Essegi 2014: 1st grow! Winter is coming.

Ok, today i decided to plant seeds.
First of all i want to thank who helped me in a thread and Sarge in particular that helped me to decide what to do! And Lonewolf from pepperfriends forum that has helped me a lot!

My list, all from Semillas, begin of september 2013:
 

• Trinidad Scorpion Moruga Red
• HP22B
• Trinidad Douglah
• Chocolate Bhut Jolokia
• Fatalii
• Fatalii White
• Ferenc Tender

I've planted all but Ferenc Tender seeds, i'll plant them next month or in beginning of March. If i'll plant them.
11 per type.
I've treated seeds for 15 mins in a 3% bleach solution then i washed them very well in water before planting.
During that process i lost 1 seed of Trinidad Douglah and 3 of Chocoloate Bhut Jolokia (i suppose 2 of that lost seeds were too tiny anyway).
 
I've used plastic glasses with an hole:

 
The soil, specific for seeds (here before planting):

• PH 6-7
• C/N 25
• 0,6 dS/m
• organic ferthilizer
• neutral peat 65% volume
• organic carbon on dry content 35%
• organic nitrogen on dry content 11%
• fulvic and humc carbon on dry content 11%

hope the last 4 are translated accurately...
 

 
 
So 62 plants in total. In a 60*100 cm table

• I plan to grow them all by myself until i have to change the vase.
• Then i keep 2 per type (12 in total) of them in a 2,4 L vase each (top external diameter 18 cm). It's ok for my table. The rest goes to friends and relatives.
• Then 1 per type in a 15-20 L vase each and 1 per type in ground. Or all in vases, but probably half on ground. Of course the last vases will go outside, i have a nice spot of 15 m lenght along my house walls that is without wind and quite hot.

Room, that is heating room:

 
That round thing in the left is warm... I've turned on radiator on right.
 
Here measured temps in center table:
 

Considering some parallax error is 27°C or little more (hoping that thing is accurate) which is 81°F
In the night will be lower but i think still above 20°C (68°F)
There's some natural light, hope that helps.
I have to do some funny things for the light, unfortunately at home have prohibited to use drying racks that would have been perfect.
 
I've a 60*3 watts LED light, nearly 10K lumens. I've found a good price and more than half was a birthday present from friends...
 

 
It's the round thing.
Well, no cats or dog allowed in growing room! Hope all goes well..

 

[maximumcapsicum]

Great looking pizza Essegi! Nice that you make your own dough. I am far less ambitious. 
 
Happy growing!

 

[Pr0digal_son]

Very nice amico.

 

[Devv]

I'm loving the Pizza you made!
 
Thanks for posting the recipe for the dough! We've been making our own but something new to try. We put the dough in the bowl with olive oil. And don't laugh, I'm eating pizza as I typo!
 
My heritage dictates I eat it very often. My Grandfather emigrated to the US from the Milan area in 1917. He's long since passed, but left us with a fantastic red sauce recipe which we keep on hand.
 
Back to peppers...I only water when the soil looks dry on top, and just a sip, you know, a little splash. Once they get older, like 4" high, they tolerate more.
 
Keep it green!

 

[Jeff H]

I'm loving the Pizza you made!
 
Thanks for posting the recipe for the dough! We've been making our own but something new to try. We put the dough in the bowl with olive oil. And don't laugh, I'm eating pizza as I typo.

 

ROFL, I was too. Pics in my blog later, but no rush, they aren't as good as Essegi's.

 

[Essegi]

Eating pizza while posting is in everyone rights!
 

I'm loving the Pizza you made!
 
Thanks for posting the recipe for the dough! We've been making our own but something new to try. We put the dough in the bowl with olive oil. And don't laugh, I'm eating pizza as I typo!
 
My heritage dictates I eat it very often. My Grandfather emigrated to the US from the Milan area in 1917. He's long since passed, but left us with a fantastic red sauce recipe which we keep on hand.
 
Back to peppers...I only water when the soil looks dry on top, and just a sip, you know, a little splash. Once they get older, like 4" high, they tolerate more.
 
Keep it green!

Ooh, nice! I'm not too far from Milan (200 km).
Thanks for the tip, probably i watered a bit too much.

For dough in general i made a quick dough with lots of yeast, rising and taste was not bad, absolutely avoiding to weight things, but i felt taste was not as it should be. I tried with milk, beer, wheat and flour, some alcohol like grappa, sugar, oil... I've done that in an unorganized way but i noticed: milk make softer pizza, durum wheat harder and is nice for taste, sugar and alcohol (small quantities) helps rising, i tried beer once, my uncle recipe, (guinness) instead water and was harder to cook and a different thing. For some unknown reasons i want to try the same with red wine.
Btw lots of yeast and fast rise is unhealthy, a dietist said that to me, and to eat pizzas possibily risen for 24h with lievito madre (not that i have health issues, i was a bit overweight).
 
So i checked some recipe on the net and i found that:
medium strenght flour (W 240)
60% water
2,5% salt
0,2% yeast
% on flour weight.
 
No oil, no sugar, nothing more. Some evo oil wouldn't hurt btw.
W is the strenght of flour that is related, from what i've understood, to gluten content, water absorption, maybe risen surface... I don't know if i really can highlight that, but if i can i check that.
But you don't find that parameter in normal wheat. Manitoba has an high W so mixing some with normal flour is a good thing. Or check in the net if you find something.
I've read that this in one of the best non pro flour:
http://www.molinospadoni.it/prod_cf_42_en.php (Spadoni = Greatswords so it's a cool name! ). W 200-240.
And pro flour? I know they're sold in 5-25kg packs...
Maybe i should ask some, just for trying, to my uncle and my cousin, that runs a pizzeria since i must repair their PC!
My uncle pointed out that in pizzeria not only oven is hotter but you have hot base and that makes things even faster.
So i tried the trick to leave metal plate in oven and pull out when hot to put pizza in oven. Seems good for cooking.
Well, pizzeria oven is wooden powered and has a different kind of base, but that is an unfillable difference!
 
Anyway with less yeast (1-2g opposite 12-25g) and more time taste is really better and is possible to hand flatten! And really, without much stuff, no oil, sugar ecc, is good as it is.
I've yet to learn proper way to knead and flatten, maybe with time i'll improve that!

 

[Devv]

We cook ours on a Pizza stone @ 450°, we let the stone get hot for 20 minutes first.

 

[Essegi]

Nice for pizza stone!
Do you mean 450°F or °C?
I was wondering to buy a pizza stone too, 30€ and could get that from amazon, but my oven is limited to 275°C (more or less i think, more than 250°C wich is the max norm for electrical ovens here in Italy) wich is still low.
My uncle cooks at 310-320°C more or less, but with a pro oven with spinning base, here a pic i took 3 months ago for another thread:

pellet fueled (my uncle says it's good, and he is used to wooden powered ovens) that thing can cook 8 pizzas at once!
As far as i know true Napoli stile pizza, wich is a different style, is cooked at higher T. Btw my uncle pizzas are great..
I could also buy G3 Ferrari wich reachs 390°C and has a pizza stone for base, it's cheap, i've heard it's not bad and cooks 1 pizza at once... The problem is that i don't want any other stuff at home, but i'm tempted to buy that!

Sorry for OT, but pizza is an hot topic indeed!

 

[maximumcapsicum]

Not off topic at all! Pizza is peppers best friend.
 
My wife is considering giving your dough recipe a try! We just need to get some more time lined up.
 
Keep the updates coming, Pizza Boss!

 

[Essegi]

Ha ha lol thanks!  Thinking about pizza and hot... Well, my first ever hot stuff could have been pizza diavola, margherita + hot pepperoni!
And nice thing making your douhg! The most difficult thing of making dough is... Making douhg! I mean, i do it with no skill and results aren't so bad, major skill required is the will to do it (and some time)!
 
Btw in THP there's a nice thread for pizza with some great pizzas from many members (at page 58 there's Booma dough recipe, take a look at that, i should try it because it sounds epic):
http://thehotpepper.com/topic/18423-the-last-great-pizza-thread/
I usually post here for that.

 

[Essegi]

New sprout, choco bhut!
 

 
The plant of my last update, wich is not a Douglah but a Moruga:

 
Overview:

 

[Spicegeist]

  choco bhut, I love those!

 

[JoynersHotPeppers]

Congrats! Last few days the sprouts have exploded!

 

[Devv]

Glad to see such great progress Essegi!
 
Seedlings are looking good!
 
And yes 450°F, the Pizza stone is wonderful. I like the crust golden brown on the bottom so I can fold the slice. Funny thing, had Pizza again tonight...can't beat it!

 

[maximumcapsicum]

Love the Choco bhut and moruga! Looking tasty!

 

[Essegi]

 Thanks all!

And yes 450°F, the Pizza stone is wonderful. I like the crust golden brown on the bottom so I can fold the slice. Funny thing, had Pizza again tonight...can't beat it!

Oooh nice! I was in doubt that temps like 450°F (let's say <300°C) were a bit low for pizza stone, it seems i was wrong and that's good! I really should buy one!
Yeah, pizza is just soo good!

 

[Jeff H]

Sprouts look great and they seem real happy.
 
450F seems to work fine for me as well, the biggest issue I have is preheating the stone. One of these days I need to get one of those giant wooden spatulas so I can preheat the stone and then just slide the pizza on there. As it is, I don't end up using the pizza stone very often since it doesn't make good crusts without being preheated.
 
It would be pretty cool to have an oven like your uncle, but that is out of my budget.

 

[Essegi]

Sprouts look great and they seem real happy.
 
450F seems to work fine for me as well, the biggest issue I have is preheating the stone. One of these days I need to get one of those giant wooden spatulas so I can preheat the stone and then just slide the pizza on there. As it is, I don't end up using the pizza stone very often since it doesn't make good crusts without being preheated.
 
It would be pretty cool to have an oven like your uncle, but that is out of my budget.

I've asked prices to a pizzaiolo i know that bought a new oven (2011 or more recently), previous was getting old and he wanted a bigger one,.. If i remeber well he spent something like 12k € (more or less) and was not spinning... Definetly out of budget!

 

[Devv]

A Pizza peel is where it at. I build my pizza on one that has a liberal amount of corn meal on it so it slides off nicely. I made a couple out of Maple I rescued from dumpster land. They redid a Gym floor at one of the campuses. I'm sure they sell them at a restaurant supply house. Prior to the wooden one we used an aluminum one, it too worked fine.

 

[HillBilly Jeff]

Love the new plant pics.  Looking good.
 
When I ran a pizza joint, we kept the ovens at 550.  Not sure how the different setups are.

 

[Jeff H]

A Pizza peel is where it at. I build my pizza on one that has a liberal amount of corn meal on it so it slides off nicely. I made a couple out of Maple I rescued from dumpster land. They redid a Gym floor at one of the campuses. I'm sure they sell them at a restaurant supply house. Prior to the wooden one we used an aluminum one, it too worked fine.

 
I'm more determined than ever to get one of these. Probably build it since I have all the tools. Got a photo of yours?