The oven · Blida
The oven
A brick oven, burning olive wood, at around four hundred degrees. A pizza spends ninety seconds in it.
The temperature
Around four hundred degrees
A wood fire does not hold one figure: it climbs when a log goes on and drops when three pizzas go in at once. The dial follows the demonstration’s clock.
Dome400 °C
The fire
Olive wood
It burns long and evenly, with little acrid smoke. The fire holds one side of the dome; the pizza cooks from the stone below and the vault above.
What to look for
The black blisters
In ninety seconds the rim puffs up and chars in places: that is the air in a dough that has risen for twenty-four hours, caught by the heat of the stone. It is not burnt; it is the point.
The black blister
An air bubble in the rim, caught by the heat of the dome. It chars on the outside and stays soft underneath.
The risen rim
The air of a twenty-four-hour rise. Rolled out with a pin, it would be gone.
The fire to one side
It heats the dome, and the dome throws the heat back onto the top of the pizza.
The stone
It cooks the base. The flour on it falls from the peel.
The journey
From order to door
Four steps, always the same.
Ordered
Ordered — the ticket goes to the kitchen
In the oven
In the oven — ninety seconds, turned once
On its way
On its way — boxed, with the driver
At your door
At your door — twenty to twenty-five minutes, forty on a Friday evening