have to confess: Pizza is one of my favorite camping foods. The simple “pie” has a lot going for it — pizza fits easily on a paper plate, can be eaten by hand and is equally delicious hot or cold. Besides, when you make it yourself you can add virtually any topping you want, satisfying every palate in your group from carnivores to vegetarians. Heck, when topped with onions, mushrooms, olives and tomato, it is almost vegan.
Now, that said, I’m not talking about tossing a frozen pizza into an RV oven or ordering takeout from a local pizza joint found during your travels. I’m not knocking either option, but I discovered a fun alternative that quickly turns the campsite meal into an entertaining party. It’s a portable, Neapolitan-style pizza oven called the Ooni that sets up — and breaks down — in a matter of minutes.
The unit I have, the Ooni Fyra 12 Wood Pellet Pizza Oven, is the base model that uses wood pellets to fuel the fire (the same pellets used in a smoker grill) and can cook up to a 12-inch pizza. More to the point, it’s extremely portable. In fact, it breaks down to about 12 x 12 x 16 inches (a carry tote is available on the Ooni website) and weighs just 22 pounds. I don’t have a lot of outdoor baggage space in my Class C motorhome, but the Ooni rides just fine in my Jeep dinghy.
As I hinted at earlier, Neapolitan pizza is my favorite style, made with tomatoes and mozzarella cheese. Strictly speaking, it must be made with either San Marzano tomatoes or Pomodorino del Piennolo del Vesuvio, which grow on the volcanic plains south of Mount Vesuvius. Another requirement is that the mozzarella cheese is made from the milk of water buffalo. Neapolitan pizza gave rise to the New York-style pizza that was first made by Italian immigrants in the early 20th century. The pizza is thin-crust and bakes quickly in the tremendously hot oven — we’re talking under two minutes at around 850 degrees Fahrenheit.
Building Your Pizza
On a floured surface or silicone pastry mat, work the dough ball with the palms of your hands and fingers into a flat disk; a light dusting of flour helps in the process. Keep pressing and pulling until you get the thickness you like. The dough will have a tendency to pull itself back into a ball, so be patient, pop another cold beverage and let it rest between stretches. Eventually, you will get there. I like my crust relatively thin at just above 1/8th of an inch, but I go by looks, not a tape measure.
There are plenty of good off-the-shelf pizza sauces for my taste, or you can cook down some canned San Marzano tomatoes and turn them into your pizza sauce. I found a great San Marzano tomato pizza sauce recipe on the FornoBravo website.
Toppings are almost unlimited, depending on what you like. Fresh tomatoes, basil, pepperoni, salami, prosciutto, ground beef, sausage, onion, garlic, peppers, black or green olives — just about anything you prefer. For the cheese, I like to use a mix of grated cheddar, parmesan, and swiss along with plenty of fresh mozzarella slices. A bit out of the ordinary — but absolutely delicious — is the Fig-Prosciutto Pizza found in this link. I’ve improvised, omitting the arugula and adding plenty of blue cheese, which goes well with the fig spread. The combination of sweet, salty and sharp is outstanding.
The wood pellet Ooni is as simple an appliance as it gets. It consists of a stainless-steel shell with a combustion chamber, removable stainless-steel chimney, a hopper to feed the pellets, removable oven door and a pizza stone on the bottom of the oven. I use a propane torch to light the pellets in the burn chamber and, once lit, I slowly start filling the hopper and keep it topped off through the bake. You’ll know the Ooni is properly fired when you see only heat waves exiting the chimney, with little to no smoke. When the temperature on the pizza stone reaches around 800 degrees as measured by an infrared thermometer, you’re ready to cook.
To make six 6-ounce pizza crusts:
- 4 ½ cups high gluten bread flour (I use Caputo type 00 flour, which is often considered the gold standard; 00 means it is ultra-fine and results in a slightly more cracker-like crust)
- 1 ¾ teaspoons salt
- 1 teaspoon instant yeast
- 1/4 cup olive oil
- 1 ¾ cups ice-cold water
Using the dough hook in your stand mixer or by hand, mix all the ingredients together, then kneed for about 10 minutes until the dough passes the “windowpane test” — where you take a piece of dough and can stretch it until you can see through it without it breaking (there are videos online that demonstrate this procedure.) The dough should be springy, elastic and sticky, not just tacky. (For bread-baking geeks, the hydration is 55-57%.)
Divide the dough into six equal-sized balls, wrap each separately in flour-dusted plastic wrap, place in a deep-wall container and refrigerate for up to seven days. This cold fermentation will help develop a complex flavor in your crust that you can’t get with a quick rise.
Use the proofed dough fresh out of the refrigerator or freeze the individual dough balls for up to three months. The frozen dough requires very little space in your RV freezer and can be thawed and ready to bake in just a few hours if set out in room temperature.
Of course, the ultimate reward is to savor some of the best pizza you will ever taste — especially campside!