scott123

The SDS for Carbon Off lists 9-10% sodium hydroxide (lye). Sodium hydroxide breaks down aluminum. I'm not sure how much aluminum you've removed, but, I think there's a good chance that it remains functional, and that some fine grit sandpaper will make it somewhat presentable again. With enough elbow grease, there might be enough aluminum left to take it to pristeen, but, I wouldn't take that chance. I think you can probably get it to look a bit like cast aluminum, which possesses it's own rustic charm.

I'm not too terribly optimistic First, Sorbillo isn't featured in any of Julia Robert's movies, but, as far as legendary Neapolitan pizzerias go, it's legit, and Sorbillo couldn't cut it in NY. I can't say for sure why Sorbillo's pizza was so bad, but, out of all the potential culprits, a failure to compensate for NYC's varying water chemistry is at the top of my list. Da Michele has that same obstacle. Da Michele's oven doesn't instill a lot of faith either. Neapolitan gas pizza ovens have come a long way, but, scaling them up to the size Da Michele is working with is uncharted territory. Historically, high output pizzerias, instead of going with huge ovens, they would just add multiple traditional sized ovens. Don't get me wrong, the pizza in the photo looks like the real deal, but, there's a huge difference between making a pie for a reviewer you know is coming and churning out a few hundred pies a day. Roberto Caporuscio (Keste, Don Antonio) lost his way when he started messing with whole wheat flour, and as much as Anthony Mangieri will boast about the old world authenticity of his pies, one look at them and it's obvious how much creative license he's taken- which many people do cartwheels over, but, as far as really great authentic Neapolitan pizza in NY goes, there is an opportunity. It would be phenomenal if Da Michele could fill those shoes. After being hopeful about Sorbillo and getting burned, though... I am very much in a wait and see configuration, regardless of one impressive photo.

Respectfully, I don't think you're grasping the porosity of these materials. Regardless of the amount of heat applied, it takes a very long time to drive the moisture completely out of a brick. Every masonry oven kit that's sold comes with some residual moisture. This is why curing instructions are always included. It's a painstaking process that starts with small fires and takes at least 4 days Even when following the instructions to a T, cracking frequently occurs. A properly built fire (dry wood, kindling, basic understanding of how to arrange the wood) can drive the ceiling of a wood fired oven up to 1000F in as little as 20 minutes. There's not a damp brick on the planet that's going to be able to release it's moisture in that time frame. Can I say that there's an X percentage chance a damp oven will explode? Of course not. But the Chefsteps oven that @lemniscate posted can give us a very rough idea. I haven't read the youtube comments in over a year, but, the last time I went through them, there were 4 reports of explosions. It's a very popular video, but, I guarantee you, by that time, no more than 1000 people had attempted to build it. 1 in 250 isn't what I'd call "highly unlikely.' If you look at the risk of frying a turkey, it's probably safer than that, but, it's still not something that, imo, anyone should knowingly do. And, even if you think that's a risk you're willing to take, it's critical to understand that while an explosion isn't guaranteed, damage is. So maybe your particular oven won't explode, but, when heated damp, it absolutely will crack, and if it drops a piece of the ceiling into the pizza as it's baking, there's a really good chance, if it's small, you won't see it. As I type this, I'm running my tongue over a chipped tooth that was a result of a pebble from a pizza oven ceiling. Can you imagine the humiliation of having one of your guests chip a tooth? Yeesh. And even if THAT'S a risk your'e willing to take, a few firings with damp brick and your oven is done. Red clay bricks are cheap, but they're not that cheap. And even the barest bone setup is going to take a great deal of labor. As I said in my previous post. I cut corners on just about everything. This isn't something where you can cut corners.

When I say the word 'All Clad' my arms get really tired. All Clad. Yup. Now I can barely make a fist

A belated thank you to everyone for your advice. I bought a sanding wheel for my drill, and it kind of looks like the burnt out pan is back from the dead. We shall see. I do need a backup- or two, so the recommendations are helpful. One more thing I've been thinking about. I can't do rivets. Rivets drive me bonkers

My entire life revolves around frugality. It's really more of a sickness than a forte. I've spend a good portion of my adult life trying to come up with a safe and inexpensive wood fired oven design. If an Ooni is presently outside your budget, then, I'm sorry to have to tell you that a wood fired oven is outside your budget as well. At least a safe one is. That design you linked to... that thing is criminally dangerous. Poorly designed ovens like these can easily explode, sending red hot projectiles towards you, your family, and guests. It all boils down to the rapid expansion in volume when water converts into steam. Basically, any porous material- masonry, stone, mud, bricks, if these materials are the slightest bit damp, when you expose them to fire, the water inside them rapidly converts to steam, expands and BOOM!!!!! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5FMPWzG63A What this means is that, for any wood fired oven, the inner chamber being exposed to the fire has to be kept BONE DRY. Since most inexpensive vapor barriers aren't suited to very high heat, this means that you have to have a layer of insulation between the oven chamber and your vapor barrier. So the necessity for a dry oven chamber and the insulation/vapor barrier that entails is one thing that drives the price up. The next thing is proper ceramic materials. Red clay bricks are cheap, but they are not suited for high temp applications AT ALL. This is why fire bricks exist- because when you exposed regular bricks to heat, they spall/flake- and the LAST thing you want to do is have a piece of your oven end up in your pizza. I have a chipped tooth from this very phenomenon. This means firebrick- for every exposed surface in your oven chamber. It also means expensive high temp refractory as mortar. The next thing that drives up the price is internal real estate. You can't successfully bake a pizza with it practically touching the fire. You need a fire, and then a few inch buffer. This means that if you want to do Neapolitan pizzas, you really need at least a 30 inch internal diameter. Another thing that you cannot skimp on is a chimney. The chimney is the thermodynamic foundation of a WFO. If the chimney doesn't draw air, you won't have proper combustion inside the oven chamber. By the time you spend the money on the firebricks, the insulation, the vapor proofing, a structure to protect the oven from the elements and a chimney, you're probably talking the cost of at least three Oonis. If that isn't enough to dissuade you, consider one more thing. The online communities (Forno Bravo, Pizzamaking.com) have a lot of helpful information, but they don't spoonfeed you everything you need to know. This involves a very extensive learning curve. I know a LOT of smart pizza people- both home and pros. I've never met a single person who nailed their first home built oven. Their second or third time around, sure, but never their first. The Ooni Koda 12 is $400. It doesn't offer as much real estate as the $600 16, but, you can get some really good pies out of it. If you really want a wood fired oven, I'd save up and invest in a kit. If you shop carefully, I think a quality kit could be obtained for around $2K. But shop super carefully- a huge number of kits/plans have designs that are horrible for pizza. One rule of thumb to follow is that the inner height of the oven should never be much taller than the radius of the inner floor.

If you look at the comments on youtube, you'll see more than a handful of people have had this oven explode on them. It's not a matter of IF Youtube and Chefsteps get sued, only a matter of when.

I just forgot about some stock I was reducing I think my 25 year old 3 Qt. Revere Ware sauce pan is toast. I might be able to find the same thing on ebay, but I'm contemplating an upgrade. The thing is, I REALLY like three things about the Revere Ware. 1. It's light. I'm washing it by hand quite a lot, and it's light enough that it washes without a huge effort 2. It fits in my dishwasher. When I put it in my dishwasher, the straight side edges and diameter allow it to fit flawlessly. I have sauce pans with lips, but the lips play horribly with my dishwasher geography. Maybe if it's taller/narrow, lips might be okay, but, between tall w/ lips and Revere Ware-ish diameter without lips, I'm hoping for lipless. 3. Price. I think I paid 10 bucks for it. I'm open to spending considerably more, but. North of about $70 isn't going to work with my budget. Just to be clear, I've been cooking with Revere Ware all my life. I'm well aware of it's limitations. But, in a world where better quality almost always comes with greater heft, a flared lip, and a much higher price tag, I'm not sure, for me, a potential upgrade exists. But I'm still asking

Yes, I focused on farmed fish because that's the most egregious example of toxic exposure, but, the greater the confinement, the increased exposure to toxins, the greater the need for antibiotics. All doctors these days will think twice about prescribing an excess of antibiotics, and yet, without a thought, we'll eat animals that are brimming with the stuff.

That's an interesting link, thanks. Just to be clear, for the most part, I'm not talking about the health impact of eating fish bacteria. The whole purpose of defecation is to separate nutritional components from toxins. There isn't an animal on this planet that is meant to live in a pool of it's own toxic waste. The only way that fish farmers are able to keep the fish alive is by dumping obscene amounts of antibiotics into the pens. It's these antibiotics that we should be worrying about the most when we eat farmed fish (regardless of what the label says). And it's the fact that unhealthy animals have a fraction of the nutrition that healthy animals possess.

You really don't see see the difference between animals that are able to shit and, to varying extents, move away from where they just shat, to animals that are raised in a pen of their own feces?

I'm probably going to be greeted with a chorus of "duh!s" because I'm so incredibly late to this realization. And I still fight the idea because of the massive fiduciary impact this realization will wreak on my bank account, but... they can plaster any certification they can possibly think of on farmed fish, but, no matter which way you cut it, all farmed fish is basically bred in a broth of it's own excrement.

It's not completely fair, but, whenever I compare prices between my local Taiwanese grocer and the Korean and Japanese places, it's like comparing Aldi to Whole Foods. Now, mind you, I don't buy a lot of fish, nor do I seek out purely Korean ingredients, so I'm not the best judge. I DO go through a metric s&?t ton of shiritaki noodles, and the cheapest price I can find is a wallet decimating $4/lb. @eugenep, if, on your travels, you stumble across a reasonable price on shiritaki/konjac noodles, please let me know. Edgewater is SO far for me, but, I'd make that trip if I could save a few pennies. Eugenp, have you tried Restaurant Depot? They opened to the public during Covid, and might still be open. I can't speak to the quality of the fish, but I'm assuming the price is competitive. And there's always a guy behind the counter, for whatever that's worth.

I know a couple people who have played around with pH meters. It was with dough, and the results seemed a bit mixed, but I think, for liquids, they might give you a good idea of the pH you're dealing with- for both the syrups AND the coffee. Milkfat is a stabilizer, making skim the most vulnerable, with heavy cream being the least prone to curdling. One thing you might consider is upping the milkfat percentage. Darker coffee roasts are also less acidic. All of the flavored syrups have to be shelf stable at room temp for a very long time. To achieve this, acids are pretty much always gong to be one of the preservation players. What flavors are you adding? There might be a way of achieving these notes without the syrup. For instance, citrus zest gives you plenty of citrus-y flavor, with much less acid. Dutch cocoa has been 'Dutched' with potassium carbonate. Dutch cocoa, to me, doesn't taste 'yucky.' I think the problem you might run into with baking soda, is that you might be introducing a bit of a salty flavor. This is just a wild guess, but, I think you might get a cleaner taste profile using less of a stronger base, like food grade lye. Do you have any leeway over the temperature of the ingredients? Maybe if you combine them when it's a little less piping hot, they'll be less prone to curdle. One last factor- fresh milk is harder to curdle. Not necessarily from the farm (you want ultra pasteurized/homogenized), but a brand new, unopened jug of whole milk might help a bit.

D'oh! I forget that the Rosa was mozzarella-less. Now, would a quality fresh mozzarella add to the Rosa equation? Maybe Imo, sauce-less pies are really the only place where fresh mozzarella shines, but... that's another conversation. Everyone deserves to experience an unadulterated, mozzarella-less, charred Rosa at least once.

When it comes to pizza, Bon Appetit are generally idiots, so when they anointed Pizzeria Bianco the best in the U.S. I rolled my eyes just as robustly as when they later crowned Beddia. This being said, Bianco is a legit talent, and the Rosa is widely accepted to be his magnum opus. But the Rosa is SO much more than just a pizza topped with Parmigiano, rosemary, red onions, pistachios and olive oil- and for MP to reduce it to merely that and avoid the best element... it's criminal. What's next, chocolate chip cookies without any chocolate? Chris Bianco is one a few well known American pizzamakers who will boast about the uniqueness of their approach/ingredients, but, when you start scratching the surface, you'll find some incredibly Neapolitan-ish components. This is where the magic of the Rosa resides. It's the char, the leoparding, the crispy rigid undercrust that you see on sauceless Neapolitan pizza. Sure, the topping combination is brilliant, but, when you take away the char, it goes from a pizza you want to devour, to merely being okay with three slices. Break out the ooni, an authentic Neapolitan dough and these toppings. It will be a transformative experience. Oh, and you definitely want fresh mozzarella on this. If you can get it, fresh mozzarella recently hand stretched from curd. In my experience, hand stretched mootz tends to be more stable, and, in a white pie like this, where the cheese, without the sauce, will bubble, you need that extra stability.

I haven't made gumbo in a while, but, my local (Northeastern U.S.) price for andouille sausage was so high that I ended up taking ground pork and making my own with some liquid smoke. Was it as good as the real deal? No, but, for about $2/lb, it was fantastic- and worked flawlessly in gumbo. I don't have my recipe in front of me, but I'm pretty sure it was less than 1/8 t. to 1 lb ground pork. One other thing worth mentioning- I've never come across concrete evidence for this, but, I've seen endless conjecture that cheap bacon is done with liquid smoke rather than being smoked in an actual smoker. If this true, having only bought cheap bacon for about a decade, I can contend that, at the right quantity of smoke flavoring, it can produce some of the best bacon I've ever had. As sacrilegious as this might sound, I won't even go near expensive bacon these days. The cheaper, the wetter, the better, imo.

Question Are you looking to make authentic Chinese cuisine from a particular province- or are you looking to recreate your favorite Chinese American restaurant dishes at home?

You're welcome! FWIW, Canada is pretty much the only country in the world where you're never going to have a problem with too little gluten using all purpose flour.

You're welcome! Thanks for the kind words. I dig some digging and found this: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0308814614015817?via%3Dihub The content is behind a paywall, but, summarizing, the study's authors found that the amount of dead yeast in various dried and fresh commercial products varied by quite a bit- up to about 80 times. The authors found that this variation produced a recognizable weakening effect in the dough. In their words, "This makes GSH [the glutathione in dead yeast] an important ingredient rather than a minor accompanying substance. " I also found this: https://www.lallemand.com/BakerYeastNA/eng/PDFs/LBU PDF FILES/1_7REDUC.PDF Now, you may very well be in that .25% range for total yeast being added to the dough, and dead yeast will be a small fraction of that. Initially (up to 8% based on the first study I linked to). It's important to remember, though, that yeast is a processed derived ingredient- that as you proof the dough, you're creating more and more dead yeast. Depending on how unhappy osmotolerant yeast is in less enriched dough, you might hit that .25% metric and see weakening. Can I guarantee that you'll see weakening? No. But I do believe that the ranges being discussed above are low enough to make dead yeast a very viable player in dough rheology. In my somewhat purist opinion, I don't think it's something you should underestimate. Interesting 15.5% protein with a 360 W value is... odd. https://www.mulinocaputo.it/prodotti/oro/?lang=en Caputo's Manitoba is W 380 (avg) at 14.5%. W, as I'm sure you're aware, is gas trapping ability, and gas is trapped by gluten, which is formed from protein. There are factors that might skew the relationship, but, in white flour, the two tend to be very proportional. The Polselli number is just not in line with the typical protein/w ratio you see in other Neapolitan flours. Apparently, they have a history posting irregular protein specs: https://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=59615.msg597919#msg597919 I'm not accusing Polselli of funny business, but, at the same time, I might take that 15.5% spec with a grain of salt. Protein can actually be a little misleading- which is why the Europeans came up with the W value. The W value doesn't lie. At 360, the Super is basically Polselli's Manitoba, clocking in as being slightly weaker than the Caputo Manitoba. 360 is pretty respectable. It's basically unmalted American bread flour. With some diastatic malt, it becomes ideal for a typical home oven. Now, if you've got a wood fired oven or an Ooni, it might be a little on the strong side for Neapolitan. Ultimately, though, my protein spec concern is just me being a little pedantic Thanks for bringing this flour to my attention. I think I might have written it off earlier based on the 10% protein spec, but, at 360 W, I'll be adding it to my list of viable flours.

This could be a gluten issue. Gluten provides structure, so, when a cake lacks it, it will have a tendency to collapse. Gluten also traps liquid, which might explain the greasy bottom. Your lack of gluten could be coming from two factors: 1. The UK doesn't have super strong flour, but there's a decent chance that British self rising flour might be a titch stronger than the self rising flour you're finding in New Zealand. 2. British water is considerably harder than New Zealand water. Dissolved solids are critical to gluten formation. As to why the chocolate cake recipes are working, while the pound cakes fail, fat is a power gluten inhibitor https://www.huffpost.com/entry/shortening-origin-name_n_6100162#:~:text=Shortening got its name because,softer%2C more crumbly baked good. Both of her chocolate cake recipes have less fat than the cakes you've seen with sunken middles. How certain am I that it's a gluten issue? Maybe 95%. If you can, get some stronger flour and some harder water and give those a try. What butter are you using? Is it a higher fat European style butter? How long are you mixing for? Are you being careful to mix just enough to combine and no more? Another thing you might play around with is a slightly longer mix- but not too long or the gluten will start to break down. Edit: I did a little digging and found this: https://thegreatbritishbakeoff.co.uk/recipes/all/mary-berry-victoria-sponge/ and this https://thehappyfoodie.co.uk/recipes/very-best-chocolate-fudge-cake/ She folds the flour/cocoa into the wet ingredients in the Black Forest Gateau- but that's only got the fat from the eggs- and a trace amount of fat from the cocoa. There's a chance you might find success by merely beating the pound cake recipes like she does with the Chocolate Fudge batter. But I'd also look at your flour and your water.

The scientists call dead yeast a 'reduction agent' and they'll tell you how reducing helps with extensibility. Dough should be extensible, so, at first glance, dead yeast appears to be good stuff. But with just about every aspect regarding pizza, the golden mean is critical. The extensibility one gets without adding dead yeast is more than sufficient enough for pizza dough. If you start adding dead yeast, when you go to knuckle stretch it, it's going to want to plummet to the ground. Instead of calling dead yeast a reduction agent, I'd be more tempted to refer to it as a gluten inhibitor. And gluten, in pizza, is absolutely critical. When you're using yeast in an off label environment, it's going to be inhospitable, and you're going to see a greater proportion of dead yeast than if you used it in it's intended environment. You can offset the lack of rising power by ramping up the yeast, but, as you do so, you're ramping up the dead yeast. Now, how much of an impact is this going to have? I've never seen this studied, so I can't say. Maybe if you started off with 14% protein flour, some extra dead yeast might go unnoticeable, but, I can't say for certain. One thing I do know, for certain, though, is that 14% white flour (16% on the label) doesn't exist in Australia. If you're starting with either weak Australian flour or weak imported Italian 00, the gluten inhibition you're going to see from counter-indicated yeast could be pretty dramatic. And if you push the fermentation clock, then that might make things even worse.

Dialing in the right thickness factor is such a huge piece of the NY style puzzle. 400g for a 14" crust is basically Domino's NY style pizza, and it's, unfortunately, how most of America defines this style. It's only when you've had the real deal do you understand that a NY slice shouldn't be that doughy/bready. Joe's is: 14% protein flour 59-63% water 2% salt 1% sugar 2-4% oil The flour is kind of critical, in that it creates a sufficiently strong dough that best facilitates the characteristic super thin stretch. You can achieve a super thin stretch, as you achieved here, with a weaker flour, but, it's exponentially more difficult/more nerve-racking. Higher protein flour will also brown faster. Previously, I mentioned the Restaurant Depot in Oklahoma City having 14% flour. There's also 14% protein flour you can order online. http://www.pennmac.com/items/3230//Bleached-Pizza-Flour-All-Trump-High-Gluten-Flour There's also a pretty good chance a local bakery is using 14% protein flour and is willing to sell you some. If you don't want to go any of these routes, then 13%-ish flour is your next best bet- King Arthur bread flour- and only King Arthur, as other brands of bread flour will be closer to 12%. Joe's also uses a high fat mozzarella that's hard to find on a retail level. Without a trip to RD, whole milk Boar's head is probably the closest you're going to come to it. As the fat content goes up, the cheese golds as it bakes rather than giving you those dark brown spots. One fairly easy cheat for getting a better melt from a leaner cheese is to go with pepperoni pies- the pepperoni will render it's fat and help the cheese gold. You can also grate a little frozen butter over the shredded cheese with a microplane. These workarounds will mostly be cosmetic, though. Pizzeria cheese has a greater percentage of fat because it's aged longer than retail. The longer the aging, the more flavor you get.

This is a very astute observation. It's why, when it was first released, my heart sank when I heard about the 14"x16" dimension of the Baking Steel, and it's why my heart still sinks when I hear about folks purchasing steels that size today. When it comes to pizza, size absolutely matters. This is why I always tell folks to source the largest square steel (or aluminum) plates that their oven can handle- touching the back wall and almost touching the front door. If someone has a lip on the back of shelf that robs some space, I tell them to source square tubing to lift the plate above the lip. Every fraction of an inch matters. I can't tell you how many people I've dealt with who are skeptical about their ovens being able to accommodate 17" plates, only to eventually figure out that they just barely fit. At least domestic ovens. European ovens are an entirely different story. A 17" NY pie isn't a 21" pie, but, it's still very respectable. Beyond stepping up to a larger plate, you can also get a bit creative in the way you slice the pie: https://www.reddit.com/r/Pizza/comments/g5rlwo/i_call_it_the_dad_slice_happens_on_the_last_pie/ NY style sauce is never cooked. It dulls the bright fresh flavor of the canned tomatoes. Cooked sauce is occasionally a thing in NY (Lucali and L&B are two examples), but never at NY style pizzerias, so if Joe's is your target, you may want to consider using the tomatoes straight from the can.

He made the switch to whole wheat in 2018. It's not something the Italians like talking about, but, for at least 100 years, Neapolitan pizza has been made with mostly North American (Manitoban) wheat. For reasons of pride and thrift, the Italians have been trying to grow sufficiently strong wheat for as long as they've been buying it from the Canadians- and failing. This latest failure is Caputo's Typo 1 flour, released in 2018. Obviously, Caputo marketed this as a stupendous homegrown success, but this emperor had no clothes whatsoever. Roberto, being Caputo's brand ambassador, was tasked with polishing the turd. At first, he tried a 100% Typo 1 pie, but soon figured out that it wasn't going to work. Eventually, he settled in on 25% and a dilution-being-the-solution-to-pollution philosophy. Technically, Caputo is Roberto's boss, and there's a huge amount of money involved, but he still could have said no. And I loved pre-type 1 Keste. I've taken tours there. Roberto was incredibly gracious and talked with us for hours. The pizza was phenomenal. His burrata was to die for. The lardo pie taught me that Neapolitan pizza could actually be quite crispy. But, sadly, that's a thing of the past. The first online reference that I found to Motorino was their (first) Williamsburg location in 1996, and their East Village location in 1999. Based on a quick search, Keste appears to have opened somewhere around 2005. FWIW, I can't go into the details, but I know, for certain, that Motorino is cutting corners on ingredient sourcing. Much like vintage Keste, I practically worshiped Motorino's brussel sprout and pancetta pie, but, knowing what I know, I can't return- or recommend it to others.