If you have a pizza oven

[Startuplife]

What’s the easiest way of catering for a big group? Say 20 people?
We usually use the little jars of sauce from Sainsbury’s but that would be quite expensive so does anyone have an alternative or a recipe?
What toppings go down well?
Can I prep the dough in advance? Ideally DP will be manning the pizza oven and I’ll be relaxing with a glass of wine having done most of the prep that morning but is this possible?
Do you usually serve anything else with the pizza? I was thinking nibbles and then a couple of salads and cold pastas. Is that about right?

How many can you hit in the oven at a time? I've been to parties of similar numbers and it is really tedious waiting for pizzas to come out, who get a slice of what pizza, no one eats at the same time if it's one each, how do you make sure everyone gets some?

Sorry to be negative!

To answer your question though prep them in advance on a pizza stacker and get them cooked as quickly as you can.

Tricky. Ours takes a few min to heat up between pizzas. The most I’ve done in a session is 10. Is it a big brick oven or an ooni type one? You can and should make the dough the day before (PizzApp for quantities). Look for big cans of mutti aromatica for the sauce and the mozarella that is dry in blocks (not in water or grated). You could make and part cook the bases to speed up the shaping and cooking time. You can’t really shape them all early without a part cook. Def serve salad and nibbles alongside. We make garlic breads to start for everyone to nibble then a selection of pizzas sliced up in the middle as they’re cooked.

Yes sorry should have said, I can’t remember the exact brand but Ooni style which makes one at a time. I hadn’t thought of people sharing pizzas, I was thinking they’d all have individual ones but that could work out easier.
It’s a garden style party so not everyone arriving at once which should mean people aren’t waiting around too long for a slice.
Love the idea of garlic bread, definitely doing that.

We did a make your own pizza thing. Toppings and sauces (tomato, bbq, etc) all in bowls. When one is finished it gets fired and couples shared

I really can’t get the hang of ours and seem to have perfected the art of an actually on fire and totally raw in the middle at the same time pizza.

You really can't make a pizza ahead of time as the wetness of the sauce impedes the transfer of the dough base onto the peel, well it would in this house. If you have time before the party what about buying ready made bases then you don't have to worry about that part of it.

We have an Ooni and make 4 pizzas but as Cat says it takes time in between each pizza for the oven to come back up to temperature. We use a charcoal base but then add wood for each pizza for flavour.

I think serving nibbles and salads etc would help and I would just do different pizzas not pepperoni for John but just dish up a pizza and cut it up and let people help themselves. Just keep a production line going. I am the pizza maker, Dh is the pizza baker but he makes the dough.

@TopGolfer lots of videos on YouTube of people perfecting their dough and the cooking process. We just had lots of practise and Dh tinkered a lot with the recipe to get one we were happy with. We use charcoal but add wood which flames over the roof of the pizza oven, I think, like I said Dh cooks them.

Definitely follow the Ooni app which will tell you how to make the dough in advance and will let you configure the yeast quantity etc. for your desired proving time. We always just use tinned tomatoes for the sauce which definitely works out cheaper (unless using DH's preferred brand from the Italian deli 😁)

We recently did a white pizza (whipped goat's cheese with olive oil and garlic, topped with apple, honey and walnuts) which was delicious. I also recommend doing some sweet pizzas with nutella!

We have catered a few parties like this and although people do have to wait for food, as long as there are nibbles on the table and wine is flowing, we haven't found there are any complaints ...

Enjoy!

Honestly trying not to be patronising here, but have you used the oven before? It takes a bit of practise and I honestly wouldn't do it for that many people. We do it as a family every few weeks and it's a 2 person job - DH runs to and from the oven with pizza while I'm shaping the base and adding toppings for the next one. This only works because we have 2 peels, otherwise you would have to make one, cook it, serve, then start the next. Even with a production line it's a faff for 4-6 of us tbh. I've done it with 1 other couple on a few occasions during covid cos outdoors and it was not the most relaxing event!

You can make the sauce from tinned tomatoes, herbs, chopped onion, garlic, small amount of sugar and simmer that the day before. Other toppings can be prepared beforehand. Have all the dough doing the final rise as nice shaped balls so easier to shape base from.

I would do maple bacon and garlic dough balls for people to nibble beforehand plus green salad and maybe coleslaw to eat with pizza. As pp said you can’t really shape / top pizza in advance as they tend to stick - but I wonder if the dough type might be a cause of this. I think once at a pizza thing the bases were all set out on grease proof paper but I’m not sure if the paper was removed before cooking. I’ve never made it work!

Once for a bigger group I had the dough balls and toppings set up on a table in the garden for people to shape etc - problem was the dough started getting to cold to work easily but this was an autumn evening so maybe will be fine at the moment.

I've done 8 before. I used Aldi dough ready rolled bases at 99p each. Will be cheaper to make your own but quite a lot of work.

I had a large passata sauce from aldi, quality bbq sauces and made a garlic butter for my three types of sauce bases. I saw a very large grated mozzarella bag at booker cash and carry on my last visit - if you know someone who has a card!

I made a variety and when cooked we cut into 8 and people picked a slice if they like it. We sharer all 6.

I use bbq base for chicken bacon sweetcorn red onion

Garlic base for tuna, anchovy and olive and for my four cheese one

Tomato base for Tomato and mozzarella, ham and pineapple.

I also make garlic bread with the garlic butter and grated parmesan - can also add chutney spots and red onion