Damnit, Joerg.. :)

So it's a secret and if you told me you'd have to kill me afterwards :-)

Maybe I should find out who she is ...

Definitely. Of course, we also make our own dough from scratch. Well, my wife does. I was almost banned from the kitchen after we started dating and my girlfriend-now-wife saw me mixing pizza dough with a kneeding hooked in the chuck of my Metabo electric drill. I had started doing that after burning up the motors of several kitchen mixers because mostly I made pizza when there was a party, for a dozen or more people.

Many moons later ... my wife prepared a special dough for gourmet pastry, very tough. The mixer started making funny noises, almost stalled and let off a smell like, hey, I'll let off some blue smoke here soon. "Honey, would you mind doing that electric drill trick just one more time?", I went to the garage and got the indestructable old Metabo. And should that ever be unable to kneed stuff I've got another much older model that would be able to torque off a wrist:

You need to use a Pizza Stone. I make BBQ chicken w/Jalapenos all the time, and no stone == burnt crust.

It's a secret, but I don't kill people... anymore.

She might be dead. 8-o

Yeah, my dough was never that bad and I kneaded it by hand. My problem was getting a good rise out of it. I would often end up adding extra sugar or honey which showed up in the flavor but not objectionably.

I have and don't believe there is much of a difference. It doesn't take much "flavor" wood to do the job. BTW, by "charcoal", I do *not* mean briquettes (e.g. Kingsford).

There is little choice in many areas of the country, particularly if you want something built in the last 30 years. HOAs aren't all bad, either.

I'm with Joerg. There's a plague of busybodies everyplace ATM, so HOAs/gated communities/coop boards/etc. are just another brick in the wall.

Cheers

Phil "Life's best in a normal neighbourhood" Hobbs

You can either use a sugar (1 teaspoon per pound max) or just wait longer with the dough in a warm place (25 - 31 deg C). Also make sure yo are using LIVE yeast (not years old, been in the car in summer etc). You can check by mixing a teaspoon of yeast and sugar in 1/4 cup of WARM water. If it hasn't started to activate in 15 to an max of 30 minutes it's dead. OTTOMH the only other things I can think of is to use bread making flour, also called 'strong' flour or else you will get something with the texture of a scone. More than 1 teaspoon to a pound of dough will also inhibit the yeast and if it is too dry it will also take longer to rise. If it was a loaf of bread you can verify the perfect consistency by getting a 'double rise' from the baking. Pizza I don't know.

Honestly I have always found that the type/brand of yeast affects the taste more than the sugar.

In general I agree but our development is pretty small (about 70 homes, when all filled out, IIRC). Since we got the builder and (later) his management company out of the process it's been pretty clear sailing. I don't agree with everything they do but that's no different than any other political division. OTOH, they do keep the rif-raf to a minimum. In a small subdivision, like we're in, I don't really have a problem with them. If I cared, I'd run for the board. ;-)

Yo, my dough wasn't bad. People liked it that way which is why back in the university days pizza was always done at my apartment. The drill could swirl the dough almost until bubbles came out. I always got a good rise. I also made my own yoghurt and some other stuff.

Still, after I married the electric drill is never again allowed to live in the kitchen even though it is allowed to visit for the occasional "side job".

Sugar is one of the items I can't stand too well in any food except a dessert or cake. I can even taste traces and that can ruin a meal for me. Our pizza is usually more on the 5-alarm side and we really have to pipe it down when visitors come. I also like anchovies on there but my wife doesn't.

So what charcoal have you used? For charcoal (aside from Kingsford) we use Lazzari Mesquite but it's very large chunks, difficult to light in some chimneys.

I can clearly taste the difference when tri-tip and the like is cooked over a real wood fire using flavorful wood.

HOAs can be outright nuts. Here we had some that would levy penalties on homeowners if they didn't water their lawn enough for a lush green color. The state or water utilty would, due to drought legislation, fine them if they did water that much. No way I'd ever put up with that.

They would not want me on the board. I can't stand bureaucracy and so I'd be pretty loud there :-)

Yup! A neighborhood that is able to deal with rif-raf in the traditional way, without nanny behavior.

We use a thick steel plate and the pizza is on aluminum foil. The foil makes it super easy to slide it off the plate and slide on the next one, we can bake in "series production" fashion if we keep the fire going.

Anything other than Kingsford or the bargain brands in the big--box stores. "Briquettes" aren't real charcoal. It's much denser than that. Chimneys?

They can be but then again, you live in Kalifornicate so one has to expect to be screwed from both sides. There *are* more sane places with more sane people.

Kinda like our neighbor, though she *is* on the board. That's exactly who you want on an HOA board.

Without an HOA, there is little that you can do to someone who is letting their home go. It's certainly better than having the town or county tell you what you can and can't do.

A stone will give you a "dryer" crust -- oils, moisture, etc. won't "fry" (as in "frying pan") the dough. A "peel" (even an improvised one) makes removing and replacing the pizza trivial (in a pinch, I use a three-sided cookie sheet). When we bake in friend's wood fired oven, the pie sits on the ceramic tile "floor" giving the same result as a stone would.

A starter chimney:

Good! But I still prefer no HOA at all.

This here is the countryside of California where people are mostly nice and conservative. Old Western saying: It ain't like back east, the law ain't in books, out here the law's on your hips" :-)

We've tried stone before but they always cracked after a while. The metal plate works nicely but you do have to keep an eye on bake time and fire temps. The other issue is where to keep it because the underside can become a bit yucky over time. The metal plate has two handles which can also be used to hang it. So no critters can get there while it's not in use. Kind of hard to do (safely) with a stone.

Ah, we just used a pint of gasoline. ;-)

The neighborhoods with no HOAs tend to have really run-down houses, if not mobile homes in them. YEah, I'd rather have no HOA where I am now but there is no option here, and in most areas of the country.

In Kalifornicate? You gotta be kiddin'. Kalifornicators are worse than NYrs!

Gotta be more careful! :>

When we do pizza indoors, we bake it on a "cooling (wire) rack" set on a cookie sheet. As such, the bottom of the crust is exposed to the air (instead of "frying" on a metal surface) and the cookie sheet saves us the hassle of cleaning the oven from melted cheese (etc.) drippings.

We store the stone on its side (edge?) alongside the oversized cutting boards (when I make bread or cookie dough, I need a large surface on which to work the dough). BTW, a large wok makes an excellent container to set the (bread) dough in to rise (I make 10 pound batches so finding something large, open and "accessible" is a bit of a challenge). Also makes it easy to punch the dough down for second rising (lightly grease sides of wok with EV olive oil before setting the COVERED dough in it).

I have one of those chimneys and it works wonders. I used to use a coffee can but it wasn't quite large enough. Plus the handle is handy. A bit of newspaper in the bottom and one match is all it takes. Plus I get to keep my eyebrows. :)

Mobile homes! lol That is a zoning issue. Around here only trailer parks can have mobile homes.

HOAs vary. Some are like Nazi Germany and some are like no HOA at all. With reasonable people on the committees doing reasonable things they can be good... just like any government.

No gasoline. Ever. Just newspaper and we also add some dry snapped twigs. But when I am here I usually start it just with wood these days.

We have a left-leaning local paper so the political commentary pages burn best :-)

We fund an astonishing difference between the chimney from the discounter (burned out after hundreds of sessions) and the one above from Weber. The old one needed about 1/2h to get the coals to glow while the Weber chimney is done in half that time.

The coating which looks like galvanizing burned off after the first use, along with some golden-colored layer below it. No clue why they even bother putting that one.

Trust me, when you use it outdoors on the barbie where meats and other stuff are also cooked it gets grimey, and fast.

I've tried raising it on a metal rack but I like the crunchier crust without.

That's all done by my wife. She is in the food preparers union and I am in the barbecuers union, thus no overlap allowed :-)

When she broke her wrist and I had to do it all I realized how much work preparing a really good pizza is. Over 30+ years I had forgotten.