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This being the weekend, something in a lighter vein:
Pizza is essentially the perfect food. Well, so long as you aren't lactose intolerant or have problems with gluten. NPR spotted a study of why different cheeses diverge in looks and taste when baked. Seriously. In a paper called "Quantification of Pizza Baking Properties of Different Cheeses, and Their Correlation with Cheese Functionality," researchers found that, among other things, the reason why mozzarella is so unique of a topping has to do with the way it's prepared. The cheese bubbles and browns because of its inherent elasticity due to stretching. In contrast, cheddar isn't as ideal because it isn't very elastic, thus it doesn't bubble as well. The same apparently goes for Edam and Gruyere, too.
http://www.engadget.com/2014/08/30/mozzarella-pizza-cheese/
[Abstract]: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1750-3841.12540/abstract
(Score: 4, Informative) by SlimmPickens on Monday September 01 2014, @01:25AM
Some little known facts about pizza napoletana
1 The pizza making process was invented in Naples and hasn't changed in over 600 years. They invented pizza and they get to decide what it is.
2 Pizza napoletana is cooked in about a 500°C oven, it cooks in just over sixty seconds. Most of New York's best pizza is coked at a similar oven temperature.
3 At those oven temps the water will turn to steam creating bubbles before the dough sets (it's an extremely wet dough btw). That's why pizza napoletana is soft and fluffy. Anything cooked for ten minutes at 250°C is at best a flatbread and probably more accurately a flavoured biscuit.
4 At those oven temps the dough will develop black spots called leoparding, however the surface temperature of the pizza should not exceed 70°C. There should definitely not be any browning or bubbling of cheese.
5 Ever since they've had water buffalo they've been making mozzarella di bufala, but for all of that time they've been using fior di latte (cow mozzarella). Both of these are fresh white cheeses (bocconcini is "little mozzarella") which have SFA to do with the dried cheese most of the world calls mozzarella. About the only thing they share is thermophilic bacteria and milk (the high temperature is what makes mozzarella stretchy).
6 A few places in Naples still use criscito, the mother yeast. These pizza's are the very best. You start off with a tiny amount of criscito and do an 18 hour rise at 18°C. Surprisingly this ends up with a stronger sourdough flavour than doing a shorter rise with a large amount of culture. The best thing is that all that microflora eat up a great deal of starch and inflammatory compounds, many that claim to be gluten intolerant can happily eat these pizzas, very few people are truly coeliac.
I have a grilldome kamado to get to those oven temps, a 300 year old culture from an Island off Naples and a bunch of othe toys to support my pizza making habit.
Once I was reading my cheese making book and I noticed that 3L of cow milk, 1L of goat milk and 250ml of cream would get me the exact same fat to protein ratio as buffalo milk, therefore a few times I attempted to make imitation buffalo mozzarella (it's very expensive down here). Goat milk has a protein that messes with casein so it didn't form up very well but it tasted very nice!
This guy in LA is making pizza napoletana in his yard. His oven is a little larger than an neapolitan oven and he shouldn't have those black blisters but it's otherwise just about perfect. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TcIO9-nFCU [youtube.com]
(Score: 2) by hankwang on Monday September 01 2014, @06:29AM
I was surprised to read this number, but indeed, there is an accreditation organization that states 900 F (482 C): http://www.pizzanapoletana.org/eng_iscriviti.php [pizzanapoletana.org] .
I'm a bit skeptical though. Where in the oven should this temperature be reached? A pocket of hot air at the roof of the oven (i.e., not where the pizza is) is something different from the surface where the pizza is. And then, a material with low heat conductivity such as bricks could be quite hot but immediately cool down at the surface as soon as it makes contact with a cold object.
Anyway, a bit more googling: they say that the actual surface temperature in the oven should be 430 C (800 F): http://www.pizzanapoletana.org/public/pdf/disciplinare%202008%20UK.pdf [pizzanapoletana.org]
Why would this be better than a metal surface (with good heat conduction) at a more moderate temperature? To me it smacks of snobbish "this is the one true way because we invented this 200 years ago and there was no room for improvement".
Avantslash: SoylentNews for mobile [avantslash.org]
(Score: 2) by SlimmPickens on Monday September 01 2014, @06:51AM
It's the deck surface, if you point an infra red thermometer at the surface that's the number you'd want. That VPN website is load of bollocks, it's not how the old school piazzolos do it. In a proper neapolitan oven the flame will curl over and singe the top of the pizza so knows how hot that is?
It's just the way it's been done, I don't care as long as the parameters are correct, as I said, I use a Kamado oven. Dude in the video doesn't have a traditional oven either. Modernist cuisine for example sell a metal pizza stone. If you have a top element in an electric oven that combination can work pretty well. Other people modify electric ovens so they can use the cleaning cycle to get that temperature.
The only thing that matters is that the steam makes bubbles before the dough sets, regardless of how you get there you need that sixty second cooking time.
The Neapolitan ovens do a fantastic job though. I'm not aware of any modern approach being superior. They need need a particular kind of rock that comes from nearby a particular volcano to make the deck, not any old stone will do.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 01 2014, @09:37PM
They invented pizza and they get to decide what it is.
That's not how the English language works. Words are defined by usage and can change over time, they aren't set in stone.
Your comment was most interesting though.
(Score: 2) by SlimmPickens on Monday September 01 2014, @10:14PM
Yes I know, however there was a purpose to putting it like that ;)