Saturday 23rd August 2014

We never lit a pizza oven in Tuscany in the old days. In recent times, Angus Willis, international food stylist, writer and chef, now King of Hastings, his Home Store dining facility visited by Sir Bobland Geldof, Angus Willis has been with in Tuscany at the villa and fearless with a wood-burning oven. Last year he achieved a temperature of 400 degrees with ease.

So we thought we’d launch out and try to get a pizza oven going at the villa without the aid of one of the most experienced wood-burning-oven experts alive today (Angus began at Carlucci’s in the 80s). It was a drive for new experiences in later life. Naturally Commander Jonny Webber was i/c fire-lighting. He was ‘up’ with Twirly Godfrey and Val and is now under-cover. So our pizza oven was lit by one with inside knowledge of the Ukraine from looking at heat-sourcing maps, deep, deep underground. Commander Jonny throbs at the heart of our Nation like Lord Arrowby.

He consulted Youtube and followed procedure. Laura Malcolm was dough-mistress in the kitchen. She planned River Cafe pizzas with treviso and pancetta. There was marvellous rising of the dough. Flames licked from the pizza oven meanwhile then died down correctly. What could be more promising? We were going to make pizza without Angus Willis. A small hitch occurred when the first attempt stuck to the paddle and could not be released into the oven. But Laura bucked at once with a stiffer dough and soon an item was sitting in the oven and apparently cooking. There was some anxious peering but after ten minutes it was to be done.

Poor Little Rich Gays hummed at the oven door. Ten minutes was not quite enough. Nor was fifteen. Some Poor Little Rich Gays suddenly announced that they’d been harbouring no confidence in the pizza oven from the start. After twenty minutes, Laura Malcolm herself was elsewhere. Suddenly the pizza oven was over. Commander Jonny Webber said it was too big. A much bigger fire was called for. In the kitchen, it turned out, Laura Malcolm  had already got the indoor oven on. ‘Oven-dried pizza,’ she declared, ‘isn’t the idea’.

Poor Little Rich Gays were joyous in defeat. With joyful abandon we abandoned the project and took the ordinary oven version. There was some calibrating type of talk while consuming as to the exact improvement the wood-burning oven might have brought. Matt Driver didn’t like the bitter Treviso on the pizza but was roundly condemned. For me, Adrian Edge, it occurred to me with some force that as an only child from a certain background the family pizza evening was not familiar.

Do not despair – we’ll light a pizza oven in Tuscany before our days are done.

The Pizza in the Pizza Oven – Looking Lost

The PIzza as It Came out of the Pizza Oven

The Mary-Berry-Type Claw of me, Adrian Edge, Lifting the Oven-Dried Pizza