Step into Sydney’s Matteo in Double Bay and you’ll be greeted by its proudest calling cards: two huge custom woodfired ovens, imported straight from Naples.
“We’ve got massive ovens in the middle of the dining room,” says chef and co-owner Orazio D’Elia, who previously flexed his pizza prowess at former namesake restaurant Da Orazio. (He even contributed a pizza recipe to The Broadsheet Italian Cookbook).
A native of Southern Italy, D’Elia knows pizza. While Matteo Downtown remains temporarily closed due to Covid-19, Matteo in Double Bay has been doing remarkably well. With no less than 14 pizzas on the regular menu, D’Elia’s signature pizza dough is integral to the Matteo experience – and now it’s possible to make a version at home.
D’Elia’s take on home-style pizza dough is “basically coming from a Neapolitan-style dough you cook in the woodfired oven”, he says. “We scaled it down and made it adaptable for home.”
With just four ingredients, you only need 20 minutes to mix, roll and bake the dough. But you will need time to let it rest and mature – first at room temperature for an hour, then in the fridge for 24 hours, then proofing for at least four hours the following day.
While the recipe – which is enough to make six pizzas – works for home ovens, D’Elia says you can also make it on the barbeque, placing a pizza stone on the main grill. But in a callback to those big ovens in Matteo’s, D’Elia says it’s important to have the capacity to cook your pizza at extremely high temperatures. This means being able to burn wood or charcoal (rather than gas) to generate more heat, and in an oven that accurately retains its temperature. So it helps to have a barbeque with multiple capabilities, such as the 4K charcoal barbeque from Everdure.
Inspired by traditional ceramic cooking and featuring air vents to replicate the airflow of a traditional woodfired oven, the 4K was created by Australian designers D+I, winning numerous international design awards (including Good Design Awards Australia, International Design Excellence Awards, Red Dot Awards and IF World Design Guide Awards) and being championed by celebrity chef Heston Blumenthal – it’s not the rusty barbie your parents keep in the shed, basically.
“When you put the pizza on the hot stone, it will rise and get coloured in four or five minutes,” says D’Elia. “You end up creating a very light product with a beautiful colour of golden brown to the dough.” This method allows the pizza to cook in less than half the time it takes in a traditional oven.
Watch how to cook woodfired pizza on a barbeque with Orazio D'Elia here.
Here’s how to make D’Elia’s woodfired pizza dough at home.
Woodfired Pizza Dough
Makes 6 pizzas
Cooking time: 20 minutes
Preparation time: 29 hours for resting and proofing
Ingredients:
1kg Italian 00 flour
4g fresh yeast
600g water
30g salt
Method:
Mix flour and yeast for a few minutes in a large bowl, then add water until you have about 100g left. Add salt and finish working the dough, then add leftover water and keep working the dough until it’s an elastic consistency.
Place the dough in a large container with a little oil at the bottom and let it rest. After an hour, put the bowl in the fridge for 24 hours to let the dough mature.
The next day, take the dough out of fridge and make 6 balls of 250–270g each. Let them proof for at least 4 hours.
Roll into pizzas and top with your favourite ingredients. Cook in the barbeque at 320°C for 4–5 minutes or less (or in oven at 250°C for 10–12 minutes).
This article is produced by Broadsheet in partnership with Everdure.
