The First Firing!

The morning of the 4th of July we woke up dreaming about pizza. It was the day we had been waiting for ... our first firing! I'll begin by saying it was a complete success; we didn't produce our best pizza (at least we hope), but it got ate and we learned a great deal.

Scott had spent the previous day splitting wood. My parents live near the Boundary Waters Canoe Area (BWCA) in Northern Minnesota, and in July of 1999 a huge storm roared across the remote woods leaving behind a large path of fallen trees. My father's passion is trees. Growing them, cutting them, building with them, simply breathing them. He loves trees. So he got a permit to trees that had blown down, and we are fortunate recipients of that wood.

Scott lit the first match in the oven around 2:00. I wish I could say it was ceremonial, but I didn't even know he was doing it! I was inside preparing for our guests.

Around 3:30 I removed the dough from the refrigerator, divided it into balls, and formed each into a tight ball just as the directions said. At about 5:30 we began making the pizza. It was horribly hot outside, so we decided to construct the pizzas in our basement kitchen.

That's when we started having problems! The dough wouldn't 'stretch'. It would just keep bouncing back to its original shape, making the crust thicker than we had hoped. I've never made homemade pizza dough in my life, except from the bag you get at the grocery store where you just add water. I need to do some serious research in this area. Despite the problems with the dough, the pizzas turned out pretty good. 

Everyone kept telling us we would burn our first pizza. But as I imagined, Scott didn't. He did an amazing job at managing the fire. His patience is something I'll never have. At first he had a hard time keeping the heat up, but figured that out as we neared the end of the day by increasing the fire in the back of the oven. Once we get a 'box' built over the oven, we are hoping the temperature won't fall as quickly as it did. 

The best part was seeing the kids so anxious to take a bite of the pizza!

In addition to the dough not 'rolling out' we had major problems with the dough sticking to ... everything! We added so much corn meal we went through my entire CSA supply given to me the week prior, and that wasn't enough. It became a group effort just to get the dough onto the peel.

But overall Scott and I had a great time. We loved making the pizzas, baking them in the oven, and more importantly sharing them with friends. We can't wait to fire the thing up again!