Mario Batali's Pizza Oven

Slice: Mario Batali's Lakeside Pizza Oven

Check this out, from his summer home in western Michigan.

Pizzas August 18

Fired up the oven again yesterday, all basic white flour crusts (Caputo).

• Basic Margheritas
• Tomato Sauce, salami, onion, mozz
• Hatch chile, sausage, cheddar, hatch pepper jack cheese
• Tomato sauce, salami, gouda
• Bianoverde style, with olive oil, parmesan, white onion (instead of red), and pistachios (oh, and arugula, put on after the oven)
  

The Hatch chiles are in season, so we got a bit experimental -- the "hatch pizza" really was a hit and turned out great. The sausage had hatch chile in it too!



Full picture link via picasa:

Picasa Web Albums - Mark - Pizza Aug 18

Amazing Pictures from Biancos

Slice: Stuffing My Face at Pizzeria Bianco

Check out the amazing pictures in this blog post about Pizzeria Bianco.

Some Glamour Shots of the Oven

Shots of the oven and a finished product:

It Also Does Bread

To bake bread in the oven, you let the oven go through it's full pre-heating cycle and then let the fire burn out. You remove the coals and use "retained heat" to bake the bread (the iron door goes back on, which you wouldn't normally use during fire-in-the-oven pizza making). Even "cooled down," this is a 500 degree moist oven.



The loaves took about 10 to 12 minutes each, with doneness gauged by a quick read thermometer.

It's a Versatile Oven!

You can do more than just pizza in a wood burning oven. Here's a non-pizza meal from the oven. The veggie kabobs were grilled in the oven on a Cast Iron Tuscan Grill. You spread out hot embers and set the grill on top. The meatballs were done in a Cast Iron Dutch Oven. Because the oven is naturally very moist heat, the meatballs were incredibly juicy and delicious.

Oh, How We Miss Biancos!

Slice: A Visit to Pizzeria Bianco

As former Phoenix residents, my wife and I really miss Pizzeria Bianco more than anything. We used to go about every six weeks or so and loved it each time. As I've written before, Chris was our inspiration to put up our own home pizza oven. We only hope our pizza is half as good as his! Check out the blog post written by a first time visitor.