Omg, I got myself an Ooni for Christmas. It has taken a hot minute to save all those accolade points from work to get this baby. Having this blog has been an excuse to build up quite the collection of miscellaneous appliances and tools over the years, like a spatzle maker and a tagine, but this one seems REALLY necessary. I think as I’ve gotten older and my palette so much more (cough) ‘refined’, my favorite food is still pizza. We have Fri-yay pizza night a good amount, the Finance Analyst in me says the eventual cost savings will catch up for this splurge…
Then I must have started a trend because my dad went and got an Ooni for Christmas too. And, he might like pizza even more than me – very specifically, we loooove some Neapolitan pizza. Except he’s been able to go to Italy for the real thing and my trip was among the many covid-canceled trips. (Bitter much?) He was also able to use his already, so we are putting his sauce recipe to the test!
Ooni Pizza
This post will be a bit different than the usual. We had a lot to learn this go around and tried to simplify where we could. In other words, I didn’t make the dough and we don’t have much in the toppings and directions department. The goal was to not burn down my patio or the pizza. It’s little bit more of documenting the first try using the Ooni and the processes that went into it but we’ve included a recipe for the secret sauce. Besides, the sauce is the most important part of the whole pizza!
We started by heating up the oven. We have the Karu version, so we opted to use the wood burning option opposed to the gas attachment. It was about 15 degrees outside, so we were never quite able to get it to the temperature we wanted. I got halted at about 600 degrees. The temp proved to be a major factor, we just didn’t get that crispy crust that I really hoped for. It also took about 5 minutes instead of the advertised 60 seconds – patience was HARD.
My dad sent us dough balls from Ooni as a Christmas present, so we used those and shaped it as best we could into pizza formation. I read that covering your surface area with a little flour and semolina helped the process and made it easier to load into the oven. This was pretty true. We also prepped 3 pizzas at once, it would have been better to build them directly on the flip and not on the cookie trays!
Next, we layered on our sauce, cheese and a little bit of basil for me. We used fresh mozzarella that we had cut into small 1/4 inch cubes. We also let the cheese sit out and come to room temp on a paper towel to remove some excess water. It was really hard for the boys to not over do the cheese, but a little less may be better.
And then, the moment of truth – loading the pizza’s into the oven. I think all in all it came out pretty tasty, but we definitely need a little more practice. I also need the weather to work in my favor a little more!
Ingredients: Papadoodle’s Pizza Sauce
*I challenge you to find anyone else who uses ‘Papadoodle’ as their spin on ‘Grandpa’. Or even Padoo for short. I’ve literally never found another. Our recipe exchanges are also very vague with alot of room for interpretation.
- 28 oz. can of whole peeled San Marzano tomatoes
- a garlic cloves, chopped. (I used 4)
- Salt, Pepper, Oregano, and red pepper flakes – all to taste, but he says just a little bit of each
- 2 tbsp. olive oil
Directions:
- Hand squeeze the tomatoes into a bowl. Or blend them if you like a smoother consistency.
- Saute the garlic and remaining ingredients for just a couple minutes.
- Add in the tomato sauce and simmer for about 20 minutes.
- Let this cool before layering onto the pizza dough
There is an option for step 5 in Padoo’s recipe: enjoy a glass of wine while you put your pizzas together.
