(upbeat music)
- Today we're going to talk about
two ways to cook great pizza at home.
I have the Breville Smart Oven Pizzaiolo
which is a countertop over that is
designed specifically for pizza.
- We're gonna compare it to the much
less expensive and modest, baking steel
which you can put in your home oven
and bake pizza directly on it.
- We're going to see how it goes.
- So you want me to start that off?
- Just trying to get the crazy out of my eyes.
(laughing)
- So Lesley, let's talk about the most
important things when we're making pizza.
- You really need your oven to be
as hot as possible because the goal is
to get a crispy crust, with a nice chewy
outer ring, and all of your toppings
to melt at the same time.
- And another important thing is the actual
surface of what you're cooking on.
You really need something that's going to
hold a lot of heat and then deliver it
to the crust to give it that crispy bottom.
- There are dozens of other variables
like dough recipe, and you know, sauce and all that stuff.
All right, now let's just explain
what these things are, okay.
(upbeat music)
The main feature of this oven is that
it gets up to 750 degrees, which is
way hotter than any home oven
I've ever experienced can get up to.
Just from the outside it looks like
a really fancy toaster oven, but if you open
the door you can see that the oven cavity
is narrow, you know, there's this pizza stone in here.
There's not a lot of headroom in here.
It really is for flat wide things, like pizza.
If you look at the control panel,
it, you know, it's another clue
that it is a pizza centric oven,
with you know, markings like frozen,
pan, wood fired, and New York, and thin and crispy.
And we're going to be using the preset modes
today because they're kind of perfect,
like this thing has been designed within
an inch of its life.
It also comes with its own pizza peel.
I have to tell you, I was very skeptical
about this pizza peel because I like
either wood or, what do you call that.
- Composite.
- I got there, we got there.
(laughing)
- Metal peels are usually aluminum,
and aluminum is a very like sticky metal,
so I thought that this thing would just stick,
but it doesn't because it is a super slick
stainless steel, and it really did surprise me.
(singing)
(upbeat music)
- This is a three-eighths of an inch thick piece of steel.
- Which goes in your oven, it absorbs
your oven's heat.
- Holds it.
- It holds it, and then whatever
is put directly on top if it
gets that blast of heat, and that's how
your pizza's gonna get that oven
straight through direct contact.
- Right, right, because the oven
itself can only get up to 500 degrees,
so this won't necessarily make the oven hotter.
- No.
- It just stores the heat so that
when you put the pizza on it, it can
deliver it to the crust.
- Right, and how long does this take to preheat?
- This takes an hour to an hour and a half.
- This thing takes 15 minutes to preheat.
I'm not saying I'm better.
(laughing)
(whacking)
I gotta turn my oven on.
So now we're gonna make pizza.
(gentle upbeat music)
All right so, you wanna know my dough recipe?
- Tell us.
- I'm not gonna tell you.
So I made this two days ago,
and I let it rise in the fridge,
and then put some semolina on your peel
before you stretch this out so you have
a landing pad for it, but not too much,
don't get crazy.
- Don't get wild.
- So now it's just a hair above
room temp which is where I like it.
I like to make a little border with
my finger tips like that, and then I just
go around and do concentric circles
and just get that going.
And I pick it up, and we're just gonna
let gravity do it's thing.
- [Michael] Just work your way around.
- Do you like making pizza?
- It's sort of like reminds me
of being a child, you know.
- Yes, it's like play dough.
So I like to stretch it from
the outer edges because the middle
tends to get really thin, really fast.
Let your hands and fists just kind of
like do that for ya.
I'm just gonna lean over and do this,
and put it on my peel.
- She's beautiful.
- It can slide.
All right, now I'm ready to dress.
I'm faster than you.
Sparse, sparse, you don't want too much sauce.
That's why I like to use a small ladle
so I don't accidentally dump a ton of sauce on it.
This is fresh mozzarella cheese.
I like to slice it and lay it out
on some paper towels to soak up the excess moisture.
I'm sure that is not the classic
Neapolitan way to do it, but you know what?
I'm in New York.
- You know what, we're in New York.
- We're in New York.
I'm not in Naples, and I can do what I want.
And I don't like to put too much in the center
because it'll just like make it all soggy
and that's not fun.
You're gonna do peppers and what?
- I think olives.
(gasping)
- [Lesley] All right, you ready?
- [Michael] That's good.
- All right, so.
- In she goes.
- Mine's going in on the wood fired setting,
which is their Neapolitan style.
I'm going to press go, which is that,
and it's going to do it's thing.
What's really important is you're going
to bake a pizza in the Pizzaiolo, that's very hot.
Or in the oven, you want to like
rotate it half way through the cooking process.
- Yeah, the other good thing about
the steel is that because it's so wide,
you can sort of position it when you put
it in the oven on one side, then when you go
to turn it, you can move it to the side that's hotter.
- Yeah.
- You know, and then kind of like
manipulate it a little bit.
- Fresh surface. - Yeah.
- Full of heat.
I'm really excited.
Mine's gonna cook for two minutes.
Michael's is gonna cook probably for five.
- Mine's gonna take a little longer.
- Now we're gonna take it out.
Finished pizza.
- [Michael] Wow, it's beautiful.
- Thank you.
Oo!
- She's very crusty, this one.
- Okay, so, let's compare.
(gentle funky music)
Nice and spotted.
- [Michael] This is pretty evenly spotted too.
- [Lesley] Yeah!
- [Michael] Yeah.
- You don't have-- - Yeah,
mine's a little more pale, not as much leopard spotting.
- But yeah, that's nothing to do
with the steel though, that is
everything to with our objectively bad oven.
- Bad oven.
- I got more leopard spotting also
because, you know, there are two like
heating elements in here, and there's an outer
ring heating element that is dedicated
to cooking this outer crust, and that's how
I got leopard spotting because it's so close
to that heating element, and I get
that concentrated heat.
- Yeah, and mine's a little more pale
because I don't have that intense heat
coming from right directly above it.
But even though it's not a great oven,
it's just still--
- [Lesley] A beautiful pizza.
- A beautiful pie, yeah.
- It's a gorgeous pizza.
I wouldn't kick that out of bed.
- No! - No!
- That's nice spotting on the bottom.
It's very evenly cooked.
The steel, you know, it's not gonna,
if you have a terrible oven,
it's not gonna solve all your problems.
- No.
- You know, there's still gonna be
the quirks that you have to deal with.
If you have hot spots in your oven,
you're still gonna have to work around those
with the steel, so it takes a little,
that's a little bit of a learning curve,
but you kind of play with it.
(gentle music)
- So after comparing these two methods
of making pizza, our verdict is
the Breville Smart Oven Pizzaiolo
really does bake up stellar pies.
It's easy to use, the preset functions
are pretty spot on, but it is very big,
and it costs $800.
- Yeah.
The steel, on the other hand,
did a really admirable job.
I think it comes very, very close
to the Breville.
You don't get quite as much of the leopard
spotting on the top, but this is a lot cheaper too.
So if you're not going to be making
pizza all the time, it's probably a better choice.
This is just over $100 for the steel.
- They're both respectable pies,
they're both delicious.
Really the choice is up to you.
Yeah. - Cheers!
- [Both] Mm!
(laughing)
- I got lipstick all over my fingers.