(Almost) Wood-Fired Pizza With Chanterelles, Egg and Arugula

Fried eggs and wood oven-baked pizza are two of my all-time favorite foods. So when I first tasted pizza with an egg cooked right on it, I knew it was the start of a love affair. Two perfect (and simple foods) knit together so artfully, I found myself wondering why I had never thought of it before.  For my egg pizza, I wanted flavors that would enhance, not compete with the flavor of the egg. I started with a base of garlic and added lightly sauteed chanterelles. The earthy sweet mushrooms and savory garlic infuse into the egg as it cooks giving you a sumptuous white, and (if you cook it just right) a yolk that is still runny enough to ooze all over your plate when you cut into it.

Of course putting an egg on a pizza is not the difficult part of this whole scheme-- the hard part is creating a respectable pizza in a home kitchen. Pizza ovens can heat up much hotter than your oven can (anywhere from 800- 1000 F). And since my little oven tops out at 500, there’s simply no way that I could get a crust similar to one baked in a real pizza oven, right? Well, sort of. I had heard rumors of a technique to hack a home pizza oven. Heat a cast iron skillet on your stovetop, then bake the pizza on that just a few inches underneath a broiler and you’ve got a cooking environment that looks promisingly like a pizza oven. After half a dozen trials (including one that stripped the precious seasoning right off my iron skillet) I’ve come up with my own version of the home pizza oven trick. And I’m happy to say that it will turn out an excellent pizza.

There are two sections of this instructable: the first part is my method and techniques for achieving a good pizza dough, and for mimicking a wood-fired pizza oven at home. The second part is my recipe for this pizza. If you're just looking for the recipe, you can skip to step 3. Enjoy!

Step 1: Pizza Dough Techniques

The dough recipe
You don’t have to use my dough recipe. Not that my recipe isn’t good (it is!), but I wouldn’t want you to think that there is something secret in my recipe that will make your dough come out differently than every other dough. In fact, the best doughs undoubtedly come from using sponges and starters, but this is my "quick" recipe. Whatever the source of your recipe, there are a few very important things to look for 1. Bread flour. Bread flour has a higher gluten content than all purpose flour-- that gluten is the key to getting a chewy, stretchy dough. 2. Long, slow kneading. Once again, it’s all about the gluten. It takes time and agitation  for the gluten proteins to connect and form a web that will give your dough it’s structure. I use a dough hook in a stand mixer and let the whole thing mix on the lowest speed for at least ten minutes. At this point the dough should look smooth and stretch into a long melted-mozzarella-like string when you lift the dough hook out. Waiting to add the salt and oil until after the initial mixing will also ensure that you get the best gluten development. 3. Proper hydration. In bread baking, the general rule is that the wetter your dough is, the bigger holes in your finished bread. In pizza, you want a dough with large well developed holes.(you know the kind that will swell up and char to perfection.) So you need to have a very wet dough. Wet doughs can be a bit tricky to work with (which is why you’ll find lots of recipes that are not very wet. I’d say at you want at least 1/3 the volume of water to the volume of flour. (Some recipes, including mine, may be as much as is ½ water.) If you've developed your gluten sufficiently, even a wet dough will cohere.

Shaping the dough
It isn’t actually that tricky to shape a pizza dough by hand. (As long as you don’t have your heart set on launching the dough gracefully into the air and catching it with dancerly elegance.) But don’t even think of using a rolling pin-- the hand stretching is crucial to achieving the correct dough consistency. 1. Weigh your dough. For my recipe each pizza will use about 170 grams of dough. If you don’t have a scale, sure, you can just eyeball equal portions. But if you want to practice getting that perfect, just-the-right-thickness crust, it helps to know exactly how much dough you are starting with.  2. Let it rest. Gluten is elastic-- this means it tends to spring back to the shape that it was in before. After you’ve tucked your dough into a ball, let it rest at least five minutes. It will be much more cooperative when you try to stretch it.  3. Cut parchment rounds. There’s nothing traditional about this one, I’m afraid. But I find cutting rounds of parchment to be incredibly helpful. Cut them to the exact size of the surface you'll be cooking your pizza on, and you’ll know exactly how large a circle you should be stretching your dough to. And it also makes transferring your pizza into the oven a snap. Yes, it is possible to transfer a pizza using just cornmeal or semolina. But, sadly,  I am not a professional pizziaola.  And I cannot accept the possibility (inevitability?) of the occasional torn, dropped, burned and ruined pizza while I work out the kinks in my technique. So I’ll stick to my parchment rounds, thank you.  4. Stretch & press. Now that your dough is ready to be shaped, pick it up over two fists (no pointy fingers that might poke holes through the dough). Rock the dough back and forth between your two fists, letting gravity stretch the dough out. Try to focus your stretching at the outside rim of the pizza, you don’t want to stretch the inside to a paper-thin sheet. Gently set your dough down onto your parchment round. Reach your fingers underneath the thicker edges and stretch the dough out to the edge of the parchment sheet. Use your fingertips to dimple the surface of the dough all over. This will ensure that you don’t get any huge dough bubbles that might create a pizza-topped balloon in the oven. You can now top the pizza with whatever you like... but use a light hand with toppings for this style of pizza. This style of pizza will not do well buried in molten cheese and laden with mounds of toppings.

Step 2: Faking a Wood-Fired Pizza Oven at Home

1. Prepare your oven. First, gather up all of your equipment. Once everything is hot, the whole process goes very quickly, so you’ll want to make sure that everything fits and works together first. You’ll need an enameled* cast iron skillet or dutch oven with a 10” diameter, flat base.  You’ll be baking with the pan upside down, adjust the oven rack so that the surface of  your upside-down pot is about three inches away from your broiler. (If you are using a skillet, you’ll need something metal to prop it up-- a round cake pan works nicely.) Place an empty baking sheet on the lower rack to catch any drips that get away from your pizza.

2. The bottom heat. The whole reason this technique works is that you can heat cast iron on your stovetop much hotter than a pizza stone in your oven. When you’re ready to cook your pizza, preheat your cast iron skillet or dutch oven over high heat for 7-12 minutes. On my electric stovetop my dutch oven takes 10 minutes to preheat. But that is my stovetop, and my pot-- you’ll have to play around and test to figure out the exact timing for your kitchen. Pour a teaspoon of water into the pot and it should dissipate into steam almost immediately. The last drop should be gone within two seconds. Quickly (and carefully) invert your pan, slide your pizza on and bake immediately.

3. The top heat. In my oven, setting the broiler to low will cook a pizza in a little less than 5 minutes. The broiler doesn’t take that long to preheat-- but you’ll still want to have some ambient heat in the oven. Seven or eight minutes preheating will likely do the trick. Once again, you’ll have to experiment to figure out what works best in your oven.

4. The optional wood smoke. This part is really, truly optional. It all depends on whether the thought of wisps of wood smoke curling around your baking pizza fills your heart with joy or sends you and your smoke detector into a panic. If you are a wood-smoke fiend like me, then read on. If not, don’t worry, I’m sure your pizza will still be magnificent. Soak a few smoking chips in water an hour or two before you’ll be baking. Wrap the chips loosely in a tin foil packet and poke a half dozen holes in the top of the packet.. In the last two or three minutes of preheating your cast iron, toss your packet of smoking chips into the pot and cover. (This heat will get the smoke started.) Use tongs to transfer the packet of smoking chips to your oven rack when you're ready to start cooking.

5. Troubleshooting. Balancing this stuff out is mostly common sense-- if your pizza is browning too quickly on either the top or the bottom, then you’ll want to reduce the heat from that side (and vice versa if it’s not cooking quickly enough.) While you’re experimenting be sure to take notes-- once you figure out how long to preheat and what broiler setting to use, you can whip out a perfect pizza in just a few minutes.

*The whole process will ruin the seasoning on your unfinished cast iron ware. And, yes, enameled cast iron is quite expensive. But if you look around you might be able to find a chipped or damaged pot or skillet for pretty cheap. Chips on the surface of the enamel aren’t great for cooking, but won’t cause any problems for this pizza stone technique.

Step 3: Prepare Dough & Toppings

Dough:
2¼t. dried yeast (regular, not quick-rising)
2c. warm water
1T. barley malt (you can omit or substitute with honey if you can't find barley malt)
4c. bread flour
2T. wheat germ (optional, but I like the nutty wheat flavor it contributes)
1½t. salt
1T olive oil

Toppings:
½ oz. dried chanterelles or other mushrooms
3-5 garlic cloves
eggs
1½ c. grated Piave cheese (If you can't find Piave, parmesan will do)
1 c. baby arugula
high quality extra virgin olive oil
salt and pepper

Equipment:
enameled cast iron skillet or dutch oven
round cake pan, or other oven-safe cookware that the skillet can be inverted onto (only if you're using a skillet)
parchment paper
smoking chips (optional, I used cherry)
baker’s peel (or an inverted baking sheet will work, too)

Yield:
6 individual pizzas

Mix Dough
Pour yeast into the bottom of your mixer bowl. Pour warm water over the yeast. Stir in malt syrup to dissolve. Pour the flour and wheat germ over the water. Fit the mixer with the dough hook and turn to medium for a minute or two, just until the dough comes together. Turn the speed down to low and let mix for about 10 minutes. By now the dough should be cleaning the side of the bowl. Add the salt and mix for another minute or two until the salt is completely absorbed. Add the olive oil and mix until the oil is incorporated (it might take another minute or two of mixing.) Cover the mixing bowl with plastic wrap and let it rise until doubled (about 2½ hours.) If you are using the smoking chips cover them in water and leave them to soak.

Prepare Toppings
Pour hot water over dried mushrooms and leave them to rehydrate. Peel garlic and mince. Lightly saute garlic with a few tablespoons of olive oil until fragrant. Set the garlic and oil aside in a bowl. Slice the chanterelles thinly. Saute the chanterelles in a tablespoon of olive oil. Season with salt. Set chanterelles aside. Grate cheese.

Step 4: Top & Bake

Preshape Dough
Divide dough into six equal portions (about 165g. if you have a food scale). Tuck the ends of each piece of dough under so that each portion is a little round. Set rounds on a well floured surface and leave them to rest for at least 5 minutes.

Prepare Oven
Cut 10” rounds of parchment paper. You probably have a plate or mixing bowl that you can trace onto parchment. Place your cake pan (or whatever you’re using) on a sheet pan. Adjust your oven rack so that the surface of your inverted pot is about three inches away from the burner. (This will probably be on the highest rack, but it all depends on the cake pan and your oven.) Tear a piece of tin foil and fold it in half. Place wood chips inside and fold over the edges of the packet to seal. Poke a few holes in the top. Preheat broiler on the low setting.
Shape Dough
Shape each dough lump to cover the parchment round.  The finished dough should come within a half an inch of the edge of the parchment round.

Top & Bake Pizza
Place your skillet on the stove and turn the heat to high. Turn your broiler on to low. Place smoking chip packet on your sheet tray.  Brush pizza with garlic and olive oil. Scatter cheese and chanterelles over the surface of the pizza. Check the heat of the skillet-- a drop of water should immediately dissipate when dropped onto the surface of the pan. Invert your skillet and place it on top of the cake pan in the oven. Slide the pizza and parchment onto the surface of the skillet. Close the oven door and let cook for 2½ minutes. Crack an egg into a bowl. When the timer goes off open the oven and pour the cracked egg into the center of the pizza. Cook for another 2½ minutes, or until the crust is blistered, crisp and golden. Scatter arugula leaves over the surface of the pizza. Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Eat immediately. If you are cooking more than one pizza (most likely) you’ll need to transfer your skillet back to the stovetop to bring it up to high heat again before baking the next pizza. It will likely only take a minute or two to bring it up to a suitable temperature.

Extra pizza dough can be stored in the freezer. Defrost it in an oiled bowl at room temperature for about 3 hours or in the refrigerator the night before. You'll have homemade pizza in less than 20 minutes!