Making good quality pizzas at home has long been an ambition of ours. The mechanics of assembling a good pizza are pretty straightforward (see the pizza section of this blog) but the stumbling block has always been how to cook it to give a good base and evenly cooked topping. There are actually three main requirements.
Like cooking a steak, part of the secret is to cook it quickly. Professional pizzeria use an oven capable of producing a temperature of around 400C (compare to a domestic oven which can maybe manage 270C). quick cooking helps ensure that the base is crisp on the outside with some softness inside, rather than becoming more like a biscuit when cooked more slowly.
Another issue is to provide a heated surface to allow rapid transfer of the heat into the base of the pizza. we tried using quarter inch thick steel plate which I preheated in the oven and this went some way towards a good result but unfortunately did not satisfy the third requirement to cook a good pizza – giving a path for moisture in the base to escape.
For this reason, many people use a pizza stone in their domestic oven in place of our steel plate. The porous surface of the pizza stone goes a long way to promoting the crispness of the bottom of the base.
As you can see, there is no ideal solution using a standard domestic oven. After many years of trying (and producing some fairly decent pizzas!) we still could not produce a pizza that could compare favourably with one from a pizza restaurant – the cooking always let them down.
Enter the G3 Ferrari!
This little oven goes a very long way to addressing the problems above. Firstly, it can produce a temperature of 390C – this ensures that the pizza is cooked quickly. The cooking surface is a proper stone which is heated from below by an embedded electrical element and from above to ensure that the toppings cook appropriately.
Not to be underestimated is the cunning two piece peel that comes with it. It serves two functions – as a handy guide to the required pizza size (if it fits on the peel it will fit on the stone) and a very simple way of transporting the pizza to the stone – the fact that it is in two pieces makes it very easy to centre the pizza by jiggling each half as required.
Things to watch out for
Before putting the rolled dough on the peel, ensure that the surface is well dusted (We use semolina to give a bit more crunch to the base). After removing the pizza, do not close the lid without dusting off any excess flour / semolina from the stone if the top element is still hot as it can tend to catch fire!
When cooking, turn the pizza occasionally with a stiff spatula to ensure that the base doesn’t stick (this is more important if you are using shop bought pizza rather than home-made). This also helps ensure that the topping cooks evenly. On the subject of shop bought pizzas, they cook brilliantly provided that they are properly defrosted first. Be aware that these shop bought pizzas will cook in around 3 or 4 minutes, rather than the 10-12 minutes in a conventional oven!
Verdict
An excellent piece of kit and well worth the money (around £100). Once you’ve cooked a pizza with this device, you’ll never want a takeaway again! On that basis, you can recoup the cost in no time.