When not writing this blog and when not being locked down due to Covid-19, I work in the events industry and promotions. And my latest gig was supposed to be a promotion of the new Breville bench-top ‘wood-fired’ pizza oven Pizzaiolo. It’s a brand new product, the first domestic oven that is capable of reaching 400°C, which is what you need to make that authentic Italian pizza. You know, the one where the crust is hand-stretched, thin but with a fluffy consistency, and cooked at extremely high temperatures in a wood-fired oven to achieve that impeccable finished quality. And looks!
Well, thanks to Breville, now you don’t have to build a pizza oven in your garden anymore. You can make wood-fired pizza on any day of the year, even in heavy rain and freezing temperatures. You don’t need to spend the morning chopping wood nor heating up the oven for the majority of the day in order to prepare your dinner. All you need to do is to invest in this super stylish (my mum thought we have an old-school radio on our kitchen bench when she saw a photo) kitchen appliance.
Pizzaiolo was about to be launched in New Zealand last week, and my job was to be making pizzas in a Noel Leeming store showing bypassers and shoppers how easy it is to make one of the most delicious pizzas you have ever tasted. All by yourself, in your own house. The reason why I was selected for the job (well, one of the reasons) was the fact that I am not exactly a renowned chef. Instead, I write about my struggles in the kitchen. Well, if I can make an awesome pizza, then anyone can!
Unfortunately the job has been postponed due to the lockdown in Auckland. The silver lining for me and my partner is that we got to keep Pizzaiolo for a few weeks! Namely, I got to take the oven home prior to the launch, so I could give it a go and practice making pizzas. I didn’t want to be a complete idiot when promoting the oven! And then I somewhat got stuck with it. And I love it!
We always keep a couple of frozen pizzas in the freezer, you know for those days when you don’t feel like cooking or when you come home too late to be bothered cooking. Instead of in a conventional oven, I made these in Pizzaiolo. Since these are made from frozen, you make them on 200°C or so degrees There is actually a setting on the oven calle ‘frozen pizza’. The pizza tastes a bit better than when made in the usual oven, but I guess mainly because of a ceramic plate that is an essential part of Pizzaiolo. I guess if you use the ceramic pizza plate in the conventional oven, you would get the same result. So no, if you plan to keep on eating frozen pizzas only, then Pizzaiolo is a waste of your money.
I have, however, got into making my own pizza dough. I never tried it before, I just thought it’s too complicated. And I didn’t think it’s worth the effort to make an average pizza you get from a conventional oven. With Pizzaiolo in my kitchen, this is a completely different story! I use Annabel Langbein’s perfect pizza dough recipe. It’s relatively fast to make, it’s easy and it’s delicious. And then I just turn Pizzaiolo on, wait for about 20min for it to heat up to the woodfire setting, stretch the dough into a pizza shape (here I still need to be a bit of practice since my pizzas are anything but round), put on my favourite toppings, and chuck it in the oven. 2 minutes is the perfect time for pizza to be cooked in Pizzaiolo. 2 minutes! And the result is unbelievable.
Hosting a dinner/pizza party has never been easier! Just before the lockdown, we managed to have a few friends around our house. We were sharing pizzas and they couldn’t eat them fast enough to keep up with me ‘production’. Not to mention that they have all said that from now on they will only come to our house for a pizza, forget about finding a restaurant that would serve a better one.
Hopefully we won’t be in lockdown for much longer, but if we are, we are sorted :).
MAYHEM IN THE KITCHEN 
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