Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Roasting

FreshRoast is little gadget to roast my green coffe beans.

Green tomatoes

I wait for my oven parts and grow some ingredients. I hope to use
these tomatos on my first pizza in new oven.

Sunday, July 29, 2007

Espresso

What one needs after a good pizza? That's right a shot. Or double shot.

It all starts with a good beans. Green. Roasted ones only good for a
week.

You should try to understand.

Thursday, July 26, 2007

Another great pizza book

This is another great book.
It has a lot of pictures with correct pizza.
It goes about history and Esposito family.
It explains and defined DOS pizza standards and provide bridge to
American ingredients. There are a lot of Italian slang (mozzarella
buffal) and many cool recipes.

This one is old and rare, but try your luck

Place #2

This is a corner place and I did some diving. I am not close on it
too. It will be more hides and more fire safe. I will not have to
build legs , but I will need some tables and wood storage so building
outdoor kitchen there not so cool as well. I do have other places in
back yard so I should think hard.

Wednesday, July 25, 2007

The pizza book

Naturaly, I have to get ready to make perfect pie so I got some books.

This is a first one and it is very fundamental one. It is b/w inside
but more like ensiclopedia britanika for pizza. This book writer by
Evelyne Slomon claimed to be one of the USA experts on pizza.


You can try to get used from here :


Tuesday, July 24, 2007

Pizza gadget

I picked this up in Target only to promptly return. Idea is great, but
temperature is not high enough to cook pizza quick so it dry out.

Thursday, July 19, 2007

Planing for Oven #2


This is temporary mock up I made to see if place for pizza oven plus outdoor kitchen is right.Or not.

Fuji-sun


That is just for pure joy and fun. Fuji-Q. Nice place we spent 2 days.

Real Pizza in very center of NARA !



,,

Back side of the moon


It is not perfect pizza so : bottom was not hot enough. But is still very OK

Close up


Pay attention on some good signs.

Mini-pizzas


No so cool in shapes, but very tasty

Bonseki


What you need after good pizza? Art !

BONSEKI fit the bill in Japan.

got to http://www.bonseki.org to see more of it!

New Year table


It was a lot of good food. Russian salads, pirozki, bread, Japaneses traditional things ...

Best Knuppe I had in my life ...


Now ... It simply does not get any better then this : Fresh baggets you baked, that your wife shaped and oven your build and fresh ingredients plus cold premium Japanese beer (seasonal small batched) in Japane, on vocation with nice company and kids...


Ah.... Life is GOOOOOOD !!!

How to serve it right


You need to serve baggets right: get nice reach butter, salmon roy(IKURA) and smoked salmon.

Crazzy Frog


This is our mascot Crazy Frog. He can sing and move.

Competition from regular oven


This is a competition. It use a secret technique : you use a lot of water and you let your dough stay overnight : 18-24 houres. Yeast kind of work for you and make nice texture. Then you use hot glass or cast iron pot and bake it closed. You get almost ARTIZAN bread as result with very minor efforts but it still takes a lot of time.

Baggets are done !


Looks so good !

After pizza is done baggets goes inside


Now , when we are done and oven cooling down we use this heat to bake bread. Baggest in this case

Nice fire


Fire ! Fire ! Fire !

Russian Pirozki goes next


Did I say I was born in Russia ? :-)

Bagets


Ju preparing baggets for me.

It was very hot




It was hotter then expected and first bread that I baked after done with pizza and removing coals actually got burned a little, but was very good anyway :-) Like potato from campfire :-)

Goes cold fast


Because of small size and big opening I have to fiddle with coals all the time.

Japanese pizza


With Japanese Shitake mashroomsit is now a very nice REAL pizza : look on sides.

Not too impresive


Kind of OK for first one. But not super impressive. Taste good so :-)

First real one goes in


Well, I realized that oven is very small and I should make "baby pizzas" instead :-)

Test pizza


As Mario told me I should "QA" oven and prime it with first "test" pizza. Here it is !

Dry wood


I want to patent this idea: wood getting dry while you cook.

FIRE !!!


Lo and Behold ! First fire !!!!

YEZZZZZZZZZZZZ!

Pizza oven in Japanese backyard


This is almost surrealistic view. Pizza oven in Japanese backyard build by Russian born boy :-)

Door is closed


That how it looks "All close to business" :-)

Say no to Santa Clause!


See when it close.

Chimeny control


Pay attention on chimney block: I move it to control how fast hot air goes up and to protect from rain.

Model 2 done


It is done. I used big block as oven door. I will make chimney taller latter on.

Model 2 almost done


It is almost done, all internal steps just like before on model 1 :-)

Base 2

Now I put base from fire bricks. See that they look a bit different then regular bricks

Model 2


Here is a real foundation : I made it bigger and changed orientation of oven.

Model 1


The first model is done, but I do not like it orientation. So I put it aprat

Small secret


This is my small trade secret for this temporary oven: use good grill net. It should be massive enough to hold bricks under high heat.

Base


See how I put blocks and fire brick

First Try


In the beginning I started with this orientation, but I did not liked it. Still, it was nice to "model"

Monday, July 16, 2007

Dough

I used dough below in different variations in Japan for pizza and bread. While COSTCO provide ingredients for all our pizza needs here including mozzarella, in Japan it is a bit different. But it worked.

Pizza dough by Natalik

Secret Ingredients :-)

1. One cube of fresh yeast
2. A cup and a half of hot water
3. 2 teaspoons and some of salt ( per taste)
4. About 4 cups of flour

and one tablespoon of olive oil, of course :-)

How to do:

Place the yeast in an empty glass.
Add 1 teaspoon of salt.
Add ½ cup of hot water (60cc max) and let it melt.

The water should be almost scolding.

Mix using a fork until the yeast is completely dissolved.

In a large plate, pour a cup of hot water,
1 tablespoon of olive oil and 1 tea spoon of salt.
Add the yeast mixture.

Add about 4 cups of flour, mixing well after each cup,

Knead until the dough stops sticking to the hands.

Shape the dough into a ball, place it on a floured surface and cover with olive oil.

Let it rise until doubles in size and punch. Divide into balls the size of pizza (apple or orange size).

Cover with towel soaked in cold water.

Cover with blanket and let rise.

When the dough is ready you are ready to make pizza!