Here in Singapore, we went into full-on lockdown in 2020. We were allowed to go to the grocery store, but otherwise we could not go anywhere.
And I just got a hankering for some pizza. But the ovens here are pretty small, like the size of a microwave. I tried to make a pizza on my gas braai by sliding it directly on to the grid, but it was just all right. I wanted that leopard-spotted bottom, and the charred bubbles on the crust. I saw online there were some pizza ovens selling in the US that go on top of a gas braai. And I thought, maybe I can make something like that.
My design uses a thick steel baking tray as the base, covered by a stainless-steel dome with a pizza stone attached at the top. The baking tray is a better heat conductor than the stone, which lets it run several degrees hotter. It works really well – it gets super hot on the bottom to give the crust that pizza crunch, while also trapping heat and reflecting it downwards to melt the cheese and make the top crust pillowy.
I'm originally from Texas, where barbecue is big. It's the simplest food, but to get it perfect is so hard. Pizza's like that too - to get it just right, it takes so much practise. I'm always trying to perfect it by studying types of dough and how to get the heat right (for tips, see 'How to make the perfect pizza' sidebar on p68).
This story is from the May/June 2022 edition of Popular Mechanics South Africa.
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This story is from the May/June 2022 edition of Popular Mechanics South Africa.
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