scott123

Respectfully, I strongly disagree For years, many people (me included) labored under the false assumption that if you didn't have the right oven, you couldn't make the world's best pizza, and then steel came along and changed everything. Naan and pizza are peas from the same thermodynamic pod.

I pour over food for hours on end. Sometimes it feels like I never stop. But every technique outlined within both these walls and my own kitchen laboratory, regardless of how complex, labor intensive or expensive, has validity because it alters the end product in some way. It changes the taste. Double blind taste test ghee with the golden colored milk solids and ghee without. No one will be able to tell the difference. If it's impossible to tell the difference (and you aren't lactose intolerant), why devote the extra labor?

Unmodified, bottom heat source ovens (BGE, grills, etc), as you've witnessed, will never bake the top of fast baked pizza/naan at the same rate as the top. If one is handy, it's possible to redirect the heat to the top with deflection (usually in the form of a pan suspended under the stone and other methods), but it's a lot of work/tweaking and rarely truly successful- especially at much higher temps. The recipe you posted from Heston is dated- and also leaves a lot to be desired. One never brushes ghee on naan before baking- only after baking. Beyond that, though, from what Heston has learned in the last 3 years via his assistant Chris Young (author of Modernist Cuisine's pizza section), he'd never use ceramic baking stones for flat bread- only steel. And tilting the stones at 45 degree angles? I'm sorry, but that's just plain silly. If you've got wood at the base of the tandoor capable of producing 900+ F deg wall temps, then sure, 45 deg. walls make sense, but in a typical 500-550 oven? Naan needs intense bottom heat and intense infrared radiation. IR is line of sight, and is proximity dependent. In order to get close enough to the broiler to bake the top of the naan as quickly as the bottom, the hearth has to be horizontal, and not at an angle.

Naan is very similar to pizza in that you can technically bake it in just about anything, but if you want the right puffy texture, your oven setup has to be able to produce an extremely fast bake time. Intense heat transfer boils the water in the dough quickly, and this rapidly expanding steam creates oven spring. There's not a recipe on the planet that can compensate for an oven setup that can't produce a fast bake. Just like the best pizza happens in less than 4 minutes (for the most popular styles), the best naan occurs there as well. The good news is that many home ovens can produce a fast bake and create restaurant quality/tandoor quality naan. If you've got an oven that goes up to 550 with a broiler in the main compartment (NOT a separate broiler drawer), you can produce the necessary bake time with 1/2" steel plate. Compared to ceramic stones, steel's superior conductivity allows for far greater heat transfer/far faster bakes at lower temperatures. Just position the steel plate close to the broiler (about 3-5"), pre-heat the plate for an hour at 550, launch the stretched naan skin with a pizza peel, and use a broiler during the bake. That environment will produce naan as good as any tandoor (and, if you get the dough right/properly fermented, better than most restaurants). If you have deep pockets and would rather spend an extra $90 than make a few phone calls sourcing steel plate locally, you can pick up a baking steel. If you think you might ever get into pizza and/or might serve naan to a crowd and need greater output (bigger naans), I highly highly recommend getting the largest square plate your oven can accommodate from front to back (touching the back wall and almost touching the door), while leaving at least an inch on each side for air flow. I also high recommend cutting the plate in half (parallel to the door) for easier oven insertion/removal, since an entire plate will be in the 40 pound realm. A custom plate from Baking Steel in the 18 x 18 x 1/2 range, with an extra cut, will be about $150. If you source it locally, it should be less than $60.

I understand that people who have dairy intolerance can generally consume ghee since ghee does not have casein (a type of milk protein) and lactose (milk sugar) which some people find difficult to digest. Browned butter, and butter, does not have this attribute. Further, price is not a factor when making ghee at home - one still buys the butter, or at least I would be starting with butter. Further, you say the taste of ghee is not "that different" from browned butter. That suggests, even by your standards, there is a difference, one that some people may find desirable. Patrick was referring to readymade ghee and my response was in that context. Readymade ghee is slightly different in flavor to homemade. Lightly browned butter and homemade ghee are indistinguishable, though- and imo far better tasting than any commercial ghee. The lightly browned milk solids that occur in ghee are delicious. They're the same beautiful flavor as the rest of the ghee and don't change the taste in the slightest if removed. The only purpose for removing them is longevity- which, if you have a refrigerator, you don't need. Investing all that labor to remove them is ridiculous. Unless you're lactose intolerant. If you're lactose intolerant, then yes, you're stuck with having to strain and skim, but, for the millions of people that aren't, it's a waste of time. And, just to be perfectly clear, I'm not knocking clarified butter. Clarified butter is irreplaceable in many applications. If you're making Indian food, though, there are no applications where milk solids are undesirable. Nobody deep fries with it, nor does anyone use it for tempering spices. If you have a refrigerator (and aren't lactose intolerant), throwing away deliciously tan milk solids is a crime, imo- especially with all the labor it takes to remove them.

It's not that different from lightly browned butter. And lightly browned butter is usually about half the price.

This is probably going to ruffle a few feathers, but, when it comes to cooking methods, I'd be hard pressed to find a more unnecessary technique than that of making ghee. Ghee was birthed from necessity. If you drive away the moisture and separate the solids, you can prevent a normally perishable product, butter, from spoiling while not being refrigerated. Past peoples of the subcontinent didn't say "oh, I have to make ghee because it tastes so wonderful," they made it because, if they didn't, the butter would spoil. Modern cooks with access to refrigeration have absolutely no need for ghee. While some of the best food I've ever eaten has been in Indian restaurants using either peanut or vegetable oil, a little light browning of the milk solids in butter can be a fantastic addition to a dish. You don't need instructions, though. You just cook the butter on a low temp until it takes a little color, watching it carefully so the butter doesn't brown. No straining, no skimming, no hassle. Leave that garbage in the history books where it belongs.

From the things that I've read about chicken farming, this analogy is especially appropriate. Chicken feces supposedly ends up everywhere. Baking chicken might render feces harmless, but I don't want to eat it. My research dates back about 15 years, so maybe chicken farms have gotten cleaner, but I doubt it.

If you take this statement and swap the word 'cheesecake' with 'custard,' then it works. It's easy to see the eggs in a cheesecake recipe and fall into the trap of treating it like a custard, but the science is entirely different because of the quantity of eggs involved and the stabilizing aspect of the cream cheese. In custard, there's very little in the way of the egg proteins attempting to form a network, so you need to take steps to prevent the eggs from heating too quickly and squeezing the liquid out. In cheesecake, the ratio of coagulation-blocking solids to eggs skyrockets. You've got all that cream cheese getting in the way of those sparse egg protein molecules attempting to link, making a liquid wringing network impossible. It's not difficult at all to cause a custard to scramble- to cause the liquids to wring out like squeezing a sponge. It's impossible to do this to cheesecake. If you give it too much heat, you end up with a drier, less gooey texture, but you don't get scrambling/liquid being forced out, because the egg protein molecules are too sparse and there's too much stuff in the way. Alton should know better than to see eggs in a dessert and have this knee jerk reaction. Custard and cheesecake, from a baking perspective, are apples and oranges, regardless of the presence of eggs in both of them. The quantity of eggs and the network blocking effect of the cream cheese change the playing field completely. Look at this way, if eggs form molecular meshes that squeeze out liquid and always require slow heating to prevent over coagulation, then explain the fast manner in which regular cake is baked. What prevents the eggs in regular cake batter from over-coagulating? "Hey, Alton, I was trying to make waffles today, but the water bath was giving me one hell of time!"

Alex, I was so focused on the stabilizers in the recipe, I completely overlooked the other ingredients. 1 cup lowfat milk to 1/2 cup cream is, imo, way too little milkfat for ice cream- hence the ice milk texture.

First of all, I think water has a place with custards, but, imo, it serves no purpose with cheesecake. Perhaps cream cheese of yore was a bit less stable than it is now and required a water bath, but, with the stabilizers in cream cheese, the sugar, and the lower ratio of eggs (as compared to a custard), a water bath not only fails to provide a benefit, it could be detrimental to the end product as well. Nix the bath and bake at a relatively low temp until the center is almost set. I prefer the glass bottoms to the metal bottoms, always have There's a big part of your problem. Glass is an insulator and stops heat from reaching the bottom of the crust. The insulating effects of glass can be mitigated in baking pans if there's a direct line of sight between the bottom of the pan and the bottom burner, allowing infrared radiation to pass through, but, by blocking the bottom with parchment and/or using a water batch, no IR can get through. In your equation, the glass is highly detrimental to the crust, which needs heat to stay crisp. Lose the glass, and, as Lisa suggested, lose the springform pan and go with a regular cake pan. I press the crumb mixture to the parchment and then bake it 350F for 5-7 minutes Melted butter contains water. 350 for 5-7 minutes most likely will toast up the exterior of the crust a bit, but it won't drive off all the water. While I think switching up the pan will go a long way in preventing a soggy crust, if you want to further ensure crispiness, parbake longer, at a lower temp- perhaps 300 for, say, 15 minutes (I'd watch it to see if it starts taking on color). the very centre of the cheesecake (just above the crust in the middle) looks like it isn't cooked. This can get a bit subjective, but the center of a cheesecake should be only barely cooked (just a bit above pasteurization for the eggs) to achieve a creamy/almost gooey texture for the first bite. If your batter is actually still raw, then the pan will resolve this. All the cakes I've made this year, haven't cracked on me *knock on wood* (I hate when they crack), so should I NOT put water into the pans anymore? Water slows down the heat transfer, which, in turn, slows down the rate in which egg proteins set in a custard so they don't overcook and force out the liquid and make a scrambled mess. Cracking is very different from scrambling. Cracking is caused by the top of the cheesecake drying out more than the middle and contracting. If anything, the water will slow down the bottom of the cheesecake from baking and exacerbate cracking issues. As Celeste pointed out, cracking is strictly cosmetic, and, with a topping, can be completely hidden, but if you're dead set on an untopped cake, then avoiding cracking should involve, beyond using the right pan, dialing in the oven temp so the cake bakes slowly enough to give you the right barely cooked, creamy texture in the middle- and a somewhat homogenous creaminess throughout the rest (created by a slow even bake), but not so slow that the top dries out and splits. I believe cake height is also a factor in cracking- tall cheesecakes tend to crack easier. Lastly, since drying is what makes cheesecake crack, you can apply a very literal solution- spray the top of the cake with water prior to baking, and, if needed, mid and post bake. This won't completely prevent cracking, but I've found it to be helpful. This is going to take some trial and error to find the right temp (I would start with 275), and, the first time you change up the pan, you might end up with too much color on the crust, but, once you dial everything in, you should see a night and day difference in the finished product.

Thanks in advance for some advice; this will be my first time using stabilizers in ice cream (or anything else). So, let's say a recipe for what looks like a little over a pint -- like this one -- calls for 1/2 teaspoon of guar. If I use xanthan + guar, how much xanthan should I use, and should I decrease the amount of guar? Also, what amounts should I use if I increase the recipe by 50% in order to make something closer to a quart? That's a tough question. I know there's a synergistic boost, but I haven't spent much time tracking it. I would definitely say that 1/4 teaspoon of each is too much, but I think 1/8 might be a little too ambitious. If it were me, I'd probably split the difference and go with 3/16 which is probably in the realm of a round 1/8th t. Btw, are you 100% cetain that the recipe you linked to actually works? When you get into savory ice cream, you lose the freezing point suppression effects of the sugar which introduces greater textural concerns. The expensive ice cream makers that have a built in compressor freeze the ice cream faster and create smaller ice crystals/a superior texture with less stabilizers. I can't help thinking, based on the wealth/professional affiliation of the people involved, that equipment plays a part in this recipe and that your typical sub $100 ice cream maker may not give you the right texture, even with two gums.

Stabilizing ice cream is a molecule game. It's all about binding liquid into smaller and smaller pockets. Almost anything in the kitchen used to thicken has molecules that get tangled up with up with each other and trap liquid. Egg protein, milk protein, starch (flour, cornstarch, tapioca, potato, arrowroot, modified food starch), and hydrocolloids (gelatin, agar, pectin, carageenan, xanthan, guar, arabic, locust bean, alginate, gellan, methylcellulose) all have tangle prone molecules that trap and bind liquid. The smaller the pockets of liquid, the fewer ice crystals can form, the smoother the ice cream. In addition, dissolved solids all lower the freezing temp of water, so the greater quantity of dissolved solids, the less frozen the ice cream, the better the mouthfeel. If that wasn't enough, many stabilizers are emulsifiers as well. By breaking the fat down into smaller units, a greasy mouthfeel is avoided, and, just as importantly, the fat gets in the way of ice crystals attempting to form, further inhibiting crystallization. Lastly, many of these stabilizers give liquids the ability to form foams. Air is a huge player in ice cream. As you churn it, you're whipping air into it. Too much air, such as you find in cheap ice cream, can be a defect, but some air is critical. Just as water can't form a crystal through a pocket of fat, it can't form a crystal through an air pocket, so air is yet another crystallization inhibitor. In addition, air adds an inherent tenderness to ice cream. Molecular entanglement is the key, and a big player in that entanglement is molecular variety. Different shaped molecules create further opportunities for entanglement. Multiple stabilizers provide synergy. This increased opportunity for entanglement translates into greater thickening than the sum of the thickening abilities of the individual ingredients. This is why the best recipes have multiple stabilizers. Gelatin is good, but gelatin + xanthan is better. As Paul pointed out, gelatin and xanthan each have shortcomings when used in large quantities. This is true of every stabilizer. Starches mask flavors, gums can get slimy, gelatin can get chewy and eggs can provided an egg-yness that may work with some flavors but may clash with others. When you combine, the synergistic thickening boost allows you to use increasingly less of each ingredient, and, in turn mitigate the negative impact that each ingredient imparts. Combining is king. Two is better than one. Three is better than two. Four is better than three. And so on and so on. This is why commercial ice cream stabilizers have so many ingredients- more is better. I know a few home ice cream makers that purchase commercial stabilizers, but not everyone has to go that crazy. A lot of these ingredients are difficult to find on the retail level. Because they're so readily available, I'm a big fan of xanthan and guar. You get a lot better stabilizing with a lot less sliminess when you combine these two. The synergy is so palpable that I've never use xanthan without guar. Ever. Beyond those, I think it's more recipe dependent. Cornstarch + xanthan + guar is good, but so is gelatin + xanthan + guar. But then, of course, cornstarch + xanthan + guar + gelatin is obviously better. Bottom line. The more the merrier. If you've got it, use it. The only caveat would be that, as far as I know, starches don't have a great deal of synergy with each other, so, say, combining cornstarch with potato starch isn't buying you anything. Other than that, though, you can't have too many stabilizers.

I don't know the fuel costs in Brazil, but here, in the U.S., it tends to cost less to heat using gas than it does electric. That being said, electric ovens tend to be a bit more powerful- stronger bake elements and far strong broiler (top) elements. It really depends on the style of pizza you're trying to make, but if you want the most out of steel, you want to be looking for an electric oven with high wattage. If you think you might want Neapolitan, then you need an electric oven with an incredibly powerful broiler. Something like this: http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,16227.msg167250.html#msg167250 Do you see the tight arrangement and number of coils? This is the minimum you need for Neapolitan top leoparding. 99.9% of people who buy steel get it for NY style, though. If that's the case, then it gets a lot easier- you'll want a broiler in the main oven compartment (no separate broiler drawer) and an oven that goes to 550. Convection is nice but not critical- if you do get convection, try to confirm that it it goes to 550 in convection mode, as some ovens will go to 550 in regular bake, but only 500 in convection. Another factor to consider with NY style pizza is that pizza size matters. The aesthetic, the rim to sauce/cheese ratio, the way it feels in your hand. If you're purchasing an oven with NY style pizza in mind, my recommendation is to go big- at least 18" deep by 18" wide- and then get an 18" x 18" piece of steel. New Haven pies- another of the world's great pizza styles, also heavily favors larger oven setups.

Considerably thinner aluminum will transfer less heat to the crust than cast iron, but the same thickness of aluminum will transfer far more heat in a shorter amount of time. I wouldn't say it works exactly this way. Carbon steel has around 56% more thermal capacity compared to aluminum at the same thickness. And stored thermal energy is the name of the game here, because its not like a pan on a restaurant stove where the thermal energy is constantly replenished from below. So the aluminum slab would rapidly transfer some thermal energy into the crust at first, but we would expect it to come down in temperature more quickly than we would like and at the end of three minutes it is likely that the steel slab will have transferred more thermal energy into the crust. In order to take advantage of aluminum in this context, you would really want a slab that was around 60% thicker than the steel slab. It would still weigh less, but it's possible that you might run into issues of thermal energy transferring too fast and the bottom burning before the top cooked. It would be interesting to compare. Cast iron, carbon steel and stainless steel all have poor thermal conductivity compared to aluminum and copper. But, again, when stored thermal energy has primary importance, we are more concerned about heat capacity than conductivity. The reason metal slabs work better than baking "stones" for home pizza making is mostly due to the fact that the metal slab holds way more thermal energy than the baking stone. If the thermal energy isn't there, all the conductivity in the world won't make much difference. I suspect that aluminum could work very well in this context, but it would definitely take some tweaking and experimentation to figure out the best thickness, etc. and it's no guarantee it would be better than carbon steel in the end. Sam, thermal capacity plays less of a role in pizza bake times than you're giving it credit for. Before aluminum started being used for pizza, I crunched the numbers, just as you did, and, based on a capacity-centric perspective, I recommended a 50% increase in aluminum thickness (3/4") to the 1/2" steel people were already using. On paper, the lower density/decreased capacity had to be taken into account. Once the real world data started coming in, though, the results told a different story. I didn't foresee this at all, but 3/8" aluminum ended up producing bake times very much on par with 3/8" steel: http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,21951.msg233048.html#msg233048 and 1/2" aluminum ended up matching 1/2" steel results as well: http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,23750.msg241164.html#msg241164 The data, although a bit limited and preliminary, seems to strongly point towards aluminum's conductivity allowing it to deliver a greater amount of it's limited energy payload in the same amount of time. This ended up being a paradigm shift in the way I viewed hearth materials. Prior to this, I was always recommending thicker stones in the belief that greater heat capacity would shorten bake times, but now I can see that the lower the conductivity, the more diminishing capacity's return. Preliminary experiments with 3/4 steel provided another big piece of this puzzle If 1/4" steel can do 7 minute bakes at 550 and 1/2" can produce a 3 minute pie at 550, shouldn't a 3/4" version be able to trim off a minute or two and take it into the Neapolitan realm? I was certain that it could, but the real world data had different ideas: http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,16379.0.html For this particular individual, 3/4" steel barely outperformed 1/2". What this tells me is that, during these typical bake times, the heat in steel can't travel far enough to draw energy from the entire plate, whereas, with aluminum, it can. Now, obviously, as I said, the results are still preliminary and I'm not taking recovery/multiple pies into account here. Aluminum's ability to transfer a far greater percentage of it's energy payload should negatively impact it's ability to do back to back pies, but... it's conductivity derived pre-heat ability might, to an extent, offset that. We'll see. Aluminum, also, as you predicted, delivers more of it's payload at the beginning of the bake, producing more contrast to the undercrust coloration. For people working in this bake time spectrum additional contrast/char might not be too terribly undesirable. In addition, I believe that this propensity for undercrust contrast can be compensated for formulaically. It's still early, but aluminum is showing a considerable amount of promise in thicknesses far lesser than I ever expected.

Considerably thinner aluminum will transfer less heat to the crust than cast iron, but the same thickness of aluminum will transfer far more heat in a shorter amount of time. Also, cast iron and steel have very similar thermal transfer rates. Again, thin cast iron is inferior to thicker steel, but cast iron, as a material, is comparable to steel.

Yum! Wood pellet ash! Could I get a slice with extra ash? Even with the built in protection from the metal deflector, fibrament stones are, by their nature, not terribly thermally durable. From what I've read, it looks like the stone just sits in the 'flame diverter' (basically just an aluminum pan). You'll extend your pre-heat time a bit, but you'll direct more heat to the ceiling and potentially further the life of your fibrament stone by putting a little air between the stone and the pan by setting the stone on 3 or 4 stainless steel washers. This will force the fibrament to pre-heat from above which should be a bit more gradual/even than preheating through aluminum, regardless of how well the highly conductive aluminum spreads the heat.

Actually, although Sam and I have gone back and forth regarding a gas oven with a lower broiler drawer, there's no question about a Kamado being a bottom heat source scenario, and in that setup, steel's conductivity makes it counterproductive. In a home oven with a broiler, the top heat can be adjusted, by using the broiler, to the fast bottom bake you get with steel. Without a top heat source, though, steel will cook the bottom of the pizza so fast, the top will most likely still be raw. In grill settings (or for that matter, wood fired oven, side-heat settings) steel is to be avoided at all cost because of the heat balance issue. In these settings, you want to favor the top heat as much as possible by handicapping the hearth with low conductivity materials. Since fibrament is about the least conductive hearth material on the market, this makes it ideal for this scenario- at least for 4 minute-ish NY bakes. Can the Kamado burn wood? If it's large enough, with an added false ceiling, you might be able to put a small cordierite stone in the front (I wouldn't trust fibrament, even the grill version, with direct flame) with a log burning underneath at the back. This is how the KettlePizza folks attempt Neo. You need a lot of lateral space, though, as the flame can't contact the edge of the stone or you'll get burnt edges on the pizza. Not that the KettlePizza approach guarantees Neapolitan bakes. Neapolitan in a grill, any grill, is incredibly difficult. Countless people have tried and failed. And that's with grills that people are willing to mod and carve up. The Kamado doesn't seem like the kind of equipment one would take a saw or a drill to. 4 minute NY bakes can kick some serious butt. I, personally, prefer them to the best Neapolitan pizza that I've ever had. Truth be told, I am a bit biased With your Kamado, though, I think world class 4 minute NY style pies with 600-650 fibrament will be far more feasible than the Neo-in-a-grill holy grail.

Ok, I'll bite. What's the best way to get a piece of aluminum you consider adequate? Aluminum as a hearth material is still in it's infancy. The results have been incredibly promising, and I firmly believe it has a place, but most of the people that have been able to score a plate have either been in the metal business themselves or knew a relative. I've helped many people source steel locally, but, so far, I've not made any calls for aluminum The really nice thing about a36 steel is that, regardless of where you live, a glance in the yellow pages will give you multiple sources, and it's just a matter of narrowing down the cheapest. All this being said, the premise really isn't that different. The drive might be a bit longer, but most people should have at least one metal distributor in their area that stocks aluminum plate. If you do a map search in google for 'aluminum' or 'metal' it will pull up a lot of extraneous wholesale and recycling-related hits, but, if you're patient, you can go down the list, call each to find out if the carry aluminum plate and sell to the public and you'll eventually get a hit. Is there any particular reason why aluminum might appeal to you? If you've got an oven that can hit 550 (most can) then aluminum isn't really going to give you much of a leg up over 1/2" steel. If you want authentic Neapolitan, then it might help, but you'll want to check your broiler specs long before shopping for aluminum. Like I said before, only about 1 in 200 broilers have the necessary power to do Neapolitan. If you could look up the wattage, I can tell you if there's hope, otherwise, you can get a good idea from the appearance of the element. The coils have to be relatively thick and there needs to be plenty of passes- 10 at least. This is the kind of broiler that you'd need: http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,16227.msg167250.html#msg167250 There's also, obviously, oven tricks and oven mods you can do which might help those with slightly weaker broilers achieve leoparding, but those will only get you so far, and, if you really push your oven, you might break it. If you were comfortable living slightly on the edge, and, say, pushing your oven to around 650 (which for most ovens, is pretty tame), that might give you a bit more top heat, and would remove the need for aluminum. 650 with 1/2" steel should give you sub 90 second undercrust leoparding. Even with a 650 preheat, you'd still be at the mercy of broiler. Without plenty of passes, it's just not possible.

With all due respect, you're splitting etymological hairs that shouldn't be split. In the retail world, the word 'style' has a legal shell game connotation (to safeguard from trademark/copyright infringement) as something that's 'similar' but not equal. In the pizza world, this legal mumbo jumbo doesn't exist. Neapolitan pizza = Neapolitan style pizza. 'Style' doesn't give you wiggle room. It's DOC all the way. The only way you might find some room for argument is in the less specific 'Neapolitan pizza.' You might, for instance, find a Roman style pizzeria in Naples, and, because it's located physically in Naples, one might refer to it as a Neapolitan pizzeria, and, someone somewhere, might even go as far as to call it Neapolitan pizza. But that's a bit of a stretch. For pizza 'style' means 'type' or 'genre,' not the watered down 'similar.' Look at NY style pizza. Is that fact that 'style' is used mean that it's any different than the type of pizza you find in NY? Of course not. NY pizza = NY style pizza. Chicago pizza = Chicago style pizza. And so on and so on. Neapolitan style pizza (and the almost always synonymous 'Neapolitan Pizza'), is, like Reggiano and Champagne, easily definable. The Neapolitans have, in an effort to protect their cultural treasure, laid out crystal clear guidelines relating to it's manufacture: http://www.fornobravo.com/vera_pizza_napoletana/VPN_spec.html These guidelines aren't always followed to the letter in every aspect at every Neapolitan style pizza (in Naples or elsewhere), but when it comes to 60-90 second bake times and the characteristics that these bake times produce (leoparding, puff), these are the standards that 99.9% of culturally aware Neapolitan style pizzerias follow. Sam, it was your eGCI tutorial on Stovetop Cookware 10 years ago that jumpstarted my fascination with materials science, and the ensuing quest to apply this knowledge to pizza hearth materials that brought me to the understanding where I am today, so I am heavily in your debt, but I can't with your sole endorsement, immediately do a 180 on my feelings on broiler drawer techniques. First of all, not every broiler drawer burner stays on indefinitely for the duration of a pre-heat. In order to achieve your 4 minute results, the broiler has to stay on for the whole hour. If it cycles on and off, the steel won't get hot enough. What works for you may not work for everyone. Secondly, I don't post photos, so it may not seem fair for me to ask, but I'm also not defending a generally unproven technique either. The big question with a broiler drawer technique is never top coloring- with close proximity to the broiler anyone can brown the top of a pizza. The proof of this technique is the ability of the broiler to fully saturate the plate and brown the bottom in the allotted time. If you're going to take pictures on a future attempt, please post an upskirt. Third, this technique tends to be a bit inconsistent. Main compartment w/ broiler approaches tend to be incredibly consistent with their results. The plate/stone will drop a bit between bakes (less with more thermal mass), but the 4th pizza won't be that different than the 1st. With a broiler pre-heat, it's very difficult to dial in a consistent hearth temp, so later pizzas fluctuate pretty wildly. I know that it's not fair to compare a broiler drawer to a main compartment with a broiler, but I've spend a lot of time developing broiler-less configurations, and I strongly believe, with a very low conductivity stone and a false ceiling with good emissivity, consistent 4 minute bakes can be achieved in a bottom heat only scenario (much like commercial gas deck oven configurations). Fourth, and this is somewhat trivial compare to my other concerns, but I do feel pretty strongly that size matters. Broiler drawers tend to have less real estate than main compartments. Fifth, and this is probably the most trivial of all, but many broiler drawers are located close to floor level, and a good number of people aren't comfortable working with a peel at that height. Now, regardless of my level of skepticism, I want this to be viable, as I know a lot of people with broiler drawers. I would ask that you stick with the 4 minute pies that you're doing rather than trying to prove 90 second (or even 120 second) Neapolitan style bakes are possible. Trust me, that's a fools errand. Even if you could ramp up the temp of the plate high enough for the bottom to bake in 120 seconds, there's not a home gas oven on the planet with a strong enough broiler to bake the top of a traditional Neapolitan 00 unmalted sugar free oil free dough in 120 seconds. If you could do consistent 4 minute malted bromated NY style pies with 1/2" steel under a gas broiler, that would be a game changer, imo- an extremely welcome game changer.

?!? Uh... thousands of people, both professional and home bakers take this idea incredibly seriously. You are familiar with pizzamaking.com, correct ? Heat doesn't discriminate. As long as you can match the intensity of heat, either with high temperatures and/or more conductive materials, you can make a flawless 60-90 second Neapolitan style pizza in any oven, even at home. Very few home oven owners have broilers that are strong enough to produce leoparding on the rim, but it's possible. Just not with 3/8" steel plate at 550 or less. There were probably thousands of attempts to fly before the Wright Brothers came along. Do we really care about the failed attempts? Should anyone really be telling people not to fly because, at some point, it wasn't figured out yet? Of course not. It was a windy road getting to the vinegar soak, but we got there. Vinegar works. Evidence of aluminum's abilities: http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,21951.0.html http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,23750.0.html I do believe that aluminum's extreme conductivity does require a few a formula tweaks for success, but it's still a very viable material for pizzamaking. Unless someone is willing to mod their oven, it's the only option for fast bakes in sub 500 ovens, and, for those with the right broilers (maybe 1 in 200), it's the ideal material for 60-90 Neapolitan style bakes at less than 600.

It's a36 hot rolled steel aka 'mild' steel. It's the same steel used in the vast majority of kitchen grills across the globe. More than suggesting. When I stated that char is definitional 2 years ago on this forum, I was torn a new one. There are those of us that have either been to Naples or have been to domestic Neapolitan pizzerias that following traditional Neapolitan rules and know how Neapolitan style pizza should be defined, and then there's Chris Young, who comes along and defines Neapolitan style as whatever he wants it to be, and, because of Nathan Myhrvold's vast reputation, this kind of abject misinformation travels far.

Purchasing this online, as I said before, is flushing money down the drain, but, as far as making the decision to go with 1/2", 3/8" or 1/4", it really depends on your desired style and oven specs. This is a rough approximation of how it works out 1/2" + 550 = 3/8" + 575 = 1/4" + 600 = 3 minute Neo-NYish bake (soft/puffy, some undercrust char, but no leoparding) 1/2" + 525 = 3/8" + 550 = 1/4" + 575 = 4-5 minute NY style (soft/puffy, relatively evenly colored undercrust, no real crispiness) 1/2" + 500 = 3/8" + 525 = 1/4" + 550 = 7 minute crispier NY style As I said, this is a rough approximation. There's a bit more data on 1/2" bakes than 1/4" so the 1/2" side is a bit more concrete. If , for instance, you like a NY style pizza with some crispiness (and are willing to forgo some puffiness/oven spring) then 1/2" might be overkill. On the other hand, if you want the greatest range of potential NY bakes and the most flexibility, then 1/2" is the way to go. Another factor to consider is that thickness dictates recovery. The more pies you do in one sitting, the thicker the plate is required in order to avoid long recovery times between bakes. Again, it depends on oven specs/how many watts/btus it can pump into the plate during/between pies, but, generally speaking, 1/4" will only get you around 2-3 pizzas before the temp starts plummeting while 1/2" should comfortably handle up to 6 back to back. The vast majority of domestic ovens have shelves that are built to handle large Thanksgiving turkeys, in big pans, with added vegetables on the side. 40 lb., the heaviest you'd go with 1/2" steel, is very much in this ballpark. Out of around 30 people that I know working with 1/2" steel, I've never come across anyone who's racks collapsed from the weight. Occasionally, with very cheap racks, they might bow a bit. If this concerns you, remove the shelf from the equation entirely and rest the plate on two lengths of angle iron, steel or aluminum run from shelf lip to shelf lip. This solution also works well for shelves with valuable space robbing lips at the back. That back to front space is critical. As a beginner, one might not care much about pizza size, but, as you take it more seriously, size makes a huge difference (rim to sauce/cheese ratio, aesthetics, slice 'feel,' etc.). For NY style, a 14" deep plate (that can only make 13.5" pizzas) is woefully undersized. Ideally, you want a square plate that will touch the back wall and almost touch the door- just small enough so the door closes, but no smaller.

There's plenty of conjecture relating to the difficulty of cleaning steel, but even more real world examples of how easy steel is to clean at home with an overnight soak in vinegar. It most definitely can be done at home, and, for a savings of about $75 on a $100 plate, it's more than worth that effort, imo.

Here we are, two years later, and Chris and Nathan still have no idea what Neapolitan style pizza is. They did, to their credit, eventually listen to concerns relating to bake times (mine, and, I'm sure, others) and post a correction:"On page 2.27, in step 6, "1.5-2 min" should read "2-7 min" and the step should further note that "the exact timing varies from one oven to another." In step 7, "By the two-minute mark, the pizza should be done. Remove it from the oven" should read "Once the top of the pizza crust turns brown, remove the pizza from the oven."" but how many more years is it going to take before they learn the incredibly simple fact that Neapolitan style pizza is bake time specific? A 3 minute bake (about the best this can do in home ovens) is NOT Neapolitan style pizza. Using this warped definition of Neapolitan style pizza is incredibly misleading to potential steel plate buyers looking to recreate the real thing at home. Misleading advertising aside, as far as using steel plate for other styles goes, though, nothing is better- at least, for certain ovens, and definitely not at this price. You can get the same plate (in, preferably, a much larger size) for 1/4 the price locally from a metal plate distributor. Have them cut it in half, for easier insertion/retrieval, soak the plate in vinegar overnight and scrub it lightly to remove the thin layer of iron oxide. Because a pizza that is sufficiently floured to launch off a peel won't stick to the baking surface, and because pizza is generally baked at temps high enough to bake most seasoning off, seasoning is completely unnecessary. Before you go steel plate shopping, though, you need to make sure that you have the right oven. Quite a few people have gas ovens with a broiler below in a separate drawer. In this bottom heat scenario, where the top of the pizza will bake very slowly, steel will speed up the bottom bake even further. In this kind of oven, you don't want the higher conductivity of steel. Another type of oven where steel isn't recommended is an oven that can't go above 500. Quite a few ovens have a 500 peak dial temp, but, when dialed to this setting, will actually get considerably hotter- 550 or higher. For some ovens, though, that 500 dial temp is an honest portrayal. In those instances, 500 will not give you the full range of potential NY style bake times. For 'true' 500 degree environments, aluminum plate is the better choice. In summation, steel plate, purchased locally, is ideal for some styles of pizza, just not Neapolitan, and only in ovens that can reach high enough temperatures and have broilers in the main compartment. It is not a one size fits all solution.