Absolutely... you can probably make it even better. But it depends on the kind of pizza you want to make, the equipment you're willing to purchase, and the practice you're willing to put in to making the style of pizza you want.
Pizza Styles - There are various styles out there, but currently the popular trend is woodfired/coalfired/super hot oven that produces pizzas in 60 - 120 seconds after going in. For the sake of not making this answer too long, I'll stick with that for now (though if you have a different style in mind, mention it and I'll update).
Equipment - Since your home oven cannot replicate the high heat (700 to 1000 degrees) to create this style of pizza, you're going to have to invest in some equipment. If your oven gets up to 500+, you can consider getting a Baking Steel (around $100 or less) http://www.bakingsteel.com/ which will typically read about 50 degrees higher than your max oven temperature. But if you're looking for the next step, my recommendation for now is to look into getting a Blackstone Pizza Oven (around $300 or less) (BLACKSTONE® PRODUCTS). The Blackstone will get up towards 750 to 800 on it's own, and with a few modifications, some people are able to push up to 900+. But let's say you're looking for something more authentic and want to serve multiple people, not one pizza a time... then you'll have to look into getting a woodfired oven for your backyard or house ($2000 to $20,000+). There's lot of producers, but the one I've used was a FGM 1030C from Breadstone (The Bread Stone Ovens Company). This is getting you pretty much as close as you can get to the real deal in terms of equipment... and of course, you'll need the right pizza tools (peels, brushes, etc.) to keep your equipment clean, and be able to handle the pizza just right.
Technique: There's a lot of different things to learn here... contrary to what people think, pizza dough is far more complex than imagined, especially if you're trying to clone a particular restaurants. First, you have to figure out what percentage of ingredients they're using in their dough (flour, water, salt, yeast). Then do they have any add ins? (Eggs, oil, sugar, etc.) Now, what temperature water do they use? This will impact how fast the dough will rise, which impacts flavor. How do they knead the dough? By machine, by hand, and if by machine, with a gentle turning fork or a spiral, or food processor? It all makes a difference to how the dough comes together... Next, do they rest the dough and do more folds/mixes after the gluten structures have relaxed? How many, how often? Do they do a bulk ferment before separating into smaller balls for proofing? If so, what temp, how long, etc. And then there's the technique of handling the dough ball and opening it up for making a pizza... do they roll out the dough with a rolling pin (which crushes the air out, making it a flatter, crisper pizza) or use their hands to stretch? If by hand, what technique do they use? (Egyptian counter stretch, Neapolitan slap, just gentle palm stretchs, tossing dough in air?) And this is all before figuring out how they top the dough, what kind of toppings, how they prepare their toppings, etc...
Here's what I suggest... if you're bent on replicating a particular restaurant's pizza, check out Pizza Making, Pizza Recipes, and More!as there is a wealth of information there... you may post a question to see if someone is familiar with that restaurant, and whether they have some insight into the particular pizza you want to recreate. You'll have to take a lot of trips to the particular restaurant to try to learn everything they do... but with enough trips, you can probably build the knowledge (talk to the chefs, not the servers) which means you still have to learn the techniques.
If you're just looking to make great pizza and not bent on a replica, PizzaMaking forum is still a great place to start and learn. There's more information than you can ever digest on the forum dating back decades... covering equipment, techniques, ingredients, etc.
Good luck in your pizza quest! It's well worth it!


0 Comments