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The physics of baking good pizza

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Re: The physics of baking good pizza

#111

Post by roel_v »

philbarr wrote: post #103
toomanybeersies wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just find it so fascinating that it can be cheaper to ship things from Europe than make them locally, even if logically I know that it makes sense. As another example: the budget branded fries that I brought for $2 for a kg came from the Netherlands. Not only was I amazed that it was cheaper than locally made fries, but that was cheaper than I could buy fresh potatoes. Somehow it's cheaper to grow potatoes, cut the…

You still have to drive it to the stores once it's on land though...

You have to do that anyway: either from the port to the store, or from the field to the factory to the store.

Unless your point is that the shipping is cheap in absolute terms, in which case 'yes' :) Although I don't think it will add much. Say pizzas are shipped 500 km, on average (for the North Island - most of them will stay in Auckland, and I imagine those going to Wellington are shipped there directly). Either way, transport like that will cost you, say Eur 1/NZD 1.75/USD 1.15 per kilometer? (IIRC from the time I worked for a transport company). But you can fit, say, 50k of them in a truck. That's 1-2 cents depending on which currency you look at, and that's using lowball estimates, and not using bulk shipping discounts.

It's amazing and completely counter-intuitive how cheap shipping is. Which is also why I so dislike the 'food miles' concept. Yes, it's 3k km to drive lettuce from Spain to Northern Europe. But you can fit so many of them in a truck, that the per-item cost is tiny, and quite often offsets the extra costs you'd have to make to grow that same lettuce up north. And yes that's even when calculating in the environmental costs (depending of course on the crop and the time of year; my point: just having fewer 'food miles' doesn't necessarily make it better for the environment).

Re: The physics of baking good pizza

#112

Post by keypress »

6nf wrote: post #106
Jaruzel wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

If high levels of salt is the worst thing you can say about frozen meals then they're pretty damn decent for the convenience they offer!

I cook from fresh every day. Now granted I'm not the fastest cook - but it can take anything from about 20mins to an 1h 30mins to prepare dinner. While I'm cooking I'm cleaning and doing other tasks. Left overs carry over to lunch or another evening meal.

If I were to use a frozen meal, I'd have to defrost, and then cook, and likely would want something alongside it - like veg or salad. Unless Chef Mike (Microwave) is employed. I find it hard to see this being that much quicker.

I've had one pre-prepared bought in meal this year. Most convenience foods like this have a strange processed taste - that isn't just salt. This is coming from someone whose sense of taste has been shot totally to pieces.

Re: The physics of baking good pizza

#113

Post by franciscop »

imh wrote: post #66
tigershark wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 :’(

>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 This seems backwards. The hotter the oven, the less time for the heat to diffuse inwards before the outside is burnt. The lower the temperature, the more even the heat. I'd imagine the reason not to put it before it's done preheating is standardization. If my oven t…

Yes, but the hotter it is the faster the outside will burn at a faster rate. If you want meat evenly cooked, it is slow and steady fire. If you want it crusty on the outside but raw inside, you would use strong fire. That is why you unfreeze food at room temperature and not in the oven.

PS, I found best results with a bit of microwave first (to unfreeze the inside, the microwaves do penetrate quite well) and then to the oven.

Re: The physics of baking good pizza

#114

Post by Djvacto »

culturestate wrote: post #104
jacques_chester wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The American concept of "a touch of sugar" is different from most places', so for that audience the advice is pretty sound. I moved to the USA from Australia. If I want bread that doesn't taste like cake, I actually have to bake it myself.

As an American who lives abroad...I hear this about American bread all the time but I've yet to discover what's actually different. Supermarket sandwich bread is just about the same everywhere. Perhaps the rest of the world is just used to buying from a bakery, rather than the supermarket?

In my experience, the difference is that in the US, bakery bread is more expensive, while in Europe it's just as cheap to buy fresh.

Re: The physics of baking good pizza

#115

Post by jazoom »

crispyambulance wrote: post #108
jazoom wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use sugar in the dough for making it slightly brown and a tiny bit crunchy.

That will work, but the best way to add crunch and color to crust is to steam it: https://blog.kingarthurflour.com/2017/02/28/steam-in-bread-b... You crank up your oven to very high (for most ovens that is ALL THE WAY), let it stabilize temperature for 40-60 minutes with an empty pan in the rack underneath where the bread goes. When the bread goes in, pour a cup of water into the pan. This will create steam in the ea…

Thanks for the link. It looks interesting.

I look forward to reading it later.

I'll probably still end up doing the extra sugar when I feel like that particular type of dough (usually thin ones) since it's a different type of crunch.

Re: The physics of baking good pizza

#116

Post by majewsky »

keypress wrote: post #112
6nf wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If high levels of salt is the worst thing you can say about frozen meals then they're pretty damn decent for the convenience they offer!

I cook from fresh every day. Now granted I'm not the fastest cook - but it can take anything from about 20mins to an 1h 30mins to prepare dinner. While I'm cooking I'm cleaning and doing other tasks. Left overs carry over to lunch or another evening meal. If I were to use a frozen meal, I'd have to defrost, and then cook, and likely would want something alongside it - like veg or salad. Unless Chef Mike (Microwave) i…

> I find it hard to see this being that much quicker.

A part that's much quicker is that you just grab a frozen meal from the store, rather than first figuring out what to cook and then searching for ingredients at various sections of the store.

Re: The physics of baking good pizza

#117

Post by jules »

Jaruzel wrote: post #90
kovek wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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.

Is salt still considered bad for you?

Re: The physics of baking good pizza

#118

Post by jules »

tigershark wrote: post #18
numbol wrote: post #13

This post encouraged me to make account and leave a comment after couple years of read-only /sorry for bad english/ Long ago, in yearly middle-school time I am argue with friends about optimum(by combined simplicity and taste score) way to bake frozen pizza, and all about with electric heating oven VS microwave. After some time oven was chosen, but I thinked that made oven pre-heaten was waste of time and try to appr…

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 :’(

If you freeze your own pizza they taste pretty good, so I wonder why store bought pizzas don't.

You can't bake good napolitan pizza at home but you can bake decent pizza at home as long as you change the recipe to be nontraditional. I make a very wet dough, let it rise, then spread it on olive oil greased sheets, rise again then pre bake the crust until it is firm enough to put on the toppings then bake again. The crust is like a thin focaccia.

Re: The physics of baking good pizza

#119

Post by dsr_ »

panabee wrote: post #83
chaosbutters314 wrote: post #42

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.

this is very cool! 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?

It is a widely-held belief that searing a piece of meat before a slow roast will seal in the juices. Actual testing reveals this to be completely incorrect.

Searing (dry, high heat) produces maillard reactions which are responsible for lots of flavors that we like. So searing is good, but it's better to cook your meat to just below the temperature you want, then take it out and sear it. You'll have a more consistent doneness.

Re: The physics of baking good pizza

#120

Post by roel_v »

jazoom wrote: post #81
dboreham wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Olive oil is for that purpose. Sugar is to feed yeast. It won’t be there by the time the dough is fired.

> 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.

... your dough caramelizes? How much sugar do you put in?
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