First pie - lessons learned

My new Koda 16 arrived yesterday, so I obviously made a pie tonight! I made my favorite crust, the King Arthur sourdough pizza crust recipe (https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/recipes/sourdough-discard-pizza-crust-recipe).

Some lessons learned: * I knew that I over hydrated the dough, but went with it anyway. In hindsight I’d have started over.

• the over hydration led to a stickier dough that (surprise!) wanted to stick to the peel. I used a wooden peel to throw, but it was still bad.

• I tried to compensate by throwing a metric ton of cornmeal under the pizza on the peel, methodically picking it up and throwing some under.

• this led to a gnarly situation on the first turn - all of that excess cornmeal just went up in flames, it was wild. I ended up having to pull the pizza out for a minute mid bake to let the cornmeal burn off and then scrape it off the stone as best I could, then put it back in.

• I really like the Ooni turning peel. My first time using a turning peel, and it worked very well and felt natural.

• I (tried to) used the method used by Santa Barbara Baker - pre-heated for 30 min, dropped to the lowest temp just before launching, and then after a full turn went to “ultra low” heat. With the above issues it wasn’t a super smooth operation, though.

• I used part skim Mozzarella, which browned quickly. It was delicious, but I think I’ll go with a low moisture whole milk mozzarella next time.

It was a ton of fun, and I look forward to improving!