Pizza-cooking tips from Jestic Foodservice Solutions to celebrate National Pizza Day

On 9th February, National Pizza Day will see pizza lovers up and down the country celebrating one of the UK’s favourite foods. To help ensure a delicious experience every time, equipment distributor Jestic Foodservice Solutions offer up their top tips for creating the perfect pizza.

With the UK population becoming increasingly discerning about their pizza, everywhere serving it as a main feature of the menu must have a pizza oven designed for the job. Michael Eyre, Product Director at Jestic Foodservice Solutions, sums up what’s important:

“To make great pizza, only the correct equipment – and in particular the right oven – can deliver the quality, consistency and speed today’s consumers expect.”

Specifying exactly the right oven for a particular type of business is critical. Michael continues, “Pizza is more complicated than people think. We ask our customers many questions about service type, volume and size, before we even start talking about the actual ovens. Look at how many pizzas an hour you need to produce in your busiest session and work it out from there – and don’t forget to include the numbers you expect to do in the future. People often buy too small an oven.”

Choose your fuel

Having determined the optimum size of oven, it’s important to choose the right type of fuel for your busines: wood-fired, gas or electric. For many, a wood-fired pizza oven is the ideal, for flavour, authenticity and a sense of theatre. But it requires skill, especially around fire management – which is why Jestic offers its award-winning training with every pizza oven it supplies. And the training is different for each specific model, as they vary so widely in the way they work, from Wood Stone’s traditional artisan stone-hearth ovens to the Alfa Opera, capable of cooking up to 150 pizzas an hour.

For a simpler option, gas or electric pizza ovens require less skill and attention, and they still produce great pizzas. In the Jestic range, Alfa offers gas options on its Quick, Opera and Quattro models, and its Zeno electric pizza oven features digital temperature control and is capable of operating up to 500°C. Edge conveyor ovens (both gas and electric) are particularly convenient, and can turn out any volume – from the EDGE30, designed for small-output operations, to the EDGE70, capable of the multi item menus required by national pizza delivery chains. The ovens can be set to different pizza types, delivering excellent results with deep pan, thin crust and Napoli style, and can use multiple decks on the same footprint.

Deck ovens are another great oven for pizza making, and they can be stacked upwards in compact spaces to reduce footprint. Jestic supplies the Sveba-Dahlen range, including the P Series, with models that hold from 4 to 36 pizzas to suit every kind of pizza operation. With balanced base-to-top heat, they cook pizzas evenly without having to rotate them.

Once the oven’s installed…

The right choice of oven will provide superb quality every time. But, of course, using the right ingredients is vital too – especially the dough for the base. Again, the training Jestic offers helps with this. As Michael Eyre points out, “A standard dough recipe is unlikely to produce a good pizza in all oven types. You need a recipe that suits your oven – what works for a conveyor oven might not be wood-fired-oven friendly. Wood-fired ovens are generally much hotter, and you need a dough formulated for this.”

Cooking the perfect pizza also depends on equipment beyond the oven. Where space is optimum, minimise surface clutter and maximise counter space with a SmartWall® Pizza Prep Unit from Metro. This unit keeps everything needed to assemble the perfect pizza off the prep surface but within arm’s reach. And in a fast-moving commercial setting, pizza peels, oven brushes and other accessories all have to be right, to keep the pizzas coming and the customers happy. The tools in the Zio Pepe Professional Line, “your allies in the pizzeria”, are regarded as the best by pizza chefs around the world.

Not just for pizza

For kitchens that don’t focus solely on pizza, the oven can have other uses. Wood-fired ovens, because they’re so hot, are ideal for many kinds of meat: caramelisation takes place very quickly, locking in moisture. And deck ovens can be used for baking bread and pastries. Michael explains: “Given the right training, chefs can use pizza ovens to cook a variety of other foods, including proteins, al forno dishes, and breads like lavash and pitta that require high temperatures, making sure you are taking advantage of their versatility”

Jestic Top Pizza Tips

• For perfect pizza two things are needed: the right equipment and the right ingredients
• For simplicity and volume, choose a gas or electric pizza oven as a wood-fired oven takes skill and trained staff to operate.
• Take advantage of pizza ovens’ versatility, and learn how to cook other items in it
• For wood-fired ovens:
  • Invest in good fire management training
  • Understand the fuel source as different species of wood burn differently and produce different results
  • Always rotate the pizza and move around in the oven for the perfect bake.

To find out more about Jestic Foodservice Solutions and its pizza-making range, visit www.jestic.co.uk or call 01892 831960.