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