Later in the day I made pizza dough, I used the recipe in the Roccbox user manual, which was going to produce far too much dough and was very wet. Still, I believe in starting with the manufactures recommendations, so if anything goes wrong I know it wasn't something I'd introduced.
I usually make enough dough for 4 pizzas. It has one rise, then is divided in to two and rises again. One piece goes in the freezer, and the other half makes one ENORMOUS rectangular pizza, and we teach take half and top it how we like. The Roccbox oven bed is fairly small, so we were going to have to go for 2 individual pizzas. It would still be quicker: our oven takes about 45 minutes to heat up and t thoroughly heat the pizza stone, and then it takes 7 minutes to cook the pizza. Roccbox should take 20 minutes to heat up, and then about 90 seconds each for 2 pizzas.
Having said that, I couldn't quite bring myself to follow their instructions. They only allowed one rise, but had used dried active yeast (not fast yeast) so it really needed two. I gave it two rises.
Roccbox was fired up, and got to temperature - 300 degrees - in about 20 minutes. Big Tick.
There were no instructions on the technicalities of moving dough around. I know from previous experience that sometimes the dough sticks, and we usually put the rolled out dough on to the paddle before topping it.
However, they didn't seem to do that in the pics, so we did the pizza toppings before attempting to move the dough. I deliberately used only a small amount of passata and a little cheese, as I could see the superthin dough was going to be a challenge to move.
It didn't end well for the first one, despite flouring the worktop and putting cornmeal on the peel.
By now, it was dark outside. Doesn't it get dark early and quickly now?. Roccbox was on the table in front of the summerhouse, so we had all the lights on so we could see the oven.For the second one, I went mad with the flour on the worktop, and we managed to get the whole thing on to the peel and then in to the oven. It only takes 90 seconds to cook, and I completely forgot that I needed to turn it in that time.
It came out charred on one side, and not properly cooked on the other - but that was totally my fault.
It was, however, rather tasty. I wish I'd taken some pictures.
I've watched some (non Roccbox) videos on handling pizza dough, and I was pleased to see that I'd actually got it right - including where I was patching holes rather than trying to squeeze them together.
Next time I'll use a similar recipe to the Roccbox supplied one, but (a) I'll halve the quantity, and (b) I'll follow my normal method of proving - all the dough together for the first rise, then cut it into individual pizza sizes, and let the pieces rise again. Any that I'm not using immediately can go in the freezer.
We had to wait for Roccbox to cool down a bit to put it away - it can't be left outside. We're going to put it on a heavy duty trolley to enable us to move it in and out easily. We'll need that because we have pizza at least once a week. We also use (or used to use) our oven and pizza stone to make naan bread, pita bread, flat breads, and garlic breads... and I'm going to try using Roccbox for that.
At the moment we have to carry it outside to use it. It's doable, but I'll be really glad when the trolley arrives.
I was lucky that I saw it when an earlybird backer price was available, and this coincided with me having the funds to pay for it. Now that I've used it, I have to say that I'd buy it at the full price (assuming I had the money available)
I'll try and take some pics next time.
