Blog and Recipes

Instructions

Get yourself a spoon. Almost any spoon will do, but if you manage to find one with a flat base, that’s a plus.

Depending on the size of the pizza, take anywhere between 1 to 3 spoons of tomato sauce and pour them in the centre of the dough.

Now use the back of the spoon to spread the sauce in a circular motion, starting from the centre. Make your circles bigger and bigger until you’re about 1 centimetre from the rim of the pizza, which should stay dry.

It’s very important that you don’t use too much sauce, because it’ll make your pizza very wet and soggy. If you can still see the dough through the sauce, you’ll be OK.

When it comes to topping your pizza, Italians would tell you that less is more. Try to limit yourself to no more than 4 toppings if you’re looking for a very pure taste sensation. If you want to put on a few more, though, go ahead, I won’t tell anybody ;).

I’ve noticed that my fellow Dutchies tend to put as many ingredients on their pizza as possible. I’d recommend steering clear of the Dutch style and following the people who invented pizza. Italian pizzaiolos use no more than 4/5 ingredients on their pizzas.

If you keep your pizza simple, you’ll enjoy the full taste of your amazing dough, your beautiful tomato sauce, and a select few delicious ingredients.

Enjoy!

Ingredients:

  • 1 Tbsp olive oil
  • 100gram of thinly sliced guanciale, pancetta, or chopped bacon (non smoked)
  • Black pepper
  • Half an onion, minced 
  • 1 clove of garlic, minced
  • 1 Can of peeled tomatoes with juices, crushed by hand (400gr)
  • Grated Pecorino
  • 175 grams of semolina, all-purpose, or tipo"00" flour
  • Half-teaspoon of salt
  • 2 eggs
  • 1 egg yoke
  • A bit of water if the dough is not coming together 

Preparation

I was 19 years old and just started traveling through Australia.  In my first week I met a group of Italians and they taught me how to make pasta Amatriciana. It was easy to make and fucking delicious.  During my travels I made this meal many times. Sometimes, I ate it alone but most of the times I shared it with new friends from all over the world. This is a special meal for me and I would love to share it with you.

You can make this meal with dried pasta from the store but if you’d like to have lots of fun and take it to the next level, then you should really try to make your own pasta. Don’t worry it’s easy.

How to make the pasta

You take 175 grams of flour and pour it onto your working bench. Then, with a stick, a fork or your fingers, open a hole in the centre. You'll want it to be relatively wide so the eggs will fit inside this hole.

When you have added all eggs in the centre of your flour pile start gradually pushing the flour into the pool of eggs using your fork, stick or your fingertips

When the eggs are mixed into the flour you will probably have a very wet and sticky dough. At this point you can use a bench scraper to scrape all the remaining flour off your working bench and fold it into your dough.

Once you have done this and the dough feels firm and dry you can start kneading it. This dough is a lot tougher than the pizza or bread dough, so you will have to use all your strength kneading this little dough ball. After this 10 min work out the gluten network is developed, this is necessary to create a delicious, snappy, elastic, and tasty pasta.

After the kneading wrap your dough in Clingfilm and let it rest for about 1 hour at room temperature. In this time the dough will fully hydrate and the gluten will have a chance to rest.

This gives you the time to fire up your outdoor oven. When the fire is burning and it’s at a low temperature of around 100C you can start baking the meat. 

Put a bit of oil in your baking tray, one teaspoon. Add guanciale and sauté it until crisp and golden, about 4 minutes. Add onion, garlic and a bit of black pepper; cook until the onion starting to caramelise. 

Take the baking tray out of the oven, add quarter or half minced chilli-pepper, and then add a can of peeled tomatoes with juices crushed by hand. Now, fill the empty can of tomatoes with water and add half of it into your baking tray

Then put the baking tray on top of your oven, it will keep it warm while you can get back to your dough.

Take your dough out of the Clingfilm and place it on top of your floured working surface. 

Start rolling it with a rolling pin until it’s super thin: 1 mm.  Now, fold it double 2 times and roll it out again, this is called laminating. It will improve the look, bite and taste of your pasta. Best is to repeat this laminating process a few times

When that’s done. Lightly flour the surface of your dough, roll it up and start cutting it creating your pasta

Place the pasta into your baking pan together with the other ingredients. Place the pan into the oven for about 15 minutes at 125C take it out every 3/5 minutes to gently stir it, rotate your baking tray and add some water if necessary. This is because the water in the sauce will reduce very quickly, so keep on checking it 😉

The last few minutes it’s best to stop adding water, you want to let the sauce reduce so it becomes nice and sticky.

Finally take your self-made pasta Amatriciana out of the oven cover it with a nice layer of Pecorino.

Share it with your loved ones and enjoy  x

Instructions

When you start making pizzas, having pre-portioned balls of ready-to-use dough can be very handy.

For a medium pizza, weigh out about 220/240 grams of dough. What you want to do next is fold the sides of the dough into the centre. Continue doing this for about 4 times 

When you feel that you’re putting tension on the gluten membrane, stop folding, pinch the seams at the bottom of the ball, and boom you’re ready! Or are you? look…

Place the dough ball on the working surface, making sure that the seams stay facing down. Hold it gently, with the sides of your hands resting on the table. Now shape the ball with an inwards rotation, always in the same direction (counterclockwise or clockwise, but not both)

By doing this you, apply a little pressure to the dough ball, shaping it into a nice, round sphere.

If it’s not perfect, don’t worry. It takes a bit of practice, and even if they’re not perfectly round, your dough balls will still make a damn good pizza 😉

Now store your dough balls in an oiled or floured dough tray, baking sheet or pan. Make sure to cover the dough with clingfilm, a lid or a damp towel to prevent it from drying out. Not sure yet? check my video tutorial here

Cheers!

Instructions

For a Neapolitan, American style pizza 

Never ever (EVER!) use a rolling pin. The reason is that after all those hours of rising and proofing, the dough is full of little bubbles of gas. In the oven, these little bubbles will expand and create a beautiful, bread-like crust full of flavour.

There are two stages to making an amazing pizza base: Pounding and Stretching.

Before you start, make sure your dough is at room temperature. This means you’ll have to take it out of the fridge at least 2 to 4 hours before using it. Take the dough from your tray, lightly dust your table top with flour and set down your dough just as it was in the tray: the bottom stays the bottom and the top the top. Dust the dough with a little flour and you’re ready to go.

Step 1 

Pounding the dough

Press your fingers down at the front of the ball of dough and go around the ball to define an outer rim. Make sure that you don’t touch the outer rim, as this will become a delicious crust. It’s also best to stay away from the centre of the dough. Don’t worry, you’ll be stretching it automatically later on in the process. 

Step 2 

Stretching the dough

There are many techniques for stretching dough, so I’ll show you a few. You can pick your favourite technique or just use all of them. 

Cup your hands and rest them on top of the dough, almost touching the outer rim. We’re now going to stretch the dough between our hands. Move your hands in an outward motion as you lightly press down on the dough. If you move your right hand a little further out than your left, you’ll start turning the dough as you stretch it. Continue until the dough has made a full rotation. 

Now, take the dough in one hand and transfer it to your other hand with a swiping motion. Repeat this process a few times, alternating between your right and left hand. 

Rest the dough on your knuckles and gently stretch the dough between your hands. Give it another quick stretch, rotate the pizza a little, and stretch again. Continue until the pizza has made a full rotation.

Now you’ve got the dough in your hands, this is the perfect moment to check whether there are any thicker areas in the dough that could do with a little extra stretching. Check out my video tutorial here

When you’ve stretched the dough to your liking, you’re ready to top your pizza. To find out more, check out my tutorial on how to put toppings on your pizza! 

Ingredients:

  • 1 Small clean chicken (Max 1.5 kg)
  • 3 Lemons.
  • 1 Oregano bush.
  • 1 Mint bush.
  • 2 spoons of coriander seeds.
  • 1 Sliced Onion.
  • Sea salt.
  • Peper.
  • 3 spoons of honey.
  • 200ml of Olive oil.
  • 3 or 4 cloves of garlic.

Preparation

The Städler Made Outdoor Oven May not but be the biggest oven out there, but it sure as hell can roast some chicken. If you like to roast a chicken in your oven, you will need to butterfly it this way so it will fit inside the oven, it helps to evenly cook al the meat as well.  The way you do this is easy, get yourself some meat scissors or a sharp kitchen scissors, then cut away the backbone from the middle of the chicken. Make sure you cut right along the bone.

Turn the chicken over and press with the palm of your hand on the middle of the chest until you feel it break. Fold the chicken open like a butterfly and lay it down flat.

For the marinade, squeeze the juice of 1.5 lemons over the mortar and add +/- 100 ml of olive oil a bit of white wine and the honey.

Cut the oregano and half of the mint finely. Put them in the mortar together with the 3 or 4 cloves of garlic, coriander seeds, pepper, and salt. Crush and grind whole into a binding mixture. Cut the rest of the lemon into thin slices and put them in the oven dish. Pour olive oil and honey over the lemons and place the chicken on top.

Massage the chicken with marinade and finally put a few lemon slices on top along with the onions.  You can place the rest of the mint on the side of the chicken and some extra olive oil over to protect the ingredients a bit against the heat.

Now you’re ready for some serious roasting. Place the chicken inside the oven for +/- 30 minutes at a temperature between 240 and 290°C

In between, take the tray out and check if the chicken is well cooked, if necessary turn a number of times, and to make it extra juicy, pour some of the liquid on top and put it back in the oven.

Chicken is ready!

Ingredients:

  • flour 
  • water
  • salt
  • yeast

Preparation

When calculating your own recipe, it’s best to stick to the percentages below. These are the ratios used by the Associazione Verace Picca Napoletana, which safeguards the original recipe for Neapolitan dough.

100% flour  

65% water     

3% salt  

0.2% fresh yeast

wow wow wow! What if you don’t like calculating? No worries, just go to my website! 

http://pizzadoughcalculator.com

All you have to do here is type in what kind of pizza you want to make – Neapolitan, in this case –, how big you want them to be and how many you’re going to make. Now just press calculate and BOOM, you’ll have your very own custom pizza recipe. Let’s get started!

Mixing

First, take 2 bowls and add the amount of flour specified by the calculator to one of them. Fill the second bowl with the amount of water the calculator has told you to use. 

Add your salt, stirring it into the water until it’s completely dissolved.

Now it’s time to dissolve your yeast in the water, but there’s one big problem. Yeast doesn’t like salty water, as the salt will damage the yeast, which means your dough won’t rise the way it’s supposed to.

So, what you do is you take some of the flour in bowl number one (about 10%) and mix it into your salty water. You don’t have to be very accurate, but it is a very important step, because the flour will protect the yeast against the salt, allowing it to work properly.

Ok. When you’ve stirred the salt and 10% of the flour into your water, you can add your fresh yeast. If you don’t have fresh yeast, you can use dry yeast, but make sure to use half of the amount recommended by the calculator. (yes, it’s a tiny amount, but trust me, it works!) After you’ve stirred the yeast into the salty, floury water, you can add the rest of the flour.

Now put the remaining flour in the bowl and mix with a spoon or your fingertips. During this stage, the dough will feel very dry and flaky.

When everything has been mixed together, you can start kneading the dough in the bowl. Continue until all the water and flour have been incorporated into a dough. During this stage, the dough will start to feel wet and sticky.

Kneading

You can now take the dough out of the bowl and start kneading the (probably very stickie) dough on your worktop. Just stay calm and keep on kneading. You’re now busy forming the gluten and the consistency of the dough will change after you’ve kneaded it for about 10 to 20 min. 

When the dough has taken on an even, soft and elastic consistency, you can start shaping it into a big ball.

Check out our tutorial on how to make dough balls to find out more (Link coming soon)

Rise 1 

Get a clean bowl and brush it with a thin layer of oil. Put your dough in the bowl and cover with clingfilm or a damp towel, before letting the dough rest for about 2 hours.

After 2 hours have passed, you can portion the dough into balls. Check out our tutorial on how to make dough balls for more info (link coming soon).

Rise 2

When you’re done portioning the balls, place them on a baking tray or pizza dough tray coated with a little bit of oil or flour and cover them with clingfilm or a lid. Let the dough rise for at least 4 hours (6 hours is better!) at room temperature.

Yesss! You’ve made your own pizza dough. Now it’s time to make pizzzaaasss!

If you’d like to make even better, tastier dough, check out the section on Proofing & Rising

Go to video tutorial here!

Ingredients:

  • 650 grams of pizza dough
  • 200 grams of mozzarella
  • 200 grams of parmesan cheese
  • 425 ml San Marzano tomatoes can
  • Basil leaves
  • olive oil

Preparation

Also known as Sfincione, focaccia, thick-crust, deep-dish or pan pizza. The Sicilian pizza is a very versatile pizza that goes by lots of different names, depending on the region, city, or country where it’s made. Though the name and the toppings may vary a lot, the basics stay the same.

These pizzas have a thicker, softer, and more bread-like texture than the Neapolitan, Roman and New York pizza. They’re baked in a pan or baking tray that’s coated heavily with olive oil. As the oil heats up in the oven, it toasts the base of the pizza, so that it ends up with a crispy golden-brown, slightly fried texture to its bottom.

Make your dough using the pizza dough calculator. Do this at least one day before so the dough has time to develop big bubbles, this way your pizza will be light to digest and will have an interior like a beautiful rustic baguette.

Heat up your Outdoor Oven with a big fire let it burn for a while until the flames are small and not really active anymore, put on the Thermodoor and the normal door. When the temperature drops down to 250ºC it is ready. 

Heavily coat your baking tray with olive oil and dump the dough into the tray.

With your bare hands, Crush one can of San Marzano tomatoes. Add a pinch of salt and pepper some olive oil. Now lay a few nice chunks of mozzarella onto of the dough. Spread out a few big scoops of tomato sauce, cover it all with a generous layer of grated parmesan finish it off with a few basil leaves. And a trickle of olive oil

Place the pizza into the preheated OutdoorOven let it bake for about 15 to 20min.

Now you have a delicious wood-fired Sicilian pizza. And I can assure you this won't be the last time you will make one 😀

Ingredients:

  • 160g chocolate 70%
  • 160g salted butter
  • 160g sugar
  • 3 eggs
  • A few drops of lemon curd.

Preparation

This is the most delicious cake recipe ever.

Put a pan on top of your outdoor oven. Melt the butter, sugar, and chocolate together. When this is done, add the eggs one by one, mix thoroughly, and pour it in a cake tin or in this case a cast iron pan. If you want to be sure the cake won`t stick place some baking paper on the bottom of your tin or pan. 

Cook in the Outdoor Oven for about 15 minutes, turning it around once in a while. 

With this cake it is very handy to use the thermo door, so you can close the baking compartment and see the temperature. It is very important to keep the temperature stable somewhere between 150°C and 190°C.  To achieve a stable temperature make sure to chop your wood very small and add a piece every 5 to 10 minutes. 

After that baby comes out, you are going to be so happy!!  But first, let it cool down for about 20 minutes, and then you are ready to dig in. The last time I made this recipe, I spread crème fraîche on the cake and covered it with grilled peaches and basil, and I added a bit of lemon curd. Mamma Mia!

But you can eat it however you like. Enjoy!

Ingredients:

  • One sea bream or other white fish (ask your fishmonger to clean it for you)
  • One lemon
  • A handful of baby potatoes
  • Two or three tomatoes
  • A handful of chard
  • Thyme / Rosemary / Dill 
  • 5 cloves garlic

Preparation

Start off with some baby potatoes or if you can’t find those chop some bigger potatoes into smaller chunks. Mix these with olive oil, salt, fresh herbs and plenty of garlic. Place this mix in an oven pan and then put the pan into your Outdoor Oven.

Bake it at a low temperature somewhere between 160°C to 180°C for about ten minutes. Getting to these temperatures start with firing up your oven as usual after about 30 minutes just ad very little pieces of wood to keep your oven between 160°C to 180°C  preferably use the thermo-door.

In the meantime, slice your lemon, peel the garlic and cut the tomatoes into quarters.

All that’s left to do is open up your fish, when it is cleaned you can stuff it with lemon slices, a generous amount of fresh herbs, a bit of garlic and a sprinkle of salt and pepper. 

I know you must be getting really hungry by now but just hold on a little longer. Add the stuffed fish to the pan, along with the tomato quarters, the chard, more herbs, one last drizzle of olive oil and give your fish a little kiss for good luck. Now place it back into the oven for about 15 more minutes at about 175°C. And voilà!