Even old dough makes a good pizza

I made this pizza with dough that was in my Fridge for almost 7 days !  So don't listen to the naysayers that say you can only keep fresh dough for 2-3 days.

Start with a Super hot oven

 Fresh Mozzarella and sharp cheddar with uncurred pepperoni 

 90 Second cook

Healthy Pizza is easy!

Fresh Avocado and Spinach Salad Pizza.

Dress fresh spinach and sun gold tomatoes with Olive oil and Balsamic, and put on the pizza right out of the oven so the spinach wilts on the hot pizza. The fresh avocado it cooked with the pizza.

How Long Can you keep your Pizza Dough in the Fridge?

The answer is : It depends 

Here is a test of some dough I thought would be getting a bit funky. I made  4 dough balls on a friday night . Cooked 3 pizzas on Sat then left one in the fridge until the following WED ! That is 5 days !  I made a prosciutto Pizza on day 5. Dough was Caputo 00 flour , 60% hydration. I took it out of the fridge 2 hours before and stretch and folded it once , and shaped it into a ball about 1 hr before. 

The result : more chew than a fresher dough - but not in a bad way,  quite tasty and still had a good rise around the rim and toasted up in 2 min.

NY Style #SourDough #Pizza in two hours

I had an old batch of dough that was in the fridge for 5days, usually the max time limit of usable dough, so i was not sure it would be any good. I wanted a back up.  In a flash with out any measurement, I  mixed up some all-purpose flour (KA) and a small palm pinch of yeast, and salt,  and to spike the dough with some flavor, I grabbed my sourdough starter from the fridge and dumbed some in. I just mixed everything by hand until I got a reasonable consistency - to me it felt like it was at about 70%. I had about 2hrs to show time. It was a warm day so I put the dough in a bowl and set it in the Sun at about 80 deg, for 1hr - did a stretch and fold then another 45 min. then brought it in the house , shaped it into a ball and let it rest some more on the counter. It did not have the best gluten development, but I did my best at stretching it out into a large Pizza one of the largest I have made ( the peel it is sitting on is a large 16 inch peel) .  I went for a plane cheese and used a combo of cheeses,  more than my usual Neapolitan style to get closer to a NY cheese slice that I remember from living in NY.

Surprisingly it worked : The crust puffed well and had an nice chew.  Took an extra minute of 2 to cook. If i had some pepperoni, that would have been just right :)


So it is possible to crank out a pizza from scratch on short notice .

Pizza Oven set up

Oven made in Italy ( Zio ciro ) and imported by los Angeles oven works (LAOW)  Peter and Anna at LAOW were great . I will report on its function later . This post is just to share the process of getting it set up on a deck. I previously build a BBQ cover that I wanted to place the pizza oven under.

The Shipping was pretty Fast ( 1 week)  but First  I had some prep work to do:

My old oven was down around the corner from my deck,  but I wanted this to be on the deck closer to the kitchen. To center the oven under my covered area and I needed to add extra support to my deck and extend the deck out a bit to accommodate the size of the oven. I made the extension super heavy duty with  6 dovetailed 4X4 supports.

The Final product

Mocking up the Space

Adding Extra Support

I needed to add about 2 feet extension

DoveTail the 4X4 posts for stronger support of 2x4's

The Oven Arrives

Moved to my Garage