Pizza in a Bread Oven

[Xabia Jim]

Last night we fired up the oven for just 3 pizzas. I usually like to have more things to cook but the day just got away from us and the new sourdough mixture was not ready for bread....and I want to try breadsticks too!

this was a three course meal...pizza-pizza-pizza.

We tried a new whole wheat pizza dough recipe that was just too wet and sticky (like batter but that is what was called for). I could see no way to use that without multiple peels so we added some white flour to stiffen up the dough a bit and made 3 different thin pizzas, two on cornmeal and one on flour.

Anyway, I decided to put one pizza in when the dome was just a bit white and the hearth was just baking temperature of about 350 degrees. If I had more things going I would have had more patience and heated it up more as I usually use long firings to generate thermal mass. It cooked up fine and the other two followed in succession, moving them around the hearth to cook and avoid burinig on the fire side.

Now, all three pizzas were consumed except for some burnt crust edges. I think the pizzas were in longer to cook the crust since the hearth was cooler and this caused the tops to brown nicely with the overhead fire. I'd say a 15 minute bake.

So I don't discourage you from trying Pizza at bread oven temp (at least the cooler hearth) but you may find that the top cooks up faster than the crust!
I'd consider a piece of foil over the top after it was toasted if the crust was not done enough.

Jim