paulraphael

You got it for the right price! I'd love to see something like this, but 1) much cheaper, and 2) with a lab-style magnetic stirring rod. It may not be possible to do both induction and a magnetic stirring rod ... anyone know about this? But for many things I'd rather have the stirrer and a hot burner than induction without.

To be fair, that guy at BBQ Bible was all about results. No idea what other BBQ people think of him, though ...

That's charitable in this case. Nevertheless, people make exceptional BBQ by sous-viding the meat, partially drying the surface, and then smoking it. Or in some cases changing the order of operations. You can have semantic and taxonomic arguments all day long (as BBQ fanatics love to do). But when it's done well the results kick ass by any conventional BBQ standards—besides lack of a visible smoke ring, which doesn't mean anything. Nathan Myhrvold advocates for this technique, and he's been a member of a champion BBQ team.

One thing with the cuisinarts (and probably every brand) is that the metal blade is going to get dull eventually, and make it seem like the machine has lost its oomph. It may not be immediately obvious that the blade is the problem. These blades have tiny serrations and so are probably impractical to sharpen, but replacements are pretty reasonably priced.

Not exactly the same thing, but it's pretty damn good. I've just decided I'm not going to spend 25 to 30 times as much per milliliter for something that just has a slightly different flavor profile. If I had 25 times as much money (many people do!) I'd collect them all.

I don't know about their pans. The big danger to one's bank account is their hams.

I have a perfume-bottle-sized aceto tradizionale reggio emilio, which is delicious, but when it's gone I won't even consider replacing it. It probably goes for over $100 now, while I can get a 375ml bottle of Pedro Ximinez sherry vinegar for around $17. The sherry vinegar is a little dryer, and not quite as viscous, and has a different flavor profile. But it's every bit as good, and at least as complex, and I don't feel like I'm dispensing some irreplaceable elixir every time I throw together a vinaigrette. What's more, for 1/3 the price of that precious balsamico, I've put together a whole stable of sherry vinegars from Despaña in NYC, that includes moscatel, fino palomino, and cheaper grade palomino vinegar in a big bottle. In my vinegar cabinet, Spain has ignominiously kicked Italy's ass. Edited to add: I don't like the supermarket grade balsamic vinegars. I don't know what they actually are, or why they get so much shelf space.

I've got an 11-cup Cuisinart from the early 90s that's endured much use and abuse. It hums along like it's a piece of commercial gear. Not sure if the quality's changed since then.

I wouldn't feel so bad that they don't pay attention to you, because clearly they haven't paid attention to anyone else who knows anything. As gfweb said, it sounds like the results would be just awful, so it's hard to imagine there would be too many customers in danger of getting sick. But for the unfortunate few, the meat is being held way too long at dangerous temperatures, where toxin-producing bacteria can thrive. After its bagged theres even a danger of spore-producing bacteria becoming activated. The toxins produced by these bacteria aren't going to be deactivated by the 90C sous-vide bath ... that will only serve to turn the meat gray and tough and bad tasting. Where does this "cool to 16C in 6 hours" come from? That's bizarre. Health codes just about everywhere say that if food spends more than 4 hours between 4°C and 40°C you have to throw it out. This is a bit too conservative ... the danger zone should be rewritten as 4°C to 55°C, with longer safe-holding times at the low end of the range. But no matter what, your coworkers' numbers are whackadoodle. edited to add: How are they passing inspections with that 9°C fridge?

Did you try any of their Grand Cru single origins? I haven't had these, but suspect that if Valrhona's making anything it amazing, you'd find it there. Valrhona made its name with blends like manjari and guanaja, which are less amazing than solid and balanced. They make these with complete consistency and predictable functional qualities, so pastry chefs can buy them year after year and know exactly how they'll behave. Artisanal chocolates are getting more like wine from a particular vintage that won't ever be exactly replicated.

SV Dash will tend to give unreasonably long cooking times. It's not wrong; it's just being maddeningly accurate, and reporting the actual time it will take the very center to reach the precise temperature you've entered. The last couple of degrees may take well over an hour. You can have a much easier time if you compensate slightly. Whatever my theoretical target temperature is, I set the core temperature in SV dash 0.5°C lower than this. And I set the bath temperature 1°C higher. Results are exactly what I'd get if working it out by trial and error, and times can be as little as half. I suspect most recipes and most of the consumer apps build this kind of tweak into their tables. I wrote a post about this method here.

I'm also suggesting that even among enthusiasts, if you're doing a tasting of a bunch of SO chocolates, your favorite might be low on another chef's list, and vice versa. It's just the nature of the beast when you're dealing with distinctive flavors.

I bet you'd find that once you get to the level Cluizel / Felchin / Amadei, etc, you'll find much more difference between the particular varieties than between the brands. Especially when you deal with the fickleness of personal taste ... all of these makers' single-origin chocolates are so distinctive that they're likely to be divisive.

What's Cocchi Rosa? How does it taste compared with Cocchi di Torino vermouth (which is my fave)?

We're talking past each other Scott. I think I understand what you're saying. When I mentioned ambient temperature of the oven, I was talking about the temperature of the surfaces, and contrasting them with the radiant heat thrown off by a broiler. The former can be measured by temperature and emissivity of the surface; the latter can't. I don't know what's a "1 in 1000" broiler." I'm just talking about a powerful one. Nathan Mhyrvold has had success with some electric broilers; I've seen success with the kinds of gas infra-red broilers you see on BlueStar, Wolf, and DCS consumer ranges. I wouldn't worry too much about someone spending too much money on these ranges just to start a pizza hobby. Anyone who's that single-minded will just get a pizza oven. Or hack their self-cleaning ovens like Jeff Varasano, or do it outside on a steel in a kamado. I've read your thoughts on dough hydration. My short reply is that I disagree. My more nuanced reply is that I hate working with high-hydration pizza dough, so it's not a point I care too much about. I'll just suggest you'll have no trouble finding examples of extremely puffy focaccia and other hearth breads made with 80%+ hydration, and made this way for sound reasons. Go ahead and use the Brooklyn Neapolitan term. I'm pretty sure I didn't coin it. But know what I'm referring to. I'm thinking of places like Roberta's and Motorino and Wheated, which may even be following VPN rules (I don't know because they don't talk about it; Naples isn't part of their identity). But they go for a slightly different crust texture. The main difference is that it isn't quite as thin and soggy and self-destructing in the center. The slices have some substance, and won't completely flop into a puddle of soup when you pick them up (with this pizza knife and fork are optional). All these shops use wood or wood-hybrid ovens, because they're cool, not because they're mandatory. My favorites use natural leavening. They all use 00 flour because of the high heat, and they're all pulling 60 - 90 second pies. Roberta's at least in its incarnation from 5 years ago, was making the best pizza I've ever had. Edited to add: upthread I mentioned substituting bromated flour, but I meant partially malted flour. It's the lack of malting that keeps Caputo pizza flour from browning at lower temperatures. Another compensation is to ferment longer, which creates more sugars. Some people just throw some honey in the dough. I don't work with Caputo flour so I don't know how longer than normal fermentation affects texture and flavor.

Sure! I assume obsession is why most people would do it. Or maybe just falling for the process. It's like when people who live in major cosmopolitan cities get into making bread ... they'll have to jump through many hoops just to equal what the best local bakeries are doing for $6 a loaf. But the process becomes an end in itself. If it doesn't, they've made a math mistake.

The proper pairing for Roman pizza is a cosmopolitan.

Yeah, it's hard, but this is eGullet, and plenty of people here take things farther and more seriously than the average Joe. I never addressed anything to "the vast number of home cooks ... " In the post of mine that you first responded to, you may recall that I gave up on Neapolitan pizza (or my intended variation) because my oven wasn't up to the task, even with all the tricks. So we're not disagreeing on the need for the right oven. That said, you may be paying too much attention to oven temperature. What cooks a pizza fast is the rate of energy transfer. Ambient temperature is only one factor. The top of the pizza cooks by radiant heat, and temperature does not directly tell you the radiant heat output (a bed of 1000°F glowing coals kicks out more radiant energy than a 3500°F gas flame, for example). And the bottom cooks by conduction. So temperature differential is one factor, conductivity the other. Steel has 80 times the thermal conductivity of fire brick. Remember that we're not trying to incinerate the dough at 900°F; we're trying to get the inside to 212°F and the outside to (roughly) 400°F quickly enough that it doesn't dehydrate. There's a range of ways to get there. And keep in mind that a steel slab set 6" under a high-powered infra-red broiler is going to get a lot hotter than the ambient oven temperature. It's these related variables: radiant energy from the broiler, and temperature/conductivity of the steel, that will determine the cooking speed. And even cooking speed offers a bit of wiggle room. Because dough composition offers another set of variables. Traditional Neapolitan dough recipes are formulated specifically for traditional Neapolitan oven conditions. If we're changing one set of variables, it's reasonable to assume we'll want to change another set to compensate. The most obvious compensation for a slower oven is higher hydration. The next compensation is to ditch the 00 flour and use something that can handle the hydration and conditions you're creating. Unbromated Italian flour isn't magical, and doesn't really do anything besides respond in a predictable way to certain baking conditions.

My purism is about the pizza being awesome and have certain qualities I like. It's not about following arbitrary rules, whether the AVPN's or anyone else's. And I precisely mean taking pizza in a "Neapolitan direction." Because the best pizza I've had has been a hybrid style. I've had purist AVPN-compliant pizza, and I've had variations that I think of as "Brooklyn Neapolitan," and I like the latter better. So that's what I go for. The differences aren't relevant to my points above, because the Brooklyn variations are no easier to make, and are just as demanding of a blazing hot oven. With the right kind of home oven, however, people have been able to get into 90-ish second territory. Because the high-powered infra-red broilers on the pro-sumer ranges kick out serious energy. Between this and the heat capacity/conductivity of a 30lb slab of steel, you can recreate wood oven conditions. Incidentally, the Modernist Cuisine crew has put to rest the idea that there's anything magical about a wood-fired oven (besides ambience). It doesn't matter what the heat source is. As long as you have enough power, and can balance the conductive energy delivery from the deck and the radiative energy delivery from above, you can do anything. Including a perfect Neapolitan pie. Even if VPN rules say you have to use wood. People who have hacked their home ovens to cook on the self-clean cycle figured this out decades ago.

It would be interesting to see how quickly the softening ability changes as the filter ages.

They say it opens to 0.7". My coolers are right around this thickness. My guess is that since both the cooler walls and the clamp are plastic, there's a bit of wiggle room. I just hope the clamp is burly enough to handle some flexing.

Plain old slabs of steel work best if you're going for anything in the direction of Neapolitan pizza (and I no longer acknowledge the existence of any other kind. End rant.) The most economical way to get a slab of steel seems to depend on geography. In rural places you can visit a scrap yard or steel fabricator. You'll probably have some work to do, removing sharp burs and rust and scale. In NYC I found the fabricators more expensive than just buying a steel on Amazon. I got this one back when it cost less. There may be better options today. Consensus seems to be that 3/8" thick gives better results than 1/4". 1/2" offers advantages over 3/8" only if you're baking several back-to-back. Beware that a 1/2" steel weighs over 30 lbs. It can put a lot of stress on oven racks and on cooks, and if you were to drop it on a toe, goodbye toe. And of course a fatter steel will take longer to preheat. Pages have been written on how to get the best results out of these things. They seem to offer the most value if your oven has a powerful broiler element at the top. The usual method is to preheat the oven with the steel on a high rack, then blast it for a few minutes under the broiler, and then with the broiler still on, slide the pie onto the steel. All preheating and broiling is done with the knobs at 11. The biggest variable is the distance you put the steel from the broiler. Managing ratio of conductive heat from the bottom to radiant heat from the top is 90% of pizza baking. If you have an oven like mine, with the broiler in a separate drawer, you're probably out of luck. Even with a 1/2" steel, there's nothing I can do to get baking times below 4 minutes. Which means, lousy pizza.

I just visited the Chocolate Lab at ICE, for a half-hour intro to what chocolate making looks like. It's hard to imagine that this is going to become a thing for most chocolatiers. Certainly not for pastry chefs. There must have been $100,000 worth of equipment in there, and it filled a room. Beyond that, chef Laiskonis said his takeaways were that "making chocolate is easy. Making good chocolate is really hard." The other takeaway: "90% of chocolate making is janitorial." It would seem the reason to take this on, besides being obsessed—in which case on one's going to stop you—is if you have a particular vision for the flavors you want, and none of the commercial makers are delivering. I don't think you'd do it just for the quality. It's doubtful you'll outdo Michel Cluizel and Amedei.

So you doubt that global warming is caused by declining numbers of pirates?

A good friend of mine has an older Wolf range. I believe it's from before the consumer stuff got spun off to SubZero, and I don't know if the designs have changed. He had problems with the char grill failing. Presumably from getting gummed up by drippings. The second time a service guy came out to fix it, my friend asked if there was anything he could do to keep the thing working. The repairman said, "if you want to grill, go outside."