81–90 of 159 posts
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I use sugar in the dough for making it slightly brown and a tiny bit crunchy.
Olive oil is for that purpose. Sugar is to feed yeast. It won’t be there by the time the dough is fired.
In my dough it most certainly is, and it makes a big difference.
Olive oil does not caramelise.
No physics, but this guy makes fun cooking videos, and visited a bunch of pizzerias in Napoli to learn how to make great pizza: https://youtu.be/BFFfyrfYllQ?t=528
This paper is so oversimplified. If you're actually curious in the physics of food, check out the journal of food engineering. We use much more complex physical models to simulate the physics of food. Fun note, this is my job and it is pretty cool to really dig into the science behind cooking and then apply that to an industrial scale.
1) what's the most helpful physics-based cooking tip most people aren't aware of?
2) are there efforts in food engineering to apply machine learning to recipes in the same way some projects are trying to automate other creative functions like graphic design?
For anybody interested in making pizza at home, /r/pizza is a fantastic resource. Making your own pizza is fun and you can make some decent pies with only a little bit of practice. For home ovens use bread flour. If you end up getting into making pizza, then go down the 00 flour + wood fire oven route.. but until then your home oven can produce some really outstanding pies. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/Pizza/wiki/rec…
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Related: I highly recommend the Cooking Issues podcast with Dave Arnold [ http://heritageradionetwork.org/series/cooking-issues/ ].
And this great book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Food_and_Cooking The science and history of food! Great illustrations too.
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1) Frozen pizza is awful 2) To properly bake a pizza you need 350/400 C 3) Normal electrical ovens arrive to 220/240 C and the pizza becomes dry and crunchy 4) If you put a frozen pizza in a cold oven it will always be burnt because by the time the inside is cooked the outside has become overcooked and burnt 5) Please don’t make me cry writing pizza misadventures :’(
I've actually had some really good frozen pizzas. The best ones I ever had were actually $4 frozen pizzas from the supermarket that were made in Italy. I'm not sure how they made a pizza in Italy and shipped it to NZ and managed to sell it for $4, but they were great, or at least the quattro fromaggio ones were. The ones with any frozen vegetables like mushrooms were sort of crap, the mushrooms went all watery. In my…
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They also import Manitoba flour in Italy to make pizza. High gluten is a must or it will just fall apart if it is the right thickness / cooked correctly. 90 seconds is faster than usual, but yes it is cooked fast. Neapolitan in Italy means thicker crust than other regions, but you are probably right that is what you are eating. Outside of Italy I am not sure many people would be able to recognize the difference.
The 90s maximum thing was told to me by the bread chef at River Cottage (woo!) ... I did subsequently check, and it seems to be legit in terms of being able to be called a Neapolitan style pizza [1] -- you need to have it cooked in under 90s. There's some other quite specific requirements, around thinness of dough, and flour type. I gather the Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana is a bit like the Comité Champagne -…
I got one of these wood/pellet/gas fired Uuni ovens and can highly recommend it for pizza aficionados. Reasonably priced too https://uuni.net/ I use wood kindling or pellets for the fire - it gets hot enough in 10 mins. For the dough I use 00 (fine) flour, and depending on time I might prove the dough for 3-4 nights in the fridge. Possibly the best cooking tool I've bought.
You've really got to be committed to making pizza after you get one of those! Do you make pies as gifts?
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ALDI has some really good ones for $3AU too, the supreme ones (basically ham, cheese and capsicum if that counts as supreme) anyway. I cook from frozen normally, but for a really "gourmet" frozen pizza experience defrost is completely and stick it under the grill. Wonderful grilled cheese on top and still a soft fluffy base underneath.
As a recent immigrant to Australia, I'm yet to try the Aldi frozen pizzas. The 3 for $6 ones look good though. I'm constantly impressed with the quality of Aldi food for how insanely cheap it is, especially their frozen goods. I can eat well for $5 per day on Aldi food.
This paper is so oversimplified. If you're actually curious in the physics of food, check out the journal of food engineering. We use much more complex physical models to simulate the physics of food. Fun note, this is my job and it is pretty cool to really dig into the science behind cooking and then apply that to an industrial scale.
I realized that some frozen meals must be better than others. Thus, there must be a frozen meal that is best. I think cooking methods relate to that. I really appreciate those because they can be very cheap yet nutritious. However, I don't know if it's healthy to consume them too often.
Frozen meals tend to have very high levels of salt in them. They also have poor quality ingredients, so are not as nutritional as you think.
If you must live on frozen meals, try making them in large quantities yourself over a weekend, and freeze them. Most basic 'meat & vegetables' meals can be frozen and re-heated.