Hello.
I'm Yamamoto, a coder from Suo-Oshima.
We wanted to create a place for interaction on Suo-Oshima! Did you read the article about how we built a simple pizza oven ?
Last time I made a simple pizza oven, so this time it's all about the main thing: pizza.
Even if you have a pizza oven, it's nothing without pizza.
So when I heard that there was a pizza chef at the Kamiyama Food Hub Project , I went there to train.
Now on to training
I made a simple pizza oven, but is it good to make pizza in a simple way?
If I make pizza, I want to make it properly and serve it deliciously, otherwise people who come to visit me will be disappointed, but I'm not sure how to make pizza properly...
Compared to other Italian pasta videos on YouTube, there are very few pizza videos, and even when there are, they are either made haphazardly in a home oven or professional pizza, so it was difficult to find anything that really caught my eye.
Then I heard that Kamiyama has an earth oven (an oven made from natural materials such as earth and stone - see this article for more details) and that the Food Hub also has a pizza chef called Luca !
I had heard from Mr. Sasagawa , a baker at Food Hub, that he had made an earth oven before making a simple pizza oven. I wondered if it was possible to make an earth oven on Suo-Oshima, and had wanted to go and see it someday. Mr. Sasagawa asked me if I wanted to try it out first, so I decided to go to Kamiyama in the latter half of April to experience making pizza with an earth oven.
Pizza making experience
First, let's start with making the pizza dough.
The pizza dough was made over two days.
Day 1: Kneading the dough
On this day, Mr. Sasagawa taught us how to knead the dough.
They use strong flour from Hokkaido and coarse flour made from Kamiyama wheat, which has always been grown in Kamiyama. Mixing them together apparently gives it a nice texture.
First, Mr. Sasagawa kneaded the dough as a demonstration, and the way he kneaded it was truly shocking.
Do not gather the dough together, stretch it, or pound it.
It only takes 2-3 minutes of kneading and it's done.
I'd seen recipes like "no-knead pizza dough" as easy recipes, but I was surprised to find that even when making a proper pizza, it doesn't require much kneading.
Next it was my turn to knead the dough, but I still felt nervous being in front of a professional.
I was wondering if I shouldn't knead it too much, but I kneaded it until I thought it felt good.
This is the end of the first day, now we just have to wait for fermentation.
Fermentation was also long, at room temperature for 5 hours, and then left in the refrigerator overnight.
The members of the Kamiyama office who taught me at the same time. Everyone was watching it a lot.
Day 2: Splitting
Our teacher on the second day will be Luca.
The task is to divide the dough made the day before into individual portions.
I thought it wouldn't be a big deal since it only involved dividing it up, but even here they were true professionals.
After dividing the dough, you need to shape it into nice round shapes.
It doesn't just make it round, it also stretches the edges tightly to eliminate cracks and unevenness.
This job was very quick and beautiful.
I tried to do it by imitating what I saw, but it didn't work right away. However, it turned out I had a good sense for it, and I was able to do this part quite nicely.
Now you can wait for the second rise and make pizza.
Earth Oven
Now that the pizza dough is prepared, it's time to head to the earth oven where the pizza will be baked.
Kamiyama's earth oven is located at a campsite called Cotton Field. It was made by the people of Kamiyama working together to gather materials from the area, and is maintained by everyone.
It not only had a pizza oven but also a kettles, and was more functional and impressive than I had imagined.
The first step is to fire the kiln.
Firing is very important, and the temperature inside the kiln needs to be raised to over 400 degrees.
Furthermore, firing does not simply mean lighting a fire and then putting the kiln in. The fire is made to circulate in a circular motion inside the kiln, raising the temperature more efficiently.
The position of the fire is also important; placing it on either the left or right side of the kiln will ensure beautiful convection.
As the temperature rises, the roof of the kiln turns white.
In the photo above, you can see that the area directly above the fire is white; when this starts to spread all over, it's a good indication that the food is cooked.
This temperature cannot be reached immediately, so the meat was pre-heated for about two hours before baking.
Baking pizza
Now that the oven is hot, it's time to bake the pizza.
The first photo is of professional dancer Luca demonstrating how to do it.
First, roll out the dough into a circle.
That's amazing.
When I saw this, I thought, oh, this is the real thing.
I was impressed by how rhythmically and quickly the hair was stretched out beautifully and roundly.
Then top with sauce, cheese and basil...
In the kiln!
I'm so excited.
It feels so authentic.
This is where the battle begins.
The oven is so hot that the pizza is cooked within just 1 to 2 minutes of being placed in it, so if you're not careful it will burn quickly, so you need to keep a close eye on it.
After a while the pizza closest to the fire will start to cook, so rotate the pizza to adjust how well it cooks.
Luca spun it effortlessly, but it was surprisingly difficult.
And finally it's done!
This is the kind of pizza I've seen in stores.
When you see it, you can tell it's delicious.
Try it.
It was a very obvious and good one.
The crust is crispy, the tomatoes and cheese are juicy, and it's incredibly delicious.
I was simply impressed by the amazing things that professionals can make.
It's your turn next.
First, stretch the dough.
Stretch it out like that.
Put the ingredients on top to make it look like the original.
In the kiln!
Here's the mistake.
Putting pizza into this oven was unexpectedly difficult.
You place the pizza on the parlor (the rod used to put the pizza into the oven), and once it's in the oven, you quickly pull out the parlor and place the pizza inside the oven, but the angle and the way it's pushed and pulled are quite precise.
I got too excited and the cheese flew forward.
I was a little embarrassed and laughed out loud, and Nozomi, who was taking the photo, got scared and asked if I was okay.
From there, I managed to make some adjustments and it was baked.
The cheese is quite biased.
You can see that I made a pretty big mistake.
But other than that, it looks good with the charring around the edges.
The taste was authentic pizza.
It was something I couldn't believe I had made.
I have tried making pizza from scratch once before, but for some reason it ended up turning out like bread, and instead of having a light texture, it ended up being heavy and not very tasty.
So I thought we would need a recipe unique to our store and a professional oven like the ones used in pizza restaurants.
Earth ovens are not something that you often find in homes, but this one is smaller than the ovens used in pizza restaurants, so I thought it might not be as professional as a pizza restaurant would make it.
This may be normal since we were taught by professionals, but to be honest, I never expected to be able to produce something like this, so I was really impressed.
After that I baked it a few times and it started to take on a decent shape.
In addition to pizza, we were treated to dishes cooked in an earth oven and enjoyed the meal with everyone from Kamiyama.
Putting into practice what I have learned
I also put into practice what I learned in Kamiyama in the simple pizza oven at Suo-Oshima.
Although the kilns are different, I tried many times to see if I could somehow reproduce it, and I finally got a pretty good result.
At first, it ended up just like bread, but after remembering what I was taught and making some adjustments, I think I've now been able to make a pretty authentic pizza.
Looking Back
I was impressed that something that can hardly be called pizza could be made after being taught and experimenting repeatedly.
I'm truly grateful to Sasagawa-san, Luca-san, and the people of Kamiyama who helped us.
The earth oven was also professional and was really fun to use; it made me feel like a craftsman. However, to be honest, I think it would be difficult to make it in Suo-Oshima.
It appears that Kamiyama's earth oven was built and maintained by a large number of different people working together.
Considering these factors, it seems difficult to find people to help in the super-aging society of Suo-Oshima right away. Realistically, I began to think that it would not be the right time to build and operate an earth oven.
However, thanks to this experience, I learned that if you pay close attention to the important points, you can bake a delicious pizza even in a simple pizza oven.
The simple pizza oven has been very useful for hosting pizza parties with coworkers and neighbors, so I plan to continue using the oven I have now and take good care of it for a while.
We've gotten to the point where we can bake some pretty good pizzas, so if you'd like, please come visit us at Suo-Oshima.
Yamamoto Yuya