scott123

Well, first of all, I've never come across a Neapolitan pizzeria who wasn't approaching the pizza authentically. As I said before, if you mess with the recipe, it fails- miserably. Aspiring owners tend to be smart enough not to mess with perfection. So this imaginary pizzeria we're discussing doesn't exist. But I understand the possibility for adulteration on a commercial level. This isn't about what people like or don't like. You're not going to find me standing outside that Vermont pizzerias waving a placard My beef is with the authors. The Reinharts, the Modernists, the Kenji's, and the Forkishes who are perpetuating the misinformation. If you write a book or a blog, you should be doing your homework. As an educator, you should start from a position of being educated. My beef is also with forums like this one who should be holding these educators to task, but who aren't.

I added too much water to my pizza and it burned. Hey, the fire's going out, add water! I've been hard on Nathan, Chris, and, more recently Francisco. At the end of the day, I don't think this is a conspiracy to ruin pizza, it's just bakers looking at pizza through a bread lens. Baker's gonna bake :) I really wished they'd, at some point, consulted with people in the industry and learned to approach pizza as pizza rather than bread, but it looks like they might be doing that now. Three 5 x 15 x .375 slabs of steel. Each slab will weigh 8 lb. Since oven shelves tend to sag in the middle a bit under weight, run the seams from side wall to side wall. I'm a big proponent of larger surface areas, because bigger pizza is better but, if you were going to be happy with 10" pies in the Cuisinart, you might not need to go larger than 15". Even if you do end up making 12 or 13 inch pizzas, the bigger target is nice for launching. A 15" steel surface @ 550 will completely blow any kind of 450 degree Cuisinart setup out of the water. As much time as I've spent in the past highlighting the distinct differences between pizza and bread. If you're working with a reasonable hydration bread dough (60%ish with bread flour), that should be fine for pizza. Leftover dough, if it's refrigerated can be tricky to ball as it can be hard to seal well, but if you're conscientious to make sure the seal is nice and tight and give it at least 6 hours before stretching, you should be fine.

Within the last 15 years, I've come across maybe 3,000 people who've tried making Neapolitan pizza at home. Do you know how many of these people had the 'right kind of home oven?' Three. Yes, it's possible to make Neapolitan in a home oven, but framing conversations in the context of a 1 in 1000 chance for success doesn't serve the home pizza maker. Had you said, 'taking pizza in a Neapolitan direction with the right oven', I would have agreed with you. But you made the implication that home cooks can strive for Neapolitan- all home cooks and that this direction is somehow okay. Considering your vast exposure to 60 second pizza and your innate knowledge of it's superiority (as compared to unmalted flour dough baked for 4 minutes), if anyone would be able to grasp the concept that it's absolutely not okay for the vast number of home cooks to strive for Neapolitan, it should be you. There's hybrid toppings but, as you pointed out, there are no hybrid bake times. I've talked with Paulie Gee (king of the Brooklyn Neapolitan, imo) extensively about this,and he understands it unequivocally. If you lower the heat and extend the bake time with a Neapolitan dough, it suffers. And self clean cycles, besides being potentially oven damaging and dangerous, have no correlation to making Neapolitan pizza at home. You said it yourself, it's all down to the broiler, and, if the broiler is too weak at 550 (which pretty much all home oven broilers are), it will still be too weak at 700.

Do you know many Neapolitans? I do. They're fiercely proud of their pizza- and rightly so. If you came up with arguably the best food on the planet, wouldn't you want the whole world to experience it- and not a shitty adulterated version of it? I guarantee you that the folks that wrote this document care about what happens in Vermont. And they're not looking down their nose on the adulterators, nor are they laughing at them. They're sad and angry because the perversion is robbing the uninitiated of the cherished experience their forefathers worked so hard to cultivate. The French care pretty deeply about champagne, how do you know they wouldn't care about the adulteration of a croissant? The protection of champagne, of parmigiano reggiano, of balsamic vinegar- these protections have very obvious financial aspects, but there's also a substantial cultural component as well. "We, the rock star Reggio Emilians have come up with the pinnacle of cheese, we know that you, the rest of the world, are going to want to screw it up- are going to want to culturally appropriate it and commodify the crap out of it. Don't. And pay us." Atrophy is the way of the world. If you make something truly wonderful and you don't find a way to protect it, to educate the rest of the world, it's not going to be around forever. I don't really enjoy paying 14.99 a pound for Parmigiano Reggiano, but I am unbelievably grateful that the Reggio Emilians went to/are going to such great lengths to make sure that I get to experience their cultural treasure. Just because the Neapolitans don't have lawyers attacking adulterators, it doesn't make their culture any less worthy of protection. In fact, I would argue that, without the mercenary component, Neapolitan pizza is more worthy of protection- that instead of lawyers threatening to sue, it's just people, like you and me, spreading the truth.

This is obviously not about 90 second pizza vs 92 second pizza. The fastest possible bake with Neapolitan dough in a home oven is going to be around 4 minutes. It's 90 seconds vs 4 minutes. 550 vs. 850. Pushing Neapolitan pizza to 4 minutes is like making a fat free croissant. Without the fat, it's not a croissant any more. And trying to sell people on the viability of a fat free croissant is pretty unforgivable.

An apple-tini doesn't ruin a martini. It's just a personal preference. It's like someone who likes to top their pizza with corn or another person who likes pineapple. I don't get involved with that stuff. On the other hand... if you take Neapolitan dough and bake it in a home oven, because the flour is unmalted, it will take forever to brown, which will dry out the crust, resulting in something bordering on biscotti. Martini's aren't really engineered. Neapolitan pizza is. Neapolitan dough baked for 4 minutes isn't better than the mediocre pizza most people can get locally. Neapolitan adulteration and misinformation ruins home baked pizza. Producing better pizza at home is the end all be all. And authors that push their readers towards unobtainable Neapolitan ambitions do them a terrible disservice.

I'm sure I don't have to explain to you the amount of energy it takes to heat water, but, for those that may not know, it takes a lot. In the same sauce pan, try timing how long it takes to boil 1/2" of water and how long it takes to boil 2" of water. One is a matter of seconds, the other minutes. I can't speak for bread, but the rate at which pizza dough heats up in the oven is a big part of it's leavening. The water in the base of the dough quickly boils and turns to steam. This rapidly expanding steam is driven upward, which heats the rest of the dough and expands the gas that was formed during proofing. If you load the dough with water, it takes what should be a quick rise in temperature in the dough, a somewhat explosive reaction, and slows it way down. If dough doesn't get hot quickly, oven spring is sacrificed. Gluten needs water to form. Every flour has a fairly exact amount of water that it can absorb which professionals call it's absorption value. Any water you add beyond that is just adding free water to the dough. And this water that the gluten has no use for, this excess water, takes considerably more energy to heat, and that kills the oven spring. Beyond impairing volume, excess water impairs the texture of pizza crusts in other ways. Cooler ovens have issues with pizza because, as they extend the bake time, the dough dries out and gets hard. You might think that you're adding moisture and softness to the final product by adding water to the dough, but, in reality, by adding water, you're just increasing the bake time, and, in order to get the crust to eventually brown, you're drying it out just as much. Excess water is not your friend. Up until the point you reach the absorption value, it's your best buddy, playing the ultra critical role of hydrating the gluten, but beyond that, it's just a literal and a figurative wet blanket. Those are my thoughts on water I don't know exactly what kind of pizza you're striving for, and, perhaps, with a considerable amount of extra oil and sugar, you can do something American-ish or maybe something foccacia-ish, but if you want pizza that's soft, chewy, puffy, and has good color, I just don't see it happening in the Cuisinart. 10" x 10" x .375" steel has the same surface area- and the same weight, as 7" x 14" x .375". If you're willing to work with 10" x 10", just get two pieces of 7" x 14" steel to make a 14" x 14" surface for your main oven. If 7 x 14 is too heavy/too unwieldy for you, you can even break it down into three pieces- maybe three 5 x 15 pieces. Like I said, I'm not really sure what you're striving for, but, from your description of your DeLonghi pizza, it certainly sounds like you want puffy. If that's the case, I strongly recommend using your main oven. How hot does your main oven get? Does it have a broiler in the main compartment?

As Paul pointed out, if you're the right candidate (hot enough oven, broiler in the main compartment), steel is better than iron or stone. Here is my guide to sourcing steel locally. https://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=31267.0 Edit: Link already provided.

https://www.fornobravo.com/vera-pizza-napoletana/pizza-napoletana/ Broiler or no broiler, 60-90 second pizza isn't happening in a typical home oven- with or without steel. If you're going to be a purist- and I applaud your zealotry then you should be aware that there is no Neapolitan pizza 'direction.' Either you have an oven that can do 90 seconds or less, and, along with an unmalted flour, you make Neapolitan pizza, or, you don't have the right oven, and you work with the temperature you're able to reach and make other styles- with other flour. I'm not pointing the finger at you, but this whole Neapolitan pizza is whatever we feel like it is thing has got to be finally put to bed. Reinhart was patient zero for most of the misinformation, but he's been penitent. The Modernist team had very little idea what Neapoitan pizza was 7 years ago, and they missed the mark in Modernist Bread, but, I think they're finally beginning to grasp the cultural ramifications. In Naples, and in Neapolitan pizzerias across the globe, less than 90 second pizza has been/is the norm. You might find one or two 2 minute outliers, but, VPN membership or no VPN membership, Neapolitan has historically been prepared within tight parameters- and to continue to extravagantly paint outside these lines is a huge slap in the face to Neapolitan culture and history- and a disservice to great pizza (Continuing rant indefinitely )

Overmixing is gluten development. If you work with pastry flour and stick to pastry flour based recipes, less protein = less propensity to form gluten.

To an outsider, drug addiction and alcoholism, assuming the addict is functioning (and boy did Anthony function), these demons can easily come across as joie de vivre. But then this happens and instantly the self medicating aspect becomes quite obvious. This being said, at this point, something isn't making sense here. I can't really say that I'm not buying it, because very little is being sold. I can't cry foul, because there is no narrative being presented to explain this- other than, of course, the depression-is-a-horrible-disease narrative. Every fiber of my being, though, says that there's more to this than just depression and possibly a bad break up. It's selfish, it's probably not respectful to his family's privacy or to his memory, but, fuck it, I want answers.

Respectfully, you absolutely 'weighed in on this particular debate' by calling it a 'potential carcinogen.' Approximately 50,000 American pizzerias use bromated flour. By calling it a 'potential carcinogen,' you're implying that an entire industry is potentially putting their customer's lives in jeopardy. If that's not 'weighing in,' I don't know what is.

In the pizza world, excess flour on the finished crust is considered a serious defect due to it's bitter taste. I think part of this might relate to the color you take the flour to, but if you don't believe me about how undesirable this flour actually is, scrape some off and taste it- you'll immediately know where I'm coming from. I'm well aware that for some types of bread, excess flour provides an important aesthetic, but I might argue that there are other ways to achieve a beautiful loaf without sacrificing taste.

You're not seeing paranoia because you're only skimming the surface. What you came up with took, what, about 2 minutes to google? Good science is about digging deeper- about getting all the facts. First, there's never been a connection between bromate and cancer in humans. Humans are not rats, and rat based studies have been shown, time and time again, to produce different results in humans. The links you posted even references the fact that the findings for rats aren't even applicable to mice. If the findings aren't applicable moving from rats to mice, how the heck are we going to know how humans will react? Milling workers in the Eastern half of the U.S., where bromate is the standard for commmercial flour, have historically been exposed to high quantities. If there was a connection between bromate and cancer in humans, you'd see it in this population. You don't. Again, look at the links you posted. Even if the link between bromate and cancer in humans could eventually be proven, a good scientist comprehends the connection between dosage and risk. They don't feed rats bromated flour bread. They don't even feed them bromated flour. They feed them pure bromate- in massive quantities. Bromate is added to flour in quantities below 20 parts per million. That's per million *pinky finger tip to mouth*. After baking, the residual bromate in bread typically measures 1/1,000th of that- parts per billion. That's billion, with a 'b' Bromate is naturally occurring. It's in the water you drink- bottle or tap. As we speak, California, the land of paranoia, allows more bromate in water than the quantity that ends up in bread. In other words, if you sit down and eat a slice of bromated flour pizza, the glass of water you drink with the pizza will likely have more bromate than the pizza does. That's the dose that we're talking about. A trace of a trace. To put this in further perspective. black pepper tea coffee cocoa cinnamon nutmeg all contain known carcinogens. Not potential carcinogens. Not carcinogens for rats that may be carcinogens for humans. Known carcinogens. We consume these foods without batting an eyelash because the quantity/the risk, like bromate, is so infinitesimally small it doesn't matter. Bromate phobia is completely and utterly ridiculous. It stems from a bunch of short sighted WHO bureaucrats, who, 50 years ago, when confronted with the possibility that bromate might be a carcinogen, instead of actually figuring out if it actually was dangerous, just made the decision that it couldn't remain in the finished bread- which at the time, it didn't- with the technology they had to measure it. Instead of actually doing their job and protecting the public, honestly, they just said "maybe it poses a risk, maybe it doesn't. Who cares? It's not in the final product, anyway, so we can just pass a regulation that it can't be." Fast forward 20 or so years to a point where technology improves and instruments can measure the parts per billion in baked bread, and, rather than look at the misguided logic that brought them to their previous ruling, they just doubled down with the 'can't be in bread' regulation, and combined with 'we now know it's in bread,' and, voila, ban. And, then, once you have a ban, the public, rather than figuring things out for themselves, looks at it, and assumes that if it's banned, it must be unsafe- the tail wags the dog. Beyond it's innate safety, nothing can touch bromate as a dough enhancer. Anyone that tells you that ascorbic acid is just as good is talking out of their behind. Ascorbic acid will never give you the same volume or dough handling ability. There's a good reason why you can't buy a slice of unbromated flour pizza East of the Rockies, it's because it creates a vastly superior product. I'm a pizza guy, not a baker so I can't unequivocally say that bromate always makes better bread, but the best bread that I've ever had, in my entire life, used bromated flour. Nothing else I've ever come across had that level of volume and tenderness of crumb.

Is this the few paragraphs, a synopsis of the few paragraphs or just a snippet? I have certain pizzeria clients in various parts of the world that, for different reasons, can't obtain strong enough flour, so they increase the strength of their dough with ascorbic acid (AA). I've managed to make 10% protein flours act like 13%. The one downside that I've seen is that, like the prevention of gray mentioned above, AA's preserving effects seem to prevent the desirable flavor byproducts one strives for in extended fermentation. In other words, extended fermentation is a kind of controlled spoilage and AA seems to work against that. For this reason, and because there are other oxidizers, such as bromate, that are FAR superior dough enhancers, I only recommend AA if you have absolutely no access whatsoever to stronger flour- at least for the home baker. In a commercial setting, the extensibility gained in a lower oxygen mixing environment is something I hadn't heard of and will have to test. How do the Modernists fall on bromate? Are they furthering the paranoia or, like the scientists they paint themselves to be, have they looked at the science to understand it's innate safety?

I agree. While Nathan's team has, I'm sure, invested a vast amount of time into this, and ink and paper, of which this has plenty, costs money, the final price tag feels a little ibready to me. This particular sneetch has no stars upon thars- and never will. Bread knowledge should be for everyone. This is not the pre-rerformation Catholic church, where only a small number of priests have direct access to the divine.

I am not anti-innovation. As I said before, I pioneered poydextrose for the home baker. I pioneered steel plate for pizza. I'm as pro innovation, pro science as you can get. You can fall in love with a regional delicacy and have a desire to preserve it for future generations by clearly defining it while still pursuing progress. The two are not mutually exclusive. Open source software authors get this. If you have what you believe to be an improvement in a piece of software, but the rest of the team isn't in agreement, you create a fork. The fork then stands as a separate entity, and succeeds or fails on it's own merits. Neither tradition nor innovation are integral to this process. It's just a matter of "this is something different, we're calling it something else.:"

I don't get it. Powdered milk is more expensive than sugar or chocolate. My best theory is that they're trying to lighten the color to make it look nuttier, so that when they dial back the hazelnuts (the most expensive ingredient), the color will still provide a psychological association. Whatever the reason, this is extraordinarily dumb. The knockoffs have already considerably cut into Nutella's market share, so messing with the recipe is only going to drive more customers into the arms of their competition.

You'll find trivial changes, such as Da Michele's substitution of seed oil for olive oil, but, I've never come across a Neapolitan pizzeria, domestic or abroad who varied substantially from the standard. The flour, the fermentation regime, the dough handling, the dough ball size, the mixing technique, the oven, the bake time- it all matches up across the board. Neapolitans, and the people that have learned from Neapolitans, know exactly what Neapolitan pizza is. There's practically no dissent whatsoever- and for pizza, that's insane. It's only the outsiders, the carpetbaggers, the, for lack of a better word, the gringos, who are hell bent on transforming Neapolitan pizza to their will- who ride the backs of the multitudes who've labored anonymously before them, but when asked to show some respect for these ancestors, they get pretty peeved.

That's incredibly kind of you to say, but, if you look around, I am not beloved. This has been, and always will be Nathanville, and, as far as the fanboys go, I'm the village idiot

Whether something is inferior or superior is your opinion. While I have talked about the inferiority of the results from Nathan's teachings, that's just my opinion. What's the phrase? Opinions are like... something? At the end of the day neither of our opinions matters when it comes to allowing Neapolitans to define their regional food. When San Diego comes up with the best ___________ in the world, then, perhaps, you'll have a little more empathy. And I'm not talking about all food. There's many pathways to gumbo. But certain foods, certain products are very well defined, and deservedly so, because, if they were not well defined,, their evolution would most likely be their ruin. There aren't multiple paths towards Parmigiano Reggiano- only one. And while I grumble just about every time I take out my wallet to pay for it, I'm grateful that someone, somewhere took the time to meticulously outline that path. Will Parmigiano Reggiano eventually be improved upon? I certainly hope so. But they will have to call it something else. This very simple rule where you can't call something Parmigiano Reggiano unless it's been made a particular way helps to make sure that when I walk into a store and buy some, I'm getting the king of cheeses, and not some pale imitation. The Champagne region's zealous protection of their trademark has always felt a bit more mercenary than culturally reverent, but that's a single path as well. The Californians can tell you that the sparkling wines they produce are comparable, if not superior, but I think it's appropriate that they have to use the term "sparkling wine." To their credit, the Neapolitans haven't tried to enforce their definition on the rest of the world. But it still doesn't change the fact that it's an incredibly well defined 'thing,' that has standards set forward by the people from the region that created it. I'm not Neapolitan, I don't get to say what Neapolitan pizza is and isn't. Nor are you. Nor is Nathan. If you know of any Neapolitans who feel differently, I'm all ears.

It takes an unbelievable amount of hubris to assume that no one has ever tried other flours for Neapolitan pizza, that no one has ever turned down the heat and tried baking it for longer. That kind of no-one-existed-before-me thinking is something that I'd expect from Kenji, but, as I've said before, I expect more from Nathan- and Heston- and Chris (Young ). When a large city devotes most of their efforts towards a single product for 150 years, chances are that they've worked through most of the permutations. Have they tried working with polydextrose? Of course not. But that's not what I'm discussing here. I'm talking about Nathan and Friends ignoring a massive chunk of wisdom in their first book, and the price home bakers have paid, and are continuing to pay. And the most frustrating aspect of all is that every successful aspect of Neapolitan pizza is firmly rooted in science- not that the Neapolitans who developed it were scientists- at least not by title, but they were able, through vast trial and error, to figure out what works and what doesn't- and the science supports it all. So, if ANYONE should understand the science behind Neapolitan pizza, it should be people that are calling themselves scientists.

You seem to be under the impression that science only brings forward progress. THIS is not progress: The idea that you can take traditional Neapolitan dough, bake it longer and have the same stellar results has misguided neophyte pizza makers in the thousands. I have met thousands of beginning pizza makers who have been misled by this garbage and who've paid the price in sub par pizza. And this is not hyperbole. And, just to be clear, scientists have the power to redefine all regional specialties? Stephen Hawking could, tomorrow, come out and say, champagne should only be made with strawberries? Wouldn't you think the French would have something to say about that? Even if strawberries made better champagne than grapes, he would certainly have to sell the French on the idea in order to change the definition. It really shouldn't be a hard concept to grasp that the people of the region where a product was developed have the right to define it. Lawyers or not, governmental intrusion or not. That's just common sense. You live in a town. Nathan lives in a town. Chris Young lives in a town. If any of your science produces a better mousetrap, name your pizza style after your town. Enough with the appropriation.

See, there's the problem. You're going down the same rabbit hole as Heston. You're mistakingly assuming that there's multiple routes to the same destination. I don't have that flour, so I can use this flour and achieve the same result. I don't have that oven that can bake pizza that quickly, but I can bake it a little slower, I don't have that much time to ferment my dough, but I have this much time. Every aspect of the Neapolitan definition has been engineered to perfection. Every aspect has been honed to work with every other aspect. It's all interconnected. If you change the flour, you make something drastically different- and not just different to the obsessive's eye, but different for everyone. If you extend the bake time, you ruin it. Period. Unmalted Neapolitan flour has been engineered to be explosive and puffy and not burn too quickly at extreme temps, but, all of the traits that make it work perfectly at a super fast bake cause it to fail miserably at a slower one. It never really browns well, and takes on a crusty/stale texture. There's a reason why Wisconsin parmesan knock offs don't taste the same. They don't have the same cows, the same terroir, the same old country approaches. They can't achieve the same results. If you don't replicate the formula, you don't get the same results. Garbage in, garbage out. And Neapolitan style is the same way. If you change an aspect, it betrays the other aspects and it fails. Now, some people like stale textured pizza. Not many. But some. But stale texture Neapolitan pizza didn't give it the prestige it has today and it's not what the people that toiled to develop it intended it be redefined as. It's a cohesive unit that deserves to be preserved for posterity, like Parmigiano Reggiano, Champagne, and Balsamic Vinegar. Just because the organization attempting to preserve it doesn't have a cadre of lawyers suing everyone on the planet that serves up a defiled version of it, it doesn't trivialize it's value.

The official definition has been honed for centuries by master craftsman to achieve the best representation of the finished product- the qualities that put this product on the map. Let me ask you this. Does the manner in which one arrives at Parmigiano Reggiano matter? Are you really enjoying those Wisconsin knock offs? The manner in which Neapolitan style pizza is defined is just as critical to the quality of the finished product. You can achieve great pizza without any kind of road map whatsoever. But Neapolitan pizza has a great deal of wisdom and science behind it that makes it so beloved. You can respect Neapolitan culture while innovating simply by losing the 'Neapolitan' label. Just make pizza- any kind of pizza. The sky's the limit! But if you're going to make Neapolitan, then the road map is critical, just as it's critical to Parmigiano Reggiano.