooked in the medium or short ratio (veal ragu or tomato sauce for example), thus bringing together 3 different ratios and creating a classic dish combining stretch crispiness and soft tenderness. To make it fancy one might add an element from and even higher ratio, such as olives, bacon or anchovy. It becomes quite interesting to analyze food from this perspective while taking apart the cooking process of both classic and modern dishes.

This is a pizza blog, and my day-to-day obsessiveness (I suspect it has passed the obsession stage) with these little differences is what I froth on. I like to look at a pizza from start to finish, with all its elements and ratios they bring together.

The crust itself is the result of a fermentation done in a long ratio, in which the dough is resting and its stretchiness is formed (one can use a biga for the process, bringing in even more stretch, almost to the brink of breaking). On the other hand, the second stage where the dough rises is a short ratio, giving it its softness to the stretch, so that in one bite you can cut right through the crust rather than having to tear it off. Finally, the crust encounters a brief ratio, in which it is baked rapidly in high heat, producing the perfect crispiness the pizza crust is famous for.

The cheese itself, fresh mozzarella, is made in a week; it is a fresh cheese that in a long ratio develops a stretch that only becomes visible once it has melted briefly.

The tomato sauce is the flavour of the dish: it does not give texture, but rather binds all the elements together. It is tangy, sharp, sweet at times, but not soft or crisp. Interestingly, a crème-based pizza, as cream is made through a long-ratio process, brings a different feel to the pizza in a rounded, softer way.

When most of us think of pizzas, we think of a simple (yet delicious) dish; however, when we look at each of its elements, we can see how all these different ratios combine to create multiple, and even complex, layers of texture… It’s no wonder pizza is one of the world’s most popular dishes!

In my day, I like to play around and experiment with these ratios, sometime making them shorter or longer, and observe the outcome. Beyond allowing me to achieve the perfect crust, this has enabled me to better understand the process of cooking. It is enthralling to observe, and can reveal a sort of truth in between the lines of many recipes, revealing what makes them great and giving insight to find new ones, understanding the chef, and ultimately, understanding food.

On Oven Shapes and Usage

I thought to write about something I never get asked about but find quite interesting: the different oven shapes and their use. The most common ovens available to purchase are Portuguese, English, or Italian. Each one of these ovens is shaped differently, which determine what they are specifically used for, so I might as well write about each of them in relation to pizza, seeing as this is the main use I get out of them.

First of all, they are made from different materials, mainly steel, refractory bricks or refractory precast, which each behave differently. Steel does not absorb heat and only uses the available fire source, quicker to fire up and quicker to cool off. The latter two materials absorb heat and take hours to heat up, and only then can food be cooked in the heat they output, with a fire source needed only for continuous use; they also take longer to cool down. More on those subjects can be found pretty much everywhere on Google, with bible-length discussions on which is better. Little tip: one is not necessarily “better” than the other, it all depends on what you are using it for.

Let’s start with the most common one for home purchase, the Portuguese oven. You may have seen these at Bunnings, at Mobile Vendors, in YouTube tutorials on home-built ovens, or in many houses around Perth. They are usually made of steel, and shaped like a half barrel laid on its side. They can be made of bricks and have more of a trapeze shape, but the main indicator is the big opening at the front. These ovens are used in a similar manner to a home oven: you can use them for breads, roasts, and many other dishes. Their large opening allows to easily put things in and take them out, their height is ideal for roasts or spits, and they run optimally at 180°C to 350°C, which is why they are a great all-rounder. However, their large opening means they lose heat easily, which means that for pizza they need a lot of firewood. A constant big flame is necessary to reach the 400°C -450°C range needed for Neapolitan pizza. Nevertheless, they are quite good for Pizzettas, Roman pizzas, Calzones and Focaccias, which require longer cooking times.

The English oven is what a lot of people think of when it comes to classic pizza ovens in Australia, based on the century-old English clay ovens that were brought over by skilled English bricklayers. This is a dome-shaped oven with narrow opening at the front. This type of oven is great at retaining heat, it can reach high temperatures and can even be used as a kiln with some modifications. The narrow opening ensures no heat is lost, and its round shape disperses the heat evenly throughout the oven. For non-dough items it can be used straight away without preheating, as it quickly reaches high temperatures due to the conical air flow inside it. In Australia, it is the most common and affordable brick oven, and it is such a great choice that I myself own two of these.

The last type is the Italian oven. You may have seen them in newer pizzas shops, whereas in the older ones they are usually built into the wall; they are big and heavy and are great for pizza specifically. Unlike the Portuguese oven that loses heat with its wide space and opening, or the English oven that can get too hot with its dome shape, the shape of the Italian oven can maintain heat at around 400°C with ease. These ovens have a slight rounded dome on top and almost 90 degrees walls on its side, enabling the heat to spread slowly and evenly from top to bottom and to pour onto your pizza like a fluffy quilt, making it a dream to work with. Naturally, these ovens can be used for all sort of things, with their fantastic ability to keep a constant temperature. The downside would be the heating time; because they have a large chamber, and due to the way the fire behaves inside, they take longer to gain temperature, but are steadier once they do.

So which oven is for you?

Let’s just assume its for your own backyard rather than for a commercial venture. It all depends on your needs. From talking with different people, most would use an oven for cooking a variety of things and not just pizzas, and most backyards don’t require a huge oven, especially for family.

The most practical choice would be the Portuguese oven: it is the most versatile, it allows better control of heat, it’s easy to operate and quite easy to build on your own.

On the other hand, if you have the space and want something that could be used day after day, then a large English oven would best suit you, as it is great at retaining temperatures and is more readily available. Additionally, if you decide you want to build an English clay oven on your own, it is a great little adventure.

Obviously, the Italian oven would be amazing to have, but for most home uses it is hard to justify its high price, and it takes very skillful craftmanship to build one.

What do I use?

I currently own one Portuguese oven and two English ones. I use generally use the Portuguese oven for bigger events, as its shape and large size allows for more pizzas to cook in one go, but I do use a combined wood and LPG system to keep it up to temperature. I use the English ovens for small and medium events, or longer-lasting events, as they are better at keeping temperature and require less on-hand fire maintenance, making them easier for one man to operate throughout the entire cooking process.

March for Pizza

Why March is a lovely time for events and pizza!

March in Perth is a great month for pizza! And this March has been especially good not just for pizza but also for pizza caterings.

Why is that?

Well, as basic as it sounds, it is the weather. March is hot, but not too hot. It is humid, and yet not raining. The wind that engulfs Perth most of the year stops, creating a consistent temperature between day and night that traps humidity, so all in all, glorious weather! But how does that affect pizza?

Well, it actually affects the pizza dough. When dough is born, it needs water, it’s a thirsty creature and consumes anywhere between 65%-80% its own body weight in water. It then goes into puberty, and like any teenager, it wants to be left alone in the dark to grow and extract all kinds of new, strange odours, new textures and a new explosive attitude. Luckily for us bakers, that stage only lasts a day or so, until a mature dough is ready to go out and tackle the world, it is no longer thirsty but it needs moisture to keep its skin shiny and beautiful. Using olive oil helps to protect it from the elements most of the year in the mild Perth desert, but throughout humid March there is enough moisture in the air to keep its skin nice and fresh and ready to be turned into a beautiful puffy pizza, or any other pastry for the matter.

Pizza dough gets a lot of its character from the Mediterranean, and like other types of dough around the area, it likes moisture, the humid air that slows you down a bit and makes us take our time, and what is the best excuse for taking time? Art of course! And that is how we get the Art of Pizza!

So, what about events? They are also great in this time of year: it could be a beach wedding, or a birthday party at the park. The lack of wind and lack of flies gives amazing evening weather. The fact that temperatures do not just drop after sunset but rather stay stable also means that guests do not have to plan for clothing. The humid air is healthy for the body and ensures no one will shy away from dancing, as everyone is already sweating. If you are planning an event between February and April, keep your eyes open for those still weeks before a storm builds up. It might be somewhat risky, but it could very easily turn out amazing!

Another word about moisture and pizzas, I get asked a lot about gas ovens or woodfire ovens. I like both, they are both incredible machines that give almost identical results. When catering for large numbers, a gas oven would produce a more consistent quality outcome, while the main reason wood can be nicer – by a tiny margin – is that it holds a bit of moisture.

Pizza ovens suck moisture out through the bricks they are made of that do that, and for good reason, that dryness is what gives a great crust. Gas is a very dry heat source and gets the oven too dry, while wood always contains a bit of moisture that gets released throughout the baking process as it burns, which is why it is critical to keep a live fire in the oven. The retained heat is what cooks the pizza, but it’s the live fire that puts in the little moisture needed to create a great crust – and no, you can’t taste the smoke!

 OUR DOUGH

A bit about dough

Our dough is not unique, like other doughs, it made of flour, water, yeast, a bit of salt and some olive oil. This recipe for dough started before written language, it would be weird of us to claim anything to it. But the details are what counts!

There are many kinds of flour; bakers, rising, 00, 000, buckwheat, maze, hard flour, soft flour and so many more that you can just go ahead and open the Wikipedia page on it and sink in to a beautiful afternoon of reading and learning, followed by a trip to woolies where you’ll find just a shard of the variety that exists.

Flours, in general, could be divided on levels of protein they have, the more protein, the more elasticity. High protein flour is beautiful for pizza, but terrible for crackers. Bakers flour is quite balance, since you don’t want too many air bubbles in your bread but also not too dense. Me personally, I prefer to use pizza flour to make pizza, people in history, smarter, braver, kinder, and better knowledgeable than me, decided that the would be a pizza flour, and I am in no position to question them. Its high protein and gives a great stretch, its ground finer and allows for more water to be absorbed, it makes my life easier constantly.

Water is important, one could use mountainous spring water, or other mineral water, I prefer filtered tap water, Australian tap water are amazingly clean in comparison to the rest of the world, they are quite neutral in flavour, and low on sediments, which makes them easy to use and makes the dough easy to work with.

How much water is a great question, and its called “hydration”, hydration is the ration of flour to water, so if you put 7kg of water into 10kg of flour, you get 70% hydration, which is, by the way, a great ratio for pizza. Most of the time I’ll use 60%-70% hydration, as it gives a good crust to stability ratio. This varies daily, on dry days I need to add a bit of water, and on humid days I could go with a bit less. Its looking at the dough and feeling the air that determines the result.

There are more variables, like the kind of salt used, how much of it, how it effects the hydration? The yeast, dry or fresh, or maybe a sourdough starter, which is the most fun! And the oil. Gives some flavour and texture and binds the all dough nicely, but not too much of course.

And putting it together, or kneading it. Its allot and it takes muscle, while I’ll use a machine to bind it all, mainly because it is a messy process! I’ll kneed it by hand once done, to get a feeling if the texture is right, if its lumpy or wet, and to not over stretch it, some things only a hand knows and its not for a machine to understand.

And that’s my dough, it basic in its form, but the attention to details, the 24hrs I give it to rise, the feeling of it in my arms, is what makes it count at the end of the day.

The Story Of Pizza

Pizza is a staple food, so basic in goes back to Neolithic era, long before the Latin word showed up, even longer before the Italian coined it as their own. The idea of flat bread topped with “stuff” to make it taste nicer is exactly as old as it sounds, it predates the oven and is prolific through the fertile crescent and into Europe and northern Africa.

In the 6th century its recorded that Persian soldiers made a version of pizza, using dates and cheese, on their shields when they were out on quests, as well as it is a common food among the nomadic tribes of the middle east where it was first baked on an inverted metal pan called “saj” and later in a built clay oven called “taboon”, it is unclear when the food traveled to what is now the Italian regions, but the first use of the word “pizza” is recorded in Latin in the 10th century under the Byzantine empire, probably as sister-word for the Greek “pitta”, meaning flat bread” which is still in use today.

What we consider today as pizza was made, as the story goes, for queen Margherita, by a napolitana pizzaiolo in 1889, he offered her three variations of the meal, and her favorite had the Italian colors on it; red as the tomato sauce, white is the mozzarella and green was the basil. From that point onwards pizza was a thing, so much of a thing that it is now a registered UNESCO preparation ordeal.

This food, this basic ingredient, and their variations, symbolize something very basic in the Italian cuisine, its ability to be simple, by only using a few ingredients, yet complex because those ingredients are well prepared and take time and process to mature. It was the French who created modern cooking, building brigades and putting order into the chaos that was early cooking, but it was the Italian way that conquered modern cooking, by paying attention to the ingredients long before they are to be used. By taking the complexity that time gives to produce and combining it simply and elegantly. We can look at the margherita pizza to understand.

The dough- thought of in advanced, prepared in a specific way and given a day to mature and develop flavour, this blank canvas is what the painting would be drawn on, and like a canvas, it needs to be done in a certain way, certain thread count, certain fold and elasticity, it is the texture on which everything rests.

The sauce- picked older tomatoes, those that are sweeter and about to spoil, are cooked to maximize their flavour, than reduced to allow them to intensify, bottled up and set to rest for a future that awaits.

Mozzarella- if it is fresca or buffalo, the mozzarella gives the contrast to the dough, if the dough is crispy than the cheese is soft and melty. It will take a few days to make it, from curding the milk to resting and shaping it.

Basil- just from the garden, put on top, without being too smart with pesto and other variation, the basil binds everything, it is the freshness to the maturity of the other ingredients, it is the sweetness to the acidity of the sauce, it is color and fragrant, so small, yet so much of it is there.

And that is pizza, it takes a week to prepare, but only 2-3 minutes to cook for your guests. The contrast of textures between the crust of the dough and the stringiness of the cheese, the contrast of flavors between the sour of the sauce and the sweetness of basil. The contrast of long preparation of ingredients and the instant moment it takes to actually make a pizza. It is Italian cuisine at its simplest form, the play on timely and rapid, the balancing of textures and flavours using just a few, well thought, ingredients.

We try and bring that forward, in modern Australia a pizza took a different turn, as it kept evolving further into more complex and regional way, but I believe that as long as it could be remembered where it came from, the concept of what made it so popular would live on.