Pizza Time: Margharita madness! Assemble, cook, eat.

It's time to assemble the pizza.

First get your oven very hot.




Hot, hot, hot! As hot as it will go.

Here I am using two of my favorite toys, the Hamilton Beach 31199 Counter Top Rotisserie Oven and the Raytek MT6 Mini Temp Infrared Thermometer.

The oven has a huge (for a toaster oven) 1 cubic foot of space inside, and includes convection, so it can cook things real quick. Pre-heat your oven as high as it will go, the highest I could get mine was about 650F. Even higher would be better, so long as you don't start a fire!

Here I was using the oven pan, however I have since had much better result using a 12" terra cotta paver (unglazed) for about $2 from Home Depot.

Another blog of mine documents my attempts to create an oven that reaches 1000F. We'll see how that goes.

Meanwhile, assemble the pizza.

Take 4 or 5 of the oven dried tomatoes and arrange them decoratively.

Then tear pieces of mozarella and intersperse among the tomatoes.

If you want to be genuinely Italian, then hardly put anything on at all. If you want more - have more!

Lay a few basil leaves over the top of all this, then drizzle with a little extra virgin olive oil.

Season with pepper and smoked sea salt to taste, then carefully slide into the oven. How you do this is up to you, but obviously it's best to have a proper pizza peel (with a short handle, if you don't have a commercial sized kitchen).



Watch the pie carefully as best you can. Try and rotate it after a few minutes to get more even cooking. It will be ready when some of the mozarella starts to turn brown and bubbles slightly. The time will depend on your oven and how hot you can get it (hot, hot hot!)

Then let it cool for a minute or two - you don't want to burn your mouth!

Use your favorite pizza cutting tool to slice up the pizza.
I like to use the
Zyliss Slicer
,
because it gives you proper leverage to cut safely, and snaps apart for easy cleaning.





And here we have it, the perfect Pizza Margharita:

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