Pizza party indoors: stone, cast iron, quarry tiles

We are jonesing for a pizza party but COVID-19 quarantine's put the kibosh on having a big group over, so we improvised indoors. We experimented with a pizza stone, cast iron griddle, and quarry tiles to see which produced the best crust.

Irene stuffed cheese in the crust, kinda fun actually

I made my usual pizza dough with Italian 00 pizza flour and a hydration of 70%: 500 g flour, 350 ml water, a teaspoon of yeast, and a tablespoon of kosher salt. The dough looked a bit dry, so I added a touch more water, but this turned out to make the dough a little too slack. We let it rise overnight in the fridge as we always do. In the morning, we divided and put individual balls in oiled plastic containers for the day to rise slightly.

An hour before baking, I heated the oven as high as it would go, 550F plus convection. I have a big heavy pizza stone on the bottom shelf, a thick cast iron griddle in the middle, and lined the top shelf with quarry tiles. Each pizza would sit on a hot surface and also be heated from the hot mass above. I let the oven preheat for about an hour so all the thermal mass would come up to temperature.

Top: quary tiles; middle: cast iron griddle; bottom: pizza stone

The dough in the containers slipped out easily so were a breeze to shape. We topped them then put them in the oven and compared the crust.

Irene topping the first pizza, done on cast iron griddle, middle shelf

Our pizzas took 4-5 minutes, compared to 1-2 minutes in the pizza oven. None of these puffed up like they do in our outdoor pizza oven, which gets to 800-1000F. We were surprised that the griddle produced the best crust. It was much less expensive, and more versatile, than the very heavy and thick pizza stone. The inexpensive quarry tiles did OK, probably about equal to the stone. Lesson learned: save your money, you don't need the pizza stone.

Nice browning on Irene's pizza, done on the cast iron griddle

Why didn't our pizzas puff? It may be that my extra hydration made them too slack, not enough structure. The lack of heat and thermal density may also have contributed. But we also realized that we didn't let the dough rest covered after shaping into balls, as we do outside.

Chris pizza done on stone

Chris' pizza on quarry tiles

While these pizzas were a far cry from the puffy, silky Neapolitan style pies we get from the outdoor oven, it was definitely quite good, and worth doing again.

Next time we do this inside, I won't be tempted to add water to my 70% hydration, and we'll let the shaped balls rise covered before stretching and topping.  I might move the stone to the top shelf and put our other cast iron griddle in the oven.

Pesto, fresh oregano, kalamata olives, bell peppers, mozza -- really tasty