Testing Pizzas

I periodically go through bouts of distraught on how I should run the Pizza station at Whole Foods.  I came to the realization that I like pizza, but I wouldn't go there to get it.  Some of my favorite pizza places have a very different style of pizza than what we have to make everyday.  Artichoke, Roberta's, Otto and all of my other favorites have a very thin crust and would be considered Neapolitan Style.  The best part about Neapolitan is that they typically cook it in a 800 degree (or higher) wood-fired stone oven.  Most of the people who work the Pizza at Whole Foods tend to be frightened if the oven even reaches 510 degrees.  Once we were done making pizza for the night, I cranked the oven up and let it heat up for over an hour.  I didn't have too much more time to make my pizza, so I started to make it when it was at 675.  It was simple, a margherita but with capers on it also.  I stretched it by hand, instead of the lame dough stretching machine that we normally use.  The only problem with stretching that I didn't think about before is that I couldn't stretch it bigger than the pizza spatula.  I had a lot more dough than I wanted, but I said what the heck it'll just be a puffy crust on the edge.  It cooked very quickly, under 5 minutes I'm pretty sure.  I put the Basil on after it came out.  I wish that I had used half of the dough so it wasn't as puffy and had the oven at least 100 degrees hotter.  It tasted pretty good however.  Who knew what a little nice olive oil, salt and pepper could do for the sauce.  We may never make pizza like that at Whole Foods but it was a good learning experience.