scott123

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.

Here's my two cents 1. Baking cauliflower (or microwaving) produces a fibrous quality that ends up messing with the smoothness of the mashed cauliflower 2. Boiling cauliflower gives you a very smooth mash, but, it also adds a load of water to the equation. It's a pain in the butt, but here's how I approach it. 1. Boil the cauliflower until a bit past fork tender. 2. Drain, and then enclose in cheesecloth, twisting and weighing down to remove the water. 3. Bake at a lowish temperature (300) oven until the cauliflower is dry, but not too brown (brown cauliflower tastes good, but looks a bit off) 4. Pulse in a food processor with cream, butter salt and pepper If you go through all this, you'll end up with a mashed cauliflower that's stiffer than most mashed potatoes.

I toast bread with the broiler almost every other day. I have an electric oven, though, and, from my experience working with gas oven owners trying to brown the top of pizza, I have found that, unless it's an expensive, abnormally high BTU oven, gas broilers tend to almost always be weaker. Another advantage my broiler provides.is that, although it does brown unevenly, the unevenness occurs on one side and can be corrected by rotating the pan 180 deg. in the middle of the bake. Not only can I toast 8 pieces of bread at once, but I can beat the toasting time on my already pretty fast vintage toaster and still have some moisture left in the crumb. The only real way to gauge the abilities of your broiler is to get out the stopwatch and compare oven and toaster times, including the time it takes to re-arrange the slices for even browning.

No offense, but I can buy something close to this: http://newyork.serio...nnerinnards.jpg http://newyork.serio...oissants-15.jpg Found in this article here: http://newyork.serio...ian-payard.html They're unbelievably expensive, but, unless I have a recipe in front of me that I know can create these kind of results, there's no way I'm making them myself. Besides, I think if I embarked on this quest, it would most likely drive me insane trying to recreate these. Not to mention if I did actually crack the code, I'd probably end up weighing 400 lb. Cracking the pizza code has already trimmed years from my life. This would be death by butter.

The moisture in onions hasn't really changed much in recent years. It fluctuates depending on the age of the crop/time of the year, but it's always fluctuated. What has changed, though, is the texture of the onion and the ability to caramelize them. Within the last 5 years, yellow onions have started getting a lot tougher (and far less flavorful). I can only assume that growers have shifted in this direction due to longevity and shipping benefits (softer onions rot faster). Sometimes you get a tender onion that caramelizes easily, but many times you'll get an onion with thin, tough layers that are both harder to cut and harder to soften without uneven/excessive browning. It's taken me probably a thousand pounds of onions to come to fully understand how to best caramelize them. Here's what I've figured out. 1. Don't be stingy with the oil. I used to be able to caramelize 1 large onion in 1 T. of oil. Not anymore. These days, it takes at least 2 T. per large onion. For three lbs. onions, I use 150 g. oil. The more oil you use, the easier onions are to caramelize. 2. Listen. There is no magic temperature where onions caramelize best. As you've already experienced, a great deal of their water is released at the beginning, so you'll generally want to start on a high heat to drive that off (unless you're working with a very thin layer). If you listen carefully, you'll hear exactly the point where the water is mostly driven off and the sizzling becomes more intense. At that very second, the heat has to be lowered, or you'll get the dreaded burning. Don't lower it too much, though. Onions lose a lot of moisture at the onset, but they'll always be losing some moisture beyond that initial phase and if you drop the temp too much, they boil. Too low of a temperature also increases the risk that the onion never softens. One used to be able to 'sweat' an onion on a very low temp for hours and come up with the perfect caramelized onion, but, with these newer harder onions, that process is a thing of the past. 3. Don't crowd the pan. If the layer is too thin, you can always turn down the heat, but if the layer is too thick, and the onions start boiling in their own juices, it's impossible to extract the water. Contrary to countless online recipes, *cough* serious eats *cough* a boiled onion is not a caramelized onion. This is all a huge pain in the butt, and, to really do it properly, it takes at least 2 hours, and, unfortunately, until you make a lot of them, they tend to require pretty diligent supervision. At the end of the day, though, there's few better flavors on this planet. You want the best lasagna? Caramelize onions and add them to the sauce. The best Chili? The best meatloaf? The best pierogies? Take the time and go through the trouble. Edit: Re; salt. In theory, salt should break down the walls of the onions membranes and allow it release more water/soften/caramelize faster, but, in my experiments, I have not found this to be the case. I think it's probably better to leave the salt to the final dish.

Sam, since you've reiterated a few of my previous points (conduction superior to radiation/convection, long bake times counterproductive to puffy crusts, screen viability having a style specific scope), I agree with you. The 2 minute claim, though, whether it be yours or Chris Young's, is off the mark. For the last 3 years, I've been recommending 1/2" steel plate for 4 minute NY style bakes. During this time, I've come across a handful of Neapolitan enthusiasts attempting sub 2 minute bakes with 3/4" steel plate (a la MC) and the results have been pretty poor. In a typical unmodded oven, the chances of a 2 minute bake with steel plate are extremely low. 500 deg. peak oven owners are SOL. I thought that 3/4" @ 550 would break that 2 minute barrier, but from the people that have tried, it doesn't appear possible. There seems to be diminishing returns on additional thermal mass. The reduction in baking time from 1/4" to 1/2" is dramatic, but, from what we're seeing, 3/4" isn't buying the home pizza baker much- not to mention that 3/4" is so heavy that it pushes some oven shelves to their limits. And this is all from a bottom browning perspective. 99.9% of all home ovens lack the broiler intensity to achieve good top browning in 2 minutes. Gas oven broilers are out of the question, while for electric broilers, the element has to be very high wattage- thick coil/many passes. In addition, the broiler has to stay on indefinitely or the oven owner has to be willing to trick the oven so the broiler doesn't cut out. A two minute pizza can be done at home, but we're talking about, out of, say 600 people attempting it, 3 succeed. Those aren't the kind of numbers that would justify leading people to believe that, with steel plate, they can achieve 2 minute bakes at home. Out of, say, 150 people that are using 1/2" steel plate, no one has had any issue of an oven shelf failing, while 3/4" is much more of a gamble. Because of this, I stick to recommending 1/2"- with a guaranteed 4 minute bake time (@550). 4 minutes isn't 2, but it still makes a kick ass pizza (some might say a 4 minute pie is superior).

Steven, this person here: http://foodstuff.hubpages.com/hub/No-Stir-Risotto feels that perfectly good risotto can be made without stirring. Do you think we need empirical data about real world no stir risotto results? Or do we see this approach for what it really is- a corner cutting shortcut that sacrifices quality? Stones are daunting, and launching a topped skin onto a pre-heated stone for the first time can be scary, but that's how the city's greatest pizzerias have been making pizza since it reached our shores. There's no silver bullet/no magic beans here. No shortcuts. If you want the best possible pizza, you've got to follow the basics- and THE most basic component of great pizza is the direct transfer of heat from a hot stone. The physics are sound- conduction, in this setting, trumps radiation. A screen without a stone will never give you anything better than a 10 minute bake time, and, for NY style pizza, that's a mediocre product.

Steven, have you looked at his pizzas? If that's what you want to make, go buy a screen. As a New Yorker, and an Executive Director of this site, I would sincerely hope that you're striving for something better than that. You are a New Yorker, right? As an inhabitant of our fair city, you should be thoroughly repulsed by screens/screen pizza. Every time I see a 99 cent pizza joint, I want to tear my hair out. Do you not feel the same? 99 cent pizza is made on screens. I wouldn't feed it to my worst enemy!

Was this a special order? The thickest stone they have available on the web site is 1". While a 1.5" thick mullite stone is intriguing, and a thickness that I've never seen in a home environment, I would never pay these kinds of prices for kiln shelves.

What style of pizza? Cracker? Chicago Thin Crust? Bar style? For these longer baked, thinner, crispier styles, then a screen might be better than a stone, although, in commercial settings, you usually see screens (and pans/disks) used in conjunction with deck ovens with stones. For NY style, though, screens are garbage- at least for the home baker without a specialty oven. The most important ingredient in NY style pizza is heat. Just like you can't make a great Neapolitan pizza in longer than 2 minutes, you can't make a truly great NY style pizza in longer than 6 minutes. As you extend the bake time, the nature of the pizza changes completely and you get something dense and bready, rather than puffy and chewy. For the home baker, anything that extends the bake time is a recipe for disaster. And screens extend the bake time. A screen, when used in conjunction with a preheated stone, will put a layer of insulation between the pizza and the heat source and prolong bottom browning. If you use a screen without a stone in a home oven, you're completely at a disadvantage. Without the pre-heated stone acting as a heat sink, you're at the mercy of whatever BTUs/Watts your bottom burner/element can pump out. In home ovens, a red hot element or roaring gas burner will never match the bottom browning impact of a quality baking stone, pre-heated to the oven's max temp. In a home oven setting, conduction will always beat the pants off radiation (and a small amount of convection). Now, in the commercial universe, there are conveyor ovens with extremely powerful bottom burners that will produce fast bakes with screens and/or disks, but that's basically just Dominos/99 cent pizza. If your friend is trying to sell you on the superiority of Dominos, then I think it's time for a new friend.

Stardiff, go to an Asian grocer. The turnover will be better, the customers will be far more demanding and the garlic will be about 1/3rd the price.

I make a roux with my flour for apple pie.

I tried roasting peeled leaves last week and it didn't work out well- you really can't roast them without stirring them, and, because of the shape of the leaves, they have a tendency to bunch together. Another consideration with roasting is that, when you roast brussels sprouts whole, only the outer layer absorbs the fat, but when you roast the leaves, they all absorb fat, so you can end up with something pretty oily. One of the advantages to frying is that, if you fry them at the right temp and the right time, you can control the fat absorption and end up with something crisp and nutty, but not too oily.

Brussels sprouts, unlike other crucifers like cauliflower and broccoli, will go mushy if you roast them slow and long. The purpose of roasting is to expose them to high enough temps to give good dark coloration on the exterior without turning their insides to mush.

The question isn't whether or not a slate baking stone will crack, but when, and, when it does, how violently. Best case scenario is that it will just crack. Worst case is that there's some moisture in it and it explodes. Another really horrible scenario that's suited especially to slate is that a shard flakes off, lodges itself in the dough and, for whatever reason, you don't notice it. I had a piece of refractory drop on top of a pizza and have a chipped tooth to remember the experience. Slate will chip a tooth just as easily. At some point, baking stones had to actually be stones, but we live in a day and age where we don't have to roll the dice on a loaf of bread or a pizza. Real stones will always have variations in composition that make them unsafe for kitchen use. And a Weber will annihilate quarry tiles. The only materials suitable for direct flame are firebrick and cordierite.

If you really want to magnify the deodorizing effects of stainless steel, scour the stainless sink (or saute pan) and then squeeze the liquid from the scouring pad onto your hands. The more s/s particles you can wash your hands with, the better. Also, don't forget that an onion's aroma producing compounds are oil soluble (hence the difficulty removing with soap and water). Rubbing your hands with oil and then wiping with a paper towel will go a long way in removing them. No onion/garlic smell can survive the one two punch of an oil rub and then scouring pad wash. Edit: And bleach, seriously? Who wants hands that smell like bleach? And while I wear gloves for a lot of kitchen activities, I'm not sure I'd want to lose any tactile sense when chopping onions, even if it's only a little bit.

Soy based flavor enhancement (basically glutamates) doesn't offend me half as much as salt. I can't walk into a supermarket and purchase a can of tuna that doesn't have added salt. It kills me. Sure, there's Trader Joes, but, honestly, the quality of tuna is really not that much better and the water to meat ratio (incredibly high) is also about the same. All TJs can give me is none of the extra crap- for $1.50, versus the typical sale price of the supermarket tuna of $1. Sure, I pay the extra 50 cents, but not without gnashing my teeth. Adding salt to tuna is just so effed up. Edit: And this is $1.50 NOW at TJs. Considering where TJs prices have been heading, who knows how much it's going to be in a few months.

It's one thing to cook for yourself. It's another thing to cook for friends and family. It's a whole other ballgame to cook for a date- and that's a date with someone you've already dated a few times. A first date? I'm not saying it can't be done or hasn't been done, but this isn't something I would ever willingly commit to. You're taking what is already a pretty stressful experience and ramping up the stress level about 1000 percent. If you can get out of this, I would. Tell him you're having oven problems, pick a good restaurant, and bake for him after you get to know him a bit better and are more relaxed. You'll both be able to enjoy your hard work so much more without the pressure of having to get know each other at the same time. If you really are dead set on doing this, then I would highly suggest clarifying what he means by loving 'Italian Food.' Here, in the U.S., 8 out of ten 10 people who say they love 'Italian Food,' will be talking about Italian American food- Pizza, Veal parm, sausage with peppers and onions, spaghetti and meatballs, lasagna, etc. If you feed these kind of people real Italian food, like Osso Buco, they will look at you with a blank stare. The last thing you want to do is spend hours on something, only for him to not really be into it. The other thing I suggest is that you shouldn't be here asking for advice on what Italian Food would be good for a first date. Making something for the first time on a first date or even after a single trial run, is, no offense, insane. You want to think of the most mind blowingly awesome dishes that you make- dishes that you can make blindfolded, with your hands tied behind your back, on sleeping pills. Those are the dishes that you want to offer this chap- not a dish that you've never made, from a cuisine that you're asking questions about. If you truly are a 'proficient cook,' then you should have at least a handful of orgasm inducing dishes in your repertoire- these are what you need to zero in on. If you want to leaf through cookbooks for your third or fourth date, go for it, but, for now, stick with something you know.

You're mostly right Because yeast produce enzymes of their own, yeast activity and enzyme activity are not entirely separate processes. Because the enzymes in malted barley are far more numerous and impactful, though, the enzyme activity from the yeast is relatively inconsequential, allowing one to look at yeast activity and enzyme activity as fairly independent processes. Now, bear in mind, this is for traditionally malted flour. Switch to an unmalted flour (as well as, perhaps, a higher falling value/less germinated/lower enzyme flour) and the enzymes generated by the yeast become much larger players.

I've never seen any hard data on this, but I think that a lot of people subscribe to the idea that the more you knead, the finer the crumb. Regardless of whether or not that's true, most people prefer the flavor of bread made from cold fermented dough. Take 100 random people, give them a sourdough, some may love it, some may not, but give those same 100 random people a cold fermented bread and non cold fermented bread and 99 will prefer the flavor from the cold ferment. A big part of that preference stems from the fact that cold fermentation favors enzyme activity- amylase is generating residual sugar for a slightly sweeter loaf and protease is generating amino acids/umami. There's obviously other byproducts being created, but those are the big players. Since cold fermented dough is superior, and since you, as a home baker, have the time and space to cold ferment, it's a no brainer. Because of the resting gluten development involved in overnight cold fermentation, you have no choice but to dial back the agitation at the start or you're going to end up pushing the gluten past it's limits. So not no knead, but definitely minimal knead with a long cold ferment.

From the New York City Administrative Code, Title 3, Chapter 2: Referring to that stuff they make in Chicago as 'pizza' is equally egregious.

Heating these hams in such a fashion that the water in the meat doesn't come to a boil and make a mass exodus is no easy task. I was incredibly luck with a similarly sized ham this Thanksgiving when I roasted it for 2 hours at 250, but if I had sous vide equipment I would never have rolled the dice like that. Split the sliced area in half, lengthwise, with two cuts, one down to the bone, and the other up. You should then be able, with some gentle boning knife action, to pull the two massive chunks away from the bone. Cut the remaining unsliced area away from the bone a little more haphazardly (you'll be grinding this). Cryovac everything and sous vide to slightly above 'safe' ham temp (a safe ham temp is usually a bit two raw tasting towards the bone and may not melt the collagen as effectively). Grind the odd shaped unsliced pieces and use the half slices for: Fried ham and eggs Ham sandwiches (with a quality swiss on rye) Hawaiian pizza (if you're into that sort of thing) w/ a glaze of your choice straight from the sous vide Diced for soups/beans/vegetables/salads (as mentioned) Diced with fettucine alfredo

The gums and stabilizers do a wonderful job of keeping cold cream cheese stable, but they were never intended for heating. If you've got a cheese sauce on the verge of curdling (and, these days, curdle prone recipes are abundant), then cream cheese will put it past the edge. I guess, maybe, if one were to add cream cheese after the sauce has cooled a bit, that would be okay, but I would never heat that sauce again. That would pretty much preclude any possibility for baked mac & cheese. Try microwaving cream cheese until it's close to a boil and you'll quickly see what I'm talking about.

They may be priced similarly normally, but, where I am, chuck steak goes on sale every couple months for 2 plus change, while I've never seen short ribs on sale.