FROZEN MEALS
Our frozen meals are best cooked directly from the freezer, but they can be cooked from frozen or thawed, as you prefer. When cooking a thawed frozen meal reduce cooking time by app. fifteen minutes. Frozen food should thaw overnight in the refrigerator. It is not safe to thaw frozen food at room temperature. So, don’t do that. The foil container is not microwave safe.
Cooking times will vary. A lot. No two ovens are the same. If you have a convection option, use it. Your cooking time will decrease by app. 15 minutes, and the results will be more consistent. Pay attention the first time that you cook a particular item. Just have a look at your watch when you pop it in the oven so that the next time you will know exactly how long it will take to bake
All of our frozen meals should be hot and bubbly when ready. The tops will be golden brown. If you find an item browning too quickly either reduce the oven temperature or loosely tent the top with aluminum foil.
WORKING WITH DOUGH
Keep your dough balls refrigerated until 2-3 hours before using. Held at room temperature, the dough balls should be slightly proofed and ready to use in that time. Experienced bakers will know how to speed up and slow down this process. The dough ball(s) should be at room temperature and slightly puffed when they are called to duty. The dough should spring back when poked with a fingertip.
Stretch or roll the pizza on a liberally floured work surface and transfer it to the peel just before going into the oven. Once the stretched dough ball is on the peel, you only have a minute to slide the pizza into the oven otherwise it will stick horribly to the peel and ruin your evening. Test to see if the pizza will move on the peel before going for the oven. If it sticks, lift small sections of the perimeter of the dough and throw a little flour under it. At 450-550 degrees, the pizza should cook in app. six minutes. The higher temperatures readily accessible in a wood fired oven are not advisable.
A decade ago, when Howie's opened, it was with simple goals and honest ambitions.
We would make a great pizza for sure, a truly artisanal product. We would make everything from scratch; our sausage, our ricotta, our dressings, using only the best ingredients. We would keep it simple, wholesome, and affordable.
We would make our guests feel welcome and cared for and strive to become part of the community. And if we did all those things, and that’s a lot to do, we would be successful. We are crazy proud of what we have accomplished at Howie’s. It’s been ten years well spent!
Howie Bulka
Proprietor