Some hints for a pizza-party

It's very difficult, especially for an apprentice pizza maker (like me), to get a disk of fresh dough topped with pizza sauce and all its ingredients, and therefore very soft, into the oven correctly, without risking drama: pizza stuck to the shovel, folding up in the oven, ingredients dripping, etc.

To avoid this, you can use the "Tchéou" method (from the pseudonym of its inventor, to whom I pay tribute here ;-), which consists in lightly pre-cooking the dough bases on their own before making them available to guests.

You can do this, in an electric oven for ease of use, and well before the meal, by rolling out the dough and putting it in the oven for around thirty seconds, directly on the oven floor, just enough to sear the underside and barely crust it up. With this preparation, the pizzas, once topped, slide much better on the shovel and are much easier to put in the oven.

During pre-cooking, you may get some large bubbles, but don't worry, just flatten them when you take out the dough disk.

A word of advice: pre-bake all your pastry before you come to the table, and place the circles on a rack on the table within easy reach of your guests. This way, everyone can take a circle of dough, garnish it to their liking (typically: a base of pizza sauce, then all the ingredients they want) and bake it with the pizza maker of the day.

Calzone pizzas are a bit special: you can't pre-bake them, or you won't be able to close them. To make them anyway, I suggest you use a non-stick aluminum pizza pan (which conducts heat better than steel). Place a circle of uncooked dough inside, arrange your ingredients on half the circle, fold over, sealing the edges, and place in the oven to cook.

When you're ready to put the dough in the oven, try not to flour, or only lightly, the shovel, as this flour will settle on the base, burn on contact and give your pizzas an unpleasant taste and color.

When baking in the oven, use the rable to push the embers away from the bottom and sides of the oven to free up space on the hearth. Give the oven a few taps with the flat of the shovel to clear the hearth of ashes and small pieces of remaining embers, and start cooking.

Be careful: with a hot oven, cooking takes about a minute, so you need to pay close attention... (the thing that happens most often with me is that my friend gets up from the table to see his or her pizza cooking, and has a chat or a drink with you: you think of something else, and toc! you unload at best a burnt pizza, at worst a disc of charcoal).

If you take a break during the meal, re-spread the embers on the hearth to distribute the heat evenly during the break.

If the hearth gets dirty with use, because small pieces of ingredients or flour have stuck to it, take a "pyrolysis" break: with the rable, spread the embers over the stains for 5 minutes, then push them back to the bottom to continue cooking => all nice and clean again..