Tips for puff pastry "pizza" in a fan oven?

May 12, 2021 2:03 AM

I'm going to make pastry sheet pizza in a fan oven that doesn't have a conventional bake feature. How do I get the bottom crispy?

It's really kind of a tart I suppose. Fennel, red onions, olives and feta tossed with olive oil, spread out on the pastry sheet and baked.

I've had good success in conventional ovens by par-cooking the veggies and then baking near the bottom of the oven on a baking sheet, but I always end up with a soggy bottom in fan-only ovens.

I've tried par-baking the pastry which works ok for the bottom, but the top gets all puffed up and makes it hard to top.

Any tips? Rack position, temp, time?

This oven has grill, fan grill, fan forced and fan defrost, and that's it.

posted by under_petticoat_rule to Food & Drink (15 answers total)

Hrmmm... could you get your baking sheet screaming hot in the oven before you put the pastry down at all? This might be too fussy depending on the way your pastry is set up, and you would need to be very careful of your fingers and the hot pan, but the stored heat should help crisp the bottom and get things from both top and bottom.

When you’ve parbaked in the past, did you poke the heck out of the pastry? If you docked it a little but not absolutely everywhere you don’t want it to puff up, it will probably puff up.
posted by Mizu at 2:44 AM on May 12, 2021 [2 favorites]

Sounds like your oven isn’t hot enough?

We make actual pizzas in a fan oven & it works ok - cooking them on a perforated baking sheet so air can get to the bottom.

You could also use a pizza stone.
posted by rd45 at 3:27 AM on May 12, 2021 [3 favorites]

Mark a line about 1-2cm in from the edge of the pastry with a knife before par-baking. After, you can gently push down the pastry inside the rim, leaving an edge/crust of puffed pastry and a more easily topped centre.
posted by parm at 3:46 AM on May 12, 2021

Another vote for heating the baking sheet; I'd stick it in the oven before turning it on to preheat.
posted by ManyLeggedCreature at 3:59 AM on May 12, 2021

Best answer: Making the bottom of pastry crispy involves sitting it on a surface that's stinkin' hot. In the bottom shelf of an oven with a bottom heating element, radiation from the element itself is what keeps the baking sheet, and through it the bottom of the pastry, overheated enough to get the good toasting going. But in a fan forced oven, the only way heat gets into anything is via hot air. This is normally a good thing (fan forced ovens have a well deserved reputation for even heating) but when you're deliberately trying to make the bottom of a thing the hottest part, not so much.

To get good crisping happening in a fan-forced oven you need to spoil its even heating deliberately in order to get the bottom of the pastry hot enough. Pre-overheating the baking sheet will help some, but those are pretty lightweight and don't actually hold all that much heat, so they'd come down to equilibrium temperature before much toasting had had time to happen. Pre-overheating something massive like a pizza stone should work a fair bit better. If you don't have a pizza stone, a heavy cast iron pan put upside down under a baking sheet might make a workable substitute.
posted by flabdablet at 4:26 AM on May 12, 2021 [3 favorites]

Fennel, red onions, olives and feta tossed with olive oil, spread out on the pastry sheet and baked

Also: yum!
posted by flabdablet at 4:29 AM on May 12, 2021 [2 favorites]

I've found in our fan oven the top shelf is reliably the hottest place.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 4:51 AM on May 12, 2021

Making the bottom of pastry crispy involves sitting it on a surface that's stinkin' hot. In the bottom shelf of an oven with a bottom heating element, radiation from the element itself is what keeps the baking sheet, and through it the bottom of the pastry, overheated enough to get the good toasting going. But in a fan forced oven, the only way heat gets into anything is via hot air.

They do have a grill/broiler, though, so they might try pre-heating the baking sheet from the top.
posted by Huffy Puffy at 5:59 AM on May 12, 2021

If you can put a baking stone or baking steel into the oven and make sure it’s preheated (infrared thermometer), that’s a way to get a crispy bottom.
posted by SillyShepherd at 6:19 AM on May 12, 2021

Best answer: Can you bake the pastry just enough to crisp up the top, then flip it, add the toppings, and continue to bake?
posted by mezzanayne at 9:07 AM on May 12, 2021 [1 favorite]

Best answer: I think the trick for par-baking puff pastry is to bake it between two sheet pans. Don't weight it, so it can rise a bit, but the top will press up against the pan and remain relatively flat.
posted by Lyn Never at 10:50 AM on May 12, 2021 [1 favorite]

Can you blind bake the base first? Or do it partly on a stovetop? (This works well for pizzas btw.)
posted by Kiwi at 1:52 PM on May 12, 2021 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Thanks everyone. I'm not in my own kitchen, and I don't have a pizza stone or heavy pan where I am, but I'll try those ideas when I do.

Pre-baking and then flipping, and pre-baking between two sheets are definitely techniques I'll try next time.

This time I tried lower heat but a longer time, which worked ok for the crust, but the toppings got a little dried out.
posted by under_petticoat_rule at 6:49 PM on May 12, 2021

Pierce the puff pastry all over with a fork and bake, it won't puff up so much. (Keep clear of the outer edge if you want that to puff.) You can also weigh it down with parchment paper and dried chick peas.
Sprinkle the baked puff pastry with a thin layer of bread crumbs (you won't taste them, I promise), and add the vegetables. The bread crumbs will absorb any excess moisture.

This is my standard way of baking quiches and tartes in a fan oven.
posted by lioness at 3:14 AM on May 13, 2021

A friend used to come over and make us crispy, thin crust pizza. I can’t speak to the specifics of the oven but an important step was sprinkling the baking surface with ground cornmeal. It seemed to make something of an air gap.
posted by bonobothegreat at 4:28 PM on May 13, 2021