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Pizza on the barby
You really need a special pizza oven to turn out perfect pizza – right? Wrong! One of the world’s most effective pizza ovens is found in literally hundreds of thousands of Australian backyards – the humble trolley barby fitted with a hood.
This incredibly versatile outdoor entertainment unit comes with all the basics needed to produce perfect pizza that is cooked right through with a golden brown base as well as top. And there’s no trace of the dreaded slice droop.
Professional pizza ovens are modelled along the lines of old style wood-fired ovens where coals heat the base of the oven as well as the walls and air inside. The same effect can be achieved by removing the slotted grill from the barby and centreing the solid plate over the middle two burners.
Ignite the burners under the plate and close the hood. After about 10 minutes this will become as hot as the base of an oven. When the temperature gauge on the hood registers about 150 C, turn off the burners under the plate and turn on the ones at either end of the barby.
When the gauge hits 200 C, open the hood and quickly place the pizza (in a metal dish or pan) on the plate. Around 10 minutes later (the time will vary a bit from barby to barby) you can lift the hood to find a pizza that many leading pizza restaurants would be proud to call their own.
On Monday nights at Chateau Blue, we usually prepare two pizzas and get stuck into the first while waiting for the second to cook. Fillings are kept simple and often make use of leftovers such as the Sunday roast.
THE BASE
The temperatures and cooking times assume that a home made dough will be used. I leave this to an automatic bread maker but if your wrists need a workout mix 500g of plain flour with a good pinch of salt, a glug of olive oil, a satchel of dry yeast and about 300 ml of water. This will give the traditional thin crust. The thicker ‘pan style’ can be achieved by adding a teaspoon or so of sugar to the dough.
If pre-cooked pizza bases are used you might as well whack them in the kitchen oven because you are really just melting the topping. And there’s no art in that.
Oh and always make sure the water used in making dough is bottled. The stuff from the tap in many parts of Australia contains enough chlorine to retard the growth of the yeast bacteria. You read it here first.
THE TOPPINGS
The biggest mistakes budding pizza cooks make is skimping on the sauce and overloading with other ingredients. I use a quality brand of tinned crushed tomatoes and add a tablespoon or so of tomato paste (to give it a little more body) and some fresh oregano. Use about 200ml of sauce on each pizza. Sprinkle this with cheese (three-quarters mozzarella to one-quarter parmesan works well).
Add some or all of the following to the cheese and tomato sauce: black olives, pepperoni slices, chopped capsicum and onion, anchovies. Lightly sprinkle with a little more cheese before setting the pizza aside to wait for the barby to heat up.
Chunks of left over lamb roast with crumbled fetta cheese, olives and fresh rosemary also make an easy Monday night pizza topping.
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