Artisan French Wood Fired Pizza … in Colorado [Video]

Before I moved to Boulder, I once waited in line for over an hour to get a table at a restaurant that was claimed by many Portlanders and food critics alike to offer the best wood-fired pizza in the state of Oregon. Leaving such a foodie city, and one often listed as among the best in the world for street food, I wasn’t holding my breath for my next taste of rustic European pizza. 

Imagine my surprise when I ran across Sebastien Idee, a French chef long involved in not only cooking amazing wood-fired pizza, but building the ovens as well. In this video, Seb explains his businesses, Seb’s Portable Wood Fired Cuisine and Rocky Mountain Wood Fired Ovens, and how he is using them to bring artisan French wood-fired pizza to the streets of Colorado. 

Special thanks to American Metalcraft.

Find your own pizza supplies here!

 

Transcript:

Hi there. My name is Seb. I’m the owner and chef of Seb’s Wood Fired Pizza. Basically what we do with this food truck and the open trailer; we do catering services like wood-fired cuisine. For lunch for businesses, corporates; and evenings, like food truck events, private parties, weddings; all this kind of stuff.

To do so, I use this eight-by-eighteen pizza trailer with a fifty-one-inch pizza oven, wood-fired oven that we build with our other company, which is the Rocky Mountain Wood Fire Oven’s and Trailers.

Now we’re going to go through the process of pizza-making in this oven. Basically we do the dough at the commissary kitchen early in the morning. The dough recipe is kind of pretty basic, but we only use the starter, the yeast, the salt and organic flour, and I mix two different kinds of flour so I got a really precise range of gluten.

As soon as the dough is ready, the oven is ready; we can start. The very unique thing about these kinds of ovens is the principle of refractory heat. Basically the heat comes from everywhere. The floor, the dome, the sides; everywhere, so you have a very balanced cooking.

How do we start to heat up the oven is my trick. I put the wood on that side and I start the fire and if one area of the oven or the floor is cooler, which happens sometimes, I use the propane to heat up this spot.

Let’s make a pizza. We’re going to make a French-style pizza. We’ll start with the dough. Take the dough ball, dip the dough ball in the flour; different techniques about dough-shaping, pizza-making.

My technique is I want to get rid of the air that’s in the dough one side, just in the middle, so I keep the edges. Both sides like that, quickly.

Then I’m going to start to stretch the edges. We are getting there. The pizza we’re going to make today is a French-style pizza; you’ll see why.

I’m going to start with a fresh; crème fraiche, which is kind of sour cream but thicker. French, so better.  I have organic potatoes that’s previously cooked in the oven. Pre-cooked in the oven. I’m going to put on top of the pizza. 

We do put some onions; it’s very important that they are very thin-sliced so they cook better. Same thing with the bacon. You need to cook to slice the bacon when it’s frozen so it’s easier to slice it very thin, so it cooks better. Like that. Everywhere. Then the French touch is French brie on top of everything; so the brie melts on everything.

Try to keep the bacon and onions open, so they cook pretty well. Now using this American metal craft pizza peel I’m going to put the pizza in the oven. Just a little bit of flour. You won’t have to do that if you do many pizzas in a row. Then we put the pizza in the oven. Going to add a little bit more wood to make it faster. Right there. See?

I, usually I cook the pizzas; I mean the oven is at 750-degrees, 800-degrees, the pizza cooks in one minute and a half. I use this kind of peel a smaller peel from American Metal Craft, as well, to turn the pizzas.

Now the pizza is ready and the fastest way to cut the pizza is I think that these tools are just amazing. This knife from American Metalcraft is just amazing because this; just see. One, two, three, four. Very fast.

Then I can use the knife to drop the pizza on the plate just like here. Then the pizza is ready for the customers.

Okay, guys, thanks for watching this video we really appreciate it. Showing us how we deal with our pizza trucks; pizza making. I hope you learned a lot of things.

Don’t hesitate to come like us on our website Seb’s Portable Wood Fire Cuisine or the Rocky Mountain Wood Fire Ovens and Trailers.

Thanks for American Metalcraft for providing these tools. We love them we use them every day and they are just great.

Thanks again, guys, and take care.

 

About Nathan Combs

By day: Videographer for Tundra Restaurant Supply. By different time of day: Hiking, biking, skiing and hammock enthusiast. And by night... do whatever I want. No job.

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2 comments

  1. Great video, Nathan! Can’t wait till Seb re-opens this spring …

  2. Yum, just had this exact same pizza for lunch! Love Seb’s pizza!

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