Adventures in Solar Cooking Part 3

This week, we are testing out our new SOS Sport Solar Oven. Check out Part 1 and >Part 2 in our Blog series, where we give you all the details about how this oven works. Its Pizza time! Coming off of our successful experiment in Dinner Rolls, we decided to up the stakes and make a food storage pizza. Now, when I say food storage, most peoples think of something like this: But earlier this year we posted our delicious recipe for a pizza, made with nothing but food storage items. This recipe was so popular we decided to see how it would fare in the SOS Sport Solar Oven. We prepared the dough and other ingredients as described in this post. And as you can see, it looked pretty great. Like we discussed last time, its important to preheat the oven as hot as you can get it. Its pretty amazing how much heat you lose every time you open the lid. I won't go into a lot of details in the preparation. But I will share with you the results! Delicious. Not perfect, but pretty dang good. Since the oven cooks at lower temperatures, the pizza dough will rise more before it cooks. We made the mistake of putting the whole thing, toppings and all, into the oven all at once. So the dough rose a bit too much for a traditional pizza. But it was very tasty. We also discovered that while you can't really burn things in the SOS Sport Solar Oven, you CAN overcook things. The toppings (specifically the cheese) were in the oven for the same amount of time as the dough, so it became a bit too crispy. Overall though, a pretty successful day of solar cooking, using all food storage, and no electricity. Things we learned today: When you open the oven the first time, you need to add 30 minutes to your cook time. Every time you open the lid after that, add 10-15 minutes. When making pizza, pre-bake the dough for about 40 minutes, and then add your toppings for the last 20-30 minutes. This will help you get a more traditional pizza crust.