slkinsey
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Posts posted by slkinsey
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I have been pondering this for decades and intensely researching it for weeks. I still have a little tweaking to do before I set sail, but believe me, my dream is about to become a reality :)
Dude... I've been making pizza at home for over ten years, not to mention that I've been living in NYC all that time and travel frequently to Italy. So, when I say that I don't think you will be able to reproduce real pizza Napulitana -- especially in a stanard home oven -- I know whereof I speak. There are certainly things you can do that will produce a very good pizza in a similar style. But, I have to say that I think you are in for a lot of disappointment if you think you are going to make something that looks like it came out of Patsy's East Harlem. I'd be pleased to be surprized, however, so I wish you the best of luck.
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I like the bathtub picture. Is that a happy expression or a get-me-the-hell-out-of-here expression?
Issa likes the bath.
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I hate sounding like a pessimist but I don't think you're going to get the thermal mass you want from a 3/4" stone. 3/4" inch stones work wonderfully for bread, but for pizza, I'm skeptical.
There is far less thermal mass in a thin pizza than there is in a two pound boule. Furthermore, since the pizza is spread more or less evenly across the surface of the baking stone, the conduction of thermal energy from the stone to the pizza is much more efficient that the conduction of thermal energy from the stone to the boule. 0.75" is fairly thick for a baking stone, BTW. Again, where you are going to run into trouble is with the third and fourth pizza (or boule).
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You are still not going to be able to produce the same exact results at home as you would with a commercial oven, exact thickness of stone or not.
I, respectfully, disagree :)
Scott, unless you build yourself a wood-burning masonry oven in the back yard, you won't be able to do it. Not in a home oven. That assumes, of course, that you are trying to reproduce a Neapolitan-style or NYC-style pizza. If you're going for a typical American pizza, such as would be baked in one of the aforementioned Vulcan ovens, it is certainly possible to make a passable approximation in a home oven. Where the commercial stainess and gas ovens have a real advantage over a home oven is in their ability to retain heat. The thermal mass of a Vulcan oven is a zillion times higher than any baking stone you could put in your oven. This means that the Vulcan can bake pizza after pizza all day without losing too much heat whereas your home pizza will start to suffer after around the second or third one.
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I am uploading these pictures for Kathleen, who will no doubt have more to add.
Ferrets are very active when they are not asleep, so asleep is usually the best time to get a picture of them.
Asher and Zebulun asleep:
Issachar sound asleep:
Asher and Zebulun sharing a nap with me:
Issachar guarding the laundry:
Asher and Zebulun sharing the tent we have come to call the "house of bites":
Issachar having a bath:
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The combined results are in this search
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Felonius, what kind of place is this and how are they allowing smoking?
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Do you mean spicy as in "hot" spicy? None of the dishes on that menu are supposed to be spicy hot, AFAIK. The only dish I found disappointing was the chicken tikka masala, which I found a little underspiced and the sauce not quite rich enough.
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Went there with bergerka, Fat Guy and Ellen for Valentine's Day. Had the "something different," which is a sandwich made with brisket and two potato pancakes instead of bread. It was fun food and an interesting time. This was my favorite part of the article:
A young man . . . said he was there to meet his mother . . . "She's a large woman," he said, putting his arms out a foot or so from his sides. "Big woman."The man seating people smiled and shook his head at the same time . . . "You better go look yourself," the man seating people told the young man, sweeping his arm to indicate the breadth of the room. "Because, you know, we got a lot of women fit that description."
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Sounds like a great time! The only downside, of course, is that you've now gone into that "pretty good, but not like Peter Luger" steak purgatory until your next visit.
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Not to mention that I don't want my humble "latte art" efforts compared to Melkor's.
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That's why the class says:
This eGullet Culinary Institute lesson describes the process of roasting a whole pig in an open pit -- also known as a pig roast. This is open pit roasting as opposed to closed pit roasting (Hawaiian Luau Style) where the pig is surrounded by hot rocks and buried in the ground, or to cooking in a closed smoker. -
500-550 degrees is typical for one of those Vulcan pizza-parlor gas ovens. Only coal fired stone ovens ever get anywhere NEAR 800 degrees. And thats at the apex of their stoking temperature.
I don't know much about Vulcan ovens nor can I find any info doing a web search, but I have done a substantial amount of research on wood burning ovens. From the pizza cooks that I've spoken with, wood burning ovens can and do reach temperatures exceeding 900 degrees.
Yes, this is correct. A wood fired oven can get plenty hot, certainly well within the range of temperatures maintained in the coal-fired establishments. The Neapolitan pizzerie use wood.
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I call dibs on a pint of Sconzo Maple Syrup!
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Doc, you should help your friend by dipping a few quarts of sap out of that bucket and reducing it down on your stove. After all, if the bucket overflows it will only go to waste.
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There are certainly parts of Italy that make fresh semolina pasta with water (usually not oil... fat inhibits the cross-linkang oe gluten strands). Orecchiette, for example. Semolina is not generally used, in my experience, in the soft strand pastas of Emilia-Romagna such as tagliatelle, etc. In general, I would not recommend semolina for fresh pasta because it produces a fairly grainy texture and I am normally going for something smooth.
Just for the record, because I think there is often confusion... semolina is a coarse, somewhat sandy-textured milling of Durum wheat. When this wheat is ground to a normal flour consistency, it is no longer semolina but simply Durum wheat flour.
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Is it distilled from Colt 45?
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Edible sea salt is, AFAIK, 99% pure NaCl, and taste tests have shown that it is very difficult (verging on impossible in some cases) to taste the difference between varieties of edible salt when dissolved in purified water. This would make it all but impossible to taste the difference between dissolved salts in the presence of other masking flavors.
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Some awesome looking dishes.
Are those fresh or canned artichokes?They are fresh baby artichokes. The canned ones taste pickled to me.
You tend to cook alot of Italian?Well, yes and no. My culinary outlook and kitchen learning experience is mostly regional Italian. However, I wouldn't say that most of the food I make is Italian per se. Which is to say that most of the dishes I make aren't traditional Italian dishes, but rather dishes made with an Italian-influenced approach to ingredients. Nothing in our meal of last night, for example, strikes me as particularly Italian.
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The one other fact that's barely been touched on here is that size matters as well. There's a difference in the food when you're serving three hundred people a night and when you're serving sixty. I'll be the first one to defend the premise that a great kitchen can served a thousand covers better than a medicore one can serve fifty, but give that same great kitchen a smaller number of diners and they can do even better.
Right... But of course if you give that restaurant half the customers, they are going to have to double their prices. This is one of the reasons most of the aforementioned three star single seating restaurants aren't making any money.
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The second downside - I placed a 6 quart (long handle) saucepan in a long slow oven - 4 hours or so - and when I took it out, the varnish on the iron handle had discoloured, and cracked in places. Some rust spots have now appeared. So - not quite sturdy as I'd imagined.
Um... Moby? You're supposed to take the varnish off the handle (as well as the copper) before you start using the pan. Just rub some oil on the handle the next time you have it in the oven and it will build up a rust-proof "seasoning."
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Debbie, that's all the details there were. It wasn't an article in the Times, just a blurb giving the same facts that I gave. Your friend might try calling Second Avenue Delicatessen for more information.
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Where do you guys do all your food shopping?
Fairway @ 74th Street, mostly. Zabar's sometimes. I like Oppenheimer Prime Meats for non-poultry (their poultry is good too, but I also like the Murray's chickens at Fairway and it's more convenient). Union Square Greenmarket during the growing season (soon!). Smattering in Chinatown/Little Italy. Smattering on 9th Avenue.
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The Portuguese use it in a version with potatoes, chorizo, etc.
Inspired by this, had for dinner (among other things):
No doubt it isn't the traditional preparation. But it does contain kale, potato and Spanish chorizo.
An Appeal for a Peel, Pizza that Is
in Kitchen Consumer
Posted
Actually, not quite. The big difference between a masonry oven used for pizza as opposed for bread is that the fire remains burning inside the oven when it is used for pizza. One purpose of this is for the radiant heat to reflect off the roof of the pizza oven back onto the pizza, cooking the toppings. This is why Neapolitan pizzeria typically add the tomato element raw -- it cooks in the reflected heat. Measurements at the top of the oven often reach upwards of 950F.