Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Physics of baking good Pizza (2018)

arxiv.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 127 posts

Re: The Physics of baking good Pizza (2018)

#31

Post by bombolo »

graycat wrote: post #29
bombolo wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Italian here! I don't think you're legally authorised to call that "pizza" (just joking, you are, but people might disagree). 1kg of flour for a single portion pizza seems very excessive.

Italian??? Thank you, thank you, thank you, yes, for pizza, Pecorino Romano , Chianti, ..., and also for https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aiSSz0snWzA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-TwMfgaDC8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2J7JM0tGgRY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkHGUaB1Bs8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1woH96ROG-c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7OyQf90WNc

I had no part in any of that.

But here's another song you probably won't like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9WWz95ripA

Re: The Physics of baking good Pizza (2018)

#34

Post by cinntaile »

gwill wrote: post #7
kevinmchugh wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also"baking steels", which are like stones but make of steel available on the market. That's the brand name but there perfectly good knock offs available. The heat transfer dynamics are probably preferable, and the steel can't crack in two under thermal shock. I've been happy with mine.

you can also "make your own". i went to a metal working shop and was able to get a 3/8" sheet of steel cut to the dimensions of my oven and they even rounded the edges for me. It was only about $45 ~5 years ago.

You can find ready made ones for that price nowadays.

Re: The Physics of baking good Pizza (2018)

#35

Post by AlbertCory »

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #17
graycat wrote: post #15

Pizza is one of my standard food items. E.g., I get bread and pizza flour in 25 pound bags from Sam's Club. Each batch of dough uses 650 ml water, 1 tablespoon of Fleischmann's active dry yeast, 1 tablespoon of salt, and 1 kilogram of the flour. I end up with 8 chunks of pizza dough. So, each chunk of dough is good for one pizza for one. No way do I want to try to compete with the artistry of brown spots from 600+ F…

> No way do I want to try to compete with the artistry of brown spots from 600+ F wood-fired pizza ovens, etc If you make pizza a lot, consider also the middle way of gas-fired "portable" ovens, the likes of Ooni or Roccbox. My experience was very positive.

Disclosure: very much a beginner at this and I'm happy to be corrected on any of it.

My Ooni experience has been very bad. I have an IR thermometer, so I can check the temps: at the back it's 900, at the front 600. This is after an hour of warm-up. If I weren't so stubborn I'd have gotten rid of the Ooni already.

Furthermore, the lack of height means you can't use gravity to slide the pizza off the peel, like you can with a kitchen oven when you slide the rack out. So the pizza tends to stick to the peel and not want to go in. (I know: lots of flour on the peel. I do that.)

I've had much better results with the kitchen oven at 500, preheated for an hour, and a steel.

This article also neglects the art of gluten formation, which lets you stretch the dough without tearing it, AFAIK. Which raises a question for y'all: rolling pin, or hand-stretch? The owner of my local pizzeria, which has been there for 50 years, says rolling pin.

Re: The Physics of baking good Pizza (2018)

#36

Post by kevinmchugh »

jghn wrote: post #26
SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> steels seem to get better results In a multi-purpose electrical kitchen oven, sure. In a hotter, dedicated gas pizza oven such as a Ooni or Roccbox, the supplied ceramic stone works perfectly, and a steel would cook too fast.

Yes. When we first got our baking steel I tried putting it on our outdoor gas grill as it can get up a bit over 700F. Let that thing heat up for a good hour, put the pizza on the steel and nearly burned myself from the steam that came off. Result was a charred bottom crust and raw top crust. Granted part of that was because the grill itself doesn't heat from the top as well as a real oven. Now we use the steel only i…

My grill gets to 600F, and I put the steel on there, it doesn't take too long to preheat. But yeah, the bottom will be char before the cheese melts, so I pull it after about 90s, and then finish the top with a searzall. Something like 5 minutes total per pie, two cooking at a time. Fun party activity to have two people working on them

Re: The Physics of baking good Pizza (2018)

#37

Post by mr_mitm »

bombolo wrote: post #18
graycat wrote: post #15

Pizza is one of my standard food items. E.g., I get bread and pizza flour in 25 pound bags from Sam's Club. Each batch of dough uses 650 ml water, 1 tablespoon of Fleischmann's active dry yeast, 1 tablespoon of salt, and 1 kilogram of the flour. I end up with 8 chunks of pizza dough. So, each chunk of dough is good for one pizza for one. No way do I want to try to compete with the artistry of brown spots from 600+ F…

Italian here! I don't think you're legally authorised to call that "pizza" (just joking, you are, but people might disagree). 1kg of flour for a single portion pizza seems very excessive.

> just joking

Unless you want to call it a Pizza Napoletana, then there is this (by the EU, of course): https://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:...

Re: The Physics of baking good Pizza (2018)

#38

Post by SoftTalker »

HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #8
amelius wrote: post #3

Ok, what's the verdict on using pizza stones?

I've tried pizza stones in my oven, but I get far better results with a pizza screen. Bought a 5-pack from Amazon for $20 and never looked back. Cast iron also works better than stones I found.

I worked at a Dominos Pizza as one of my first jobs. Back then, they still used real pizza ovens not the conveyor blow-dryers they use now. They ran at about 650 degrees F IIRC. We used screens directly on the bottom of the oven, which was cordierite.

It took some skill to bake pizza consistently in those, and also not get burned. That is why they were replaced by the conveyor ovens, which any idiot can use but which also produce an inferior pie.

Re: The Physics of baking good Pizza (2018)

#39

Post by deltarholamda »

graycat wrote: post #15

Pizza is one of my standard food items. E.g., I get bread and pizza flour in 25 pound bags from Sam's Club. Each batch of dough uses 650 ml water, 1 tablespoon of Fleischmann's active dry yeast, 1 tablespoon of salt, and 1 kilogram of the flour. I end up with 8 chunks of pizza dough. So, each chunk of dough is good for one pizza for one. No way do I want to try to compete with the artistry of brown spots from 600+ F…

Pizza gets a bad rap healthwise, but when it's made at home it can be perfectly healthy.

I make flatbread and use that as the pizza crust. Then everybody in the family gets to put their choice of toppings on. It's a bit of a circus as you can only bake one pizza at a time in our 24" oven, but circuses are fun.

The advantage of the flatbread is all you really have to do is get the toppings hot and cheese melted, as the crust is already cooked. Pizza purists won't like that, but it works very well. You can keep the sugar and salt content reasonable, and making a decent sauce is really simple.

Post reply on HN