We were sent a pizza steel kit to review last week and thought we’d give it its first trial in this week’s Cakes & Bakes post.
It’s a pizza steel, so of course that was going to be the thing we made! After making last week’s loaf we had some left-over ingredients so we thought beetroot and goats cheese pizza would be a great choice – waste not, want not! And we always have batches of home made tomato sauce in the freezer… we’ll share that recipe next week as it’s a very flexible and useful staple to have available.
The kit is available in two sizes (depending on the width of your oven) and comprises a steel, a pair of aluminium combi peels for preparing the pizzas and a stainless steel dough cutter.
Prior to use, the steel needed to be ‘seasoned‘. This entails it being wiped all over with some kitchen roll impregnated with olive or rapeseed oil and putting it into a hot oven (250ºC) for an hour. Once that’s been done it keeps the steel non-stick, makes it easier to clean and stops it from rusting. So long as you maintain it properly by not washing it in soapy water, keeping it dry and resealing it with oil when necessary.
Before using it to cook your pizza, it needs to be preheated in the oven for 45 minutes (a pizza stone needs up to twice that length of time to achieve the correct heat).
Even if you don’t make pizza that frequently, the steel can be used to make home-made loaves, rolls, baguettes… any sort of bread product.
Prior to using the pizza steel, our home-made pizzas usually take about 25 minutes to cook. This batch of beetroot and goats cheese pizza took a mere 12-15 minutes – and the base and crust had a far superior texture.
We can’t recommend the pizza steel highly enough for producing professional looking and tasting pizzas. In fact, we can safely say it’s going to revolutionise our pizza and bread making!
What’s your favourite pizza topping(s)?
Click here to pin the recipe for later!
- 450g/16oz Italian Tipo 00 flour
- 300ml/10½fl oz warm water
- 10g/⅓oz fresh or dried yeast
- 25ml/1fl oz olive oil
- 10g/⅓oz salt
- 200ml/7fl oz tomato sauce
- 125g/4½oz goats cheese log, sliced
- 1 raw beetroot, peeled and sliced thinly
- 6tsp pesto (or my nettle pesto)
- Place the flour in a mixing bowl fitted with the dough hook attachment
- Dissolve the yeast in the warm water and add to the bowl
- Mix at slow speed until you achieve a dough texture
- Cover with cling film or a large clear plastic bag and rest for an hour
- Add the olive oil and salt to the dough and mix slowly for a further 4 minutes
- Rest for ½ hour
- Shape the pizza and leave to prove for 12 minutes
- Add the tomato sauce, and other toppings and bake at 230ºC/ 450ºF/Gas mark 8 on a pizza steel for 25 minutes