193/18 – Ooni 3 Pizzas #2:
Time to finish off the pellet testing on the Ooni 3 so it was time for Ooni 3 Pizzas #2.
The Book:
The dough and sauce recipe is from The Pizza Bible Book:
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Ooni Blog:
My new Ooni Blog is now live on this site with all of my notes on there. It’s split out into categories so should be a lot easier to use now. Will be easier for me to update too:
Ooni Blog
THE INGREDIENTS:
Flour: Caputo Red Flour
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Yeast: Saf-Levure Dry yeast
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Tomatoes: San Marzano Plum Tomatoes
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THE KIT:
6 litre food grade container with lid: I use this to bulk ferment the dough once it’s mixed
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Food grade pizza dough trays (x3): I use these to cold proof the dough balls
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Wooden Pizza Peel: Stops your pizza sticking when you launch it into the oven, needs minimal flour also. I wish I had bought one of these years ago as it’s a total game changer.
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The Dough:
The Sauce:
New York – New Jersey Tomato Sauce from The Pizza Bible book. The San Marzano tomatoes, tomato puree, oregano, salt and oil blitzed with a hand blender then hand crushed tomatoes were also added.
The Fire:
As part of the testing I asked my wife to package up Ooni pellets and Balcas Brites in different unmarked containers. Last time I went for the closest container and they were really good to cook with, time to use the other container.
I weighed out 1kg before I started. I lit the fire with a flamer in the tray, left it 5 minutes but the pellets weren’t lit so I added another flamer plus one in the middle for good luck. I haven’t had pellets fail to light before, this wasn’t a good start! It took another 10 minutes with the fan on to get a decent fire going so I could add the jam funnel and fill it. The whole 1kg of pellets had now been added so I topped up the scale with another 500g ready to top up. The hottest I could get the stone was 475c which was strange as it normally hits 550c without an issue.
There was a serious amount of smoke coming out of the Ooni at this point, I had to step outside for a bit to clear my lungs!
This video shows the amount of smoke coming out the back.
This was the state of my bbq hut.
There was even black smoke coming out the chimney!
And when it was time to cook the stone was black and covered in debris.
The Cook:
Really not sure what happened with this one, it seemed to get stuck on the stone when I went to turn it!
Bit of a better shape
I only had salami for the kids so I ripped it up a bit as it looks pretty poor whole.
Small dough ball so a small pizza
Some East Coast Cured Merguez on mine.
And again!
SUMMARY:
All in it took an hour to light and cook 6 pizzas vs 34 minutes on the other pellets. I also used 2.4kg of pellets vs 1kg of the other pellets.
The amount of smoke that came off these was horrific, I didn’t feel too good after cooking from inhaling the fumes. There was a bit of a smell/taste to the smoke too, can’t quite place it but a bit chemically. I couldn’t get the oven as hot as normal and the stone was covered in soot.
The pizzas looked good but had a sooty/acrid taste to them. I haven’t managed to clear the taste from my mouth 4 hours on!
Pretty quickly I guessed these were the Balcas pellets due to the issues lighting them and the amount of smoke which I haven’t had on the Ooni pellets before. It’s a bit of a shame as a lot of people on the forums are massive fans of these but due to the smoke, soot and acrid taste on the pizza I won’t use them again. Also a shame as the Balcas people were really helpful on email. It’s definitely a quality product, fully natural, no additives and they produce 500 tonnes a day running 24/7. They also offered me a tour of the facilities to see the pellets getting made which was nice. I think these are best suited to biomass boilers and not to food ovens. My first time trying softwood pellets and I am afraid it will be my last as I will stick to the Ooni pellets in future. I fully expect a number of die hard Balcas fans to tear this apart, I don’t know what could have been done differently to achieve a better result. I turned the fan off for the last few pizzas and it was no better. If you use these pellets and have no issues I congratulate you, if you haven’t used them I would suggest you stick to the Ooni ones!
THE BOOK:
The dough and sauce recipe is from The Pizza Bible book:
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If you don’t have an Ooni 3 yet you can buy one here
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KUNGFUBBQ: UK BBQ Blog and Ooni Blog documenting recipe cooks from various cookbooks, my own recipes, reviews of BBQ’s and Accessories plus handy hints and tips. UK BBQ Blogs