Ooni Koda 16 (gas), 63% Hydration, KA Bread Flour, 48 hour cold ferment. Preheated Ooni for 30 mins, as you can see in the undercarriage pic, one side seemed to get a bit burnt. I don’t know how I can get the bottom the be crisp without burning it, especially the cornicione.
HELP me Obi Wan
by NorseKnight
9 Comments
Two easy tips –
#1 a cooling rack. Heat and moisture once pie comes out of the oven is trapped underneath while it cools on say a cutting board. Easy trick, use a cooling rack.
#2 – need a pupping hot surface to cracker or crisp the crust – pizza steel preheated for 30 min or longer to that temperature does the trick for me (combined with cooling rack).
Outside of that it’s going be your oven and dough recipe.
Whatever colour material you had it on in the oven, use the other colour (I believe black and dark grey conduct the heat best)
You have to make sure it was in the oven whilst it’s preheating
Be careful taking it out and placing it back in… will be hot… BE CAREFUL!
Go 50/50 with 00 Al Caputo blue and your KA bread flour. Your actually making sugar so it’s not surprising it’s going to brown quicker. When you leave your dough to cold ferment you’re creating simple sugars among other things.
On top of that you’re using a pizza oven which gets stupid hot and you don’t tell us the temperature which is slightly concerning when burning is the issue.
The 00 flour isn’t going to burn so easily. It’s designed for pizza oven.
Try a longer bake at a lower temperature
I use King Arthur bread flour. Cold ferment your dough for 3-4 days. Use a pizza steel. I’ve never had flop doing this.
Ooni is made for neopolitan style pies. Those aren’t typically super crispy on the bottom and some flop is characteristic. Not that it can’t be done but you might get better results with a normal home oven with steal on bottom and stone on top. What style of pie are you going for?
Looks amazing! Maybe the stone was too hot for too long. Burnt it before it got some internal structure. This is par for the course with Neapolitan, but with a more NY style like you’ve got here, the stone should stabilize at 575, same with air. It should bake for around 5-8 minutes. Ooni’s don’t do this well without being super mindful of temps or adding a more dial-able regulator. Oonis can make a killer NY style or New Haven style, but it takes some time to really dial in the temps and get consistent with it. Might try lowering the hydration, adding some AP, using a screen then transferring to the stone, master cheese and sauce only.
I did the 3 2 1 recipe over the weekend and got a crisp crust. The veg oil helps and I added diastatic malt to it. It needed more salt. I also cooked it on a screen, on a baking steel. As the pizzolo above recommends, a cooling rack is key.
As the owner of a small pizza business who spends almost every day on the line, I would mostly advise you to stop worrying about the whole “no flop” thing. You’re making great pizza!
NY Style slices don’t flop for a few reasons. They’re cooked lower than other styles, but for a longer period of time, so they dry out a bit more. They also typically have less on top (sauce, cheese) than other styles. Then they sit out until someone orders them, go back in the oven and get crisped yet again on the bottom.