PIZZA STARTER KIT (6 Tools To Make Pro Level Pizza at Home)

hey what's up today i'm going to show you the tools that i think are absolutely necessary for a beginner or intermediate home cook to start to make really high quality pizza at home including the one pizza tool that i personally wouldn't try making pizza at home without if you're new to this channel and you're wondering why i might be qualified to tell you about this well i used to make pizzas for a living check out union loafers pizza here in st louis for my resume on that i've also made like over a dozen pizza recipes for the home cook on this channel so yeah i make a lot of pizzas at home and i really want to show you guys the tools that i use and the tools i think you need to be successful so the first set of items i think someone who is just starting to get into pizza needs to be successful is a good mixing setup for me that's a medium stainless steel bowl a spoon and a lid to go with that bowl and if you're wondering hey bry what about a stand mixer well you definitely don't need one to make great pizza at home there's like five or six recipes on this channel where i show both hand mixing and stand mixing of pizza doughs or i don't use a stand mixer at all to clarify i'm not saying that you need this specific bowl lid spoon combo but if you did want them they're going to be linked in the description below along with everything else that i'm going to mention in this video and yes i will get a very small portion of amazon sales as an affiliate and when i say small i mean like very small now why is it important to have a mixing setup well when it comes to mixing and fermenting doughs one of the most important things you can do as you learn how to be successful is to eliminate variables i use the same bowl every time i mix bread or pizza because it gives me a barometer for how things are coming together and it doesn't introduce anything different from mix to mix that might affect the outcome dough temperature is a good example of that if you used a big ceramic bowl one time and a plastic one with a super tight fitting lid the next your fermentation times could be all over the place ceramic tends to suck heat out of a dough and that really slows down its fermentation whereas plastic bowls with lids insulate the dough and that tends to speed it up standardizing the vessel that you mix and ferment the dough in eliminates those variables what about a sturdy spoon well i've actually bent quite a few spoons when mixing doughs together by hand so i always use something that is small enough to be maneuverable a chunky wooden spoon is just not a fun way to mix things together in my opinion and i pick something that's dirty enough to not bend back when the dough gets nice and sticky this particular spoon was stolen from a rick bayless restaurant in chicago called topolo bompo sorry rick but i really love it it's really sturdy and i'll link to something very similar down in the description and then lastly this lid is pretty self-explanatory it's very reusable it's not plastic and it seals the top of this bowl well enough the next tool that i think is absolutely essential for the beginning budding pizza cook is this digital scale i'm sure most of you guys aren't surprised that because all of the recipes on this channel are communicated in the videos via grams volume is also always in the description by the way if you need it but i use grams because it's more accurate full stop when it comes to scaling ingredients for bread or pizza doughs grams is better than volume i even use a scale to measure water in grams because that's more accurate than using a pitcher with milliliters on the side a lot of people really hate that i label the water in my recipes in grams and that's okay that's how we did it in the bread bakery pizza restaurant that i helped found here in st louis so that's how i'm going to communicate it to you but yeah i really think you'll start to see a lot more consistency in your pizza results if you start using a scale we all know that flour can be all kinds of different volumes depending on the humidity how compact it is or how long it's been sitting in your cabinet so in the spirit of eliminating variables i say get a 25 kitchen scale and enjoy having better pizza so i've covered some of the tools that you need to both scale and mix your dough but what about actually baking the pizza well there's actually an intermediate step between those two called proofing and it's really important proofing happens after the dough has been divided and it gives the ball of dough some gas and the ability to loft itself higher in the oven for most breadier styles like new york or new jersey or even neapolitan style the secondary fermentation or the proof is super necessary the tool i use most often to do that properly is this four quart pyrex glass container or something very similar to it you don't need this specific one but the main benefit to using these over say a sheet tray with plastic wrap is that they're stackable that makes fridge storage a lot easier and they can be pulled out one at a time so that way if you need to have two doughs for a two-person pizza night you can pull those out of the fridge proof them up and bake only two with the sheet tray once the dough is on the tray all of those doughs have to travel together so if you pull one out you have to pull all four a quick note with these containers though is that since these lids are so tight fitting the thermal energy of the dough is gonna make that proof carry over a lot further when you go to put the dough in the fridge for its cold fermentation so you need to keep an eye on the dough temperature so don't use water that's maybe over 80 f or just crack the lid on these for the first 15 minutes so they don't gas up and overflow and that's it this is a really simple tool but super effective and i think you should probably buy this or something like it now to actually bake these expertly mixed and fermented pizza doughs we're gonna need three more tools the first of which is what i call a pizza loading peel this one in particular came with my uni pro pizza oven and i like it a lot more than say a wooden peel because it's thin the thicker wooden ones like this one are just hefty and chunky and all around make it a struggle to get the pizza off of it and into the oven plus once a wooden peel gets wet sauce and cheese on it the next pizza you build on it will stick way more than the aluminum one these days i only use my loading peel for building and loading pizzas into my oven i use an entirely separate peel for actually moving those pizzas while they're cooking that's what i call a turning peel but before i get to this let me quickly cut and serve this pizza with this dope cutter tool that i got from bespoke post the sponsor of this video bespoke post is a monthly membership club that delivers boxes of top shelf goods to your house for more under the radar brands most of which are small businesses like ninety percent every month they introduce new products to their members like outdoor gear bar wear and home and kitchen goods all based on a preference quiz that you fill out when you sign up each month you get to preview what's inside the box before it's shipped so you can decide if you want to keep it swap it for a different box or even skip that month altogether for no charge this month i got three boxes first i got the chop kit that came with this vegetable cleaver and alaskan ulu knife with a crescent blade i've been using that to cut pizzas it's insane look at this thing i also got the destination box which is a garment slash duffel bag combo that's for when i'm going somewhere but i have to pack something that i don't want to get wrinkled and my last box is the smoked box i'm probably most excited about that one because it includes a food and cocktail smoking kit and a butane torch the question now becomes what can't you smoke so to check out bespoke post click the link in my description use code lagerstrom20 at checkout to get 20 off your first box that's bespokepost.com lagerstrom20 thank you bespoke post now when you're in the throes of a pizza party situation while the pizza is still cooking you need to do two things one is cook that pizza properly and two you need to build the next pizza to drop behind it with only one pizza peel in play you'll have to use that peel to turn and cook the pizza and then once that pizza is out of the oven use it again to build the second pizza this is a much longer turnaround than i personally like at a pizza party and that first pizza is going to be fully consumed before the second one is out of the oven and the loading peel is going to be super hot from moving pizzas around in the oven and that means that the pizzas you build on it from that point forward are probably gonna get like super gummy and stuck so enter the pizza turning peel this is a smaller and more nimble version of the loading peel that we use just to turn and cook the pizza while it's in the oven we actually use something almost identical to this to turn and cook the pizzas professionally at union loafers i want to stress that this tool is kind of a game changer for me personally the quality of my homemade pizzas went up by a lot when i started using it especially in the outdoor style pizzas that i cooked in my uuni for example like thin crust roman or neapolitan style pizzas those pizzas in particular need to be turned nearly constantly but for new york new jersey everything bagel or even indoor neapolitan style pizza a turning peel makes cooking that pizza a lot more controlled consistent and just more fun the last and most important tool that i probably wouldn't live without is unfortunately the most expensive that's a pizza steel or a stone would also work but i highly recommend a steal over a stone if you're in the market for a pizza cooking surface if you already have a pizza stone that you like then maybe dial in the fundamentals of pizza fermentation or pizza building before you upgrade to the steel but yeah a pizza steel does the work of transferring heat from the oven to the pizza better than anything else i've seen in the home kitchen mine is a quarter inch plate of steel that always stays in my oven because it makes my oven way more efficient that steel acts as a kind of heat sink that keeps the interior temperatures of this thing way up when i'm constantly opening the door to check on food when i was still cooking with a pizza stone i noticed that the heat needed to set and caramelize the bottom of the pizza properly would be gone after just one pie and i'd have to recharge it for another 15 minutes or so that's far from my deal with the pizza steel i can get four pizzas cooked properly before i need to recharge it in a pizza restaurant they use deco ovens that have large thick plates of steel on the top and the bottom of the pizza to hold and transfer that heat theirs are just thicker and get hotter but in the u.s no home oven that i'm aware of goes above 550f so the combo of a thoroughly preheated oven and a thick pizza steel will get you as close as possible to a new york or new jersey style gas pizza deck you should be able to get all of these tools for about a hundred to two hundred dollars depending on the shipping of the pizza steel that's usually not super cheap but overall you should be able to make not good but great pizzas with all of these tools thrown a stand mixer if you want but again that's not necessary at all and like 75 percent of pizza styles do not require it let me know in the comments what tools you think i missed or what you guys use at home this is in general just what works for me having made a lot of various styles and i think it's pretty effective as always guys thank you so much for your time and attention smash that freaking like button if you like this video and maybe turn on the bell for notifications so you never miss a vid see you next time

Channel: Brian Lagerstrom

Views: 220,233

Keywords: how to make pizza, pizza tools, pizza, pizza steel, how to cook pizza, proof pizza, baking steel, how to make pizza at home, pizza peel, how to proof pizza, homemade pizza, pizza at home, beginner pizza, pizza kit, pizza making tools, pizza making, make pizza at home, how to make the best pizza, best pizza tools, brian lagerstrom, kitchen tools, weeds and sardines

Id: mnO34s9wc7g

Length: 10min 48sec (648 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 20 2022