 The Saturday Afternoon Pizza Post is on hiatus this week. So instead of your normal, expected pizza nonsense philosophy or left-field how-to tip, we’re offering a simple cautionary note. Ready?
While eating the pizza you just made, don’t talk about other pizzas you’ve eaten. It’s a little like making love to one person while talking about making love to another. How well is that going to work out for anyone really?
0 Comments
 This is a sad tale. To borrow from the Broadway musical Hadestown, “It's a sad tale. It's a tragedy. We're gonna sing it anyway.” The good news: It’s short. And no actual pizzas were harmed.
This tale of woe is also a cautionary note. Thumbtack it to your kitchen bulletin board. (Do people even still have those?) Maybe there should be a refrigerator magnet. And this is not just for the home pizzaiolo. It’s for home cooks everywhere. Beware the evil that lurks in your kitchen!  The Ongoing Modernist Pizza Review, ConclusionModernist Pizza Written by Nathan Myhrvold and Francisco Migoya Published by The Cooking Lab; First edition, October 19, 2021 Hardcover: 1708 pages, 32.7 pounds, 13.78 x 10.24 x 15.94 inches List Price: $425.00 Amazon discount price as of 05/03/23: $294.99 People have I asked me whether they should buy Modernist Pizza. That seems like a loaded question: Whether I have an opinion on whether you should buy a $450, three-volume pizza “cookbook” that weighs 32 pounds and comes in a stainless-steel case with a bright red finish.
The answer is simple: Yes. If you can even ask the question, you are a candidate. If you are someone who doesn’t automatically say, “$450 for a cookbook? That’s insane!”, then you may well be the right person for this epic work on pizza: the history, current state of the art, techniques and recipes. The people to whom I’ve unequivocally recommended this book are very smart people who have two things in common: They are adventurers and they love pizza.  NOTE: This is a long-ish read. (It also contains a word or two of profanity.) If you’d like to download it as a PDF and read on your device, you can find it here.
If you use a pizza steel, one of the reasons is Andris Lagsdin. He’s homemade pizza's Man Of Steel. Back when Nathan Mhyrvold and the team at Modernist Cuisine began experimenting with bread baking, they determined that the best baking surface was not stone, but steel--which changed Andris's life. Once upon a time, Andris was a culinary rockstar chef in Boston. He used to run the pizza program for celebrity chef Todd English at his restaurant, Figs in Charlestown. However, Andris also comes from a decades-old family steel business called Stoughton Steel. He grew up in steel fabrication, and had gone back to the business to help his father when he saw an opportunity.  The Ongoing Modernist Pizza Review, Volume 3, Chapter 14, "Serving And Storage"Modernist Pizza Written by Nathan Myhrvold and Francisco Migoya Published by The Cooking Lab; First edition, October 19, 2021 Hardcover: 1708 pages, 32.7 pounds, 13.78 x 10.24 x 15.94 inches List Price: $425.00 Amazon discount price as of 05/03/23: $294.99 “You’ve mixed and proofed, stretched and sauced, cheesed and baked. It’s the moment you’ve been waiting for, the moment where you’ve just pulled the pizza from the oven. What more can we tell you at this point? Just dig in, right?”
And so it begins: the end. The last chapter of Modernist Pizza. But knowing Mhyrvold & Migoya, you’re going to get the Modernistas’ take all the way through to serving and storing your pizza, which means (yes): They did experiments. How to vent steam from the bottom of the pizza is a conundrum. Steam makes the pizza soggy, so how do you prevent that? Can making great pizza at home make the world a better place--or at least improve your love life?5/6/2023  Last Thursday night while I was out, I had text and voicemail messages from a longtime friend and pizza-geek reader of this blog. There was some urgency involved. I got back to him at the end of the evening. He was a couple of hours behind me. (Like a Billy Joel character, this guy used to give them the standup routine in LA. But that was another life, yet he still lives there. Lucky him!)
It turns out my friend was doing something public that showcases the Free The Pizza book, and wanted to make sure I was OK with the exposure. Let’s see. Am I OK with someone wanting to promote my books for free with no strings attached? Um… Yep. But this friend, whom we’ll call David (because that is his name) got onto a pizza jag. He was deep into the idea of making pizzas and working with toppings and making it a part of his repertoire and feeding his friends and wooing the women in his bachelor life and, and, and…  The Ongoing Modernist Pizza Review, Volume 3, Chapter 13, "Flavor Themes"Modernist Pizza Written by Nathan Myhrvold and Francisco Migoya Published by The Cooking Lab; First edition, October 19, 2021 Hardcover: 1708 pages, 32.7 pounds, 13.78 x 10.24 x 15.94 inches List Price: $425.00 Amazon discount price as of 05/03/23: $294.99 “But what do we mean by a flavor theme? It’s a combination of sauce, cheese and toppings that would work on virtually any style of pizza.” Thus begins the discussion of what to put on the top of your pizza.
My wife has been after me to write a book about pizza toppings. She feels like that’s something the marketplace is missing. I’m not sure whether I agree with that. But the Modernistas could certainly write it. I hope they will. They’ve done the research and have the recipes. And it’s all here in Volume 3, Chapter 13, “Flavor Themes.” I admit, I’m excited by this. (Yes, my life has become very small.)  It’s a fantastic April morning. The sky is a hopeful and promising blue. The birds are singing songs filled with lust. And I am sitting here in the garden, coming to a frustrating realization: I hate my spoodle. Beware the expertise of others and the tips they bring you. (Me included.)
First, you’re probably asking what in the name of the Holy Mother Of Pearl is a “spoodle” anyway. It’s the logical yet awful contractional name for a tool that is part spoon, part ladle while bringing the best qualities of neither implement. Yes, it sounds like a breed of dog which is a cross between a spaniel and a poodle. Maybe it is. If so, keep it out of my kitchen and away from the pizza. The spoodle is basically a flat-bottomed ladle with little to no angle in the handle. It was recommended as the ideal instrument for spreading pizza sauce. The recommendation came from the writers of an epic book about pizza making.  The Ongoing Modernist Pizza Review, Volume 3, Chapter 12, "Iconic Recipes," Part 4 Modernist Pizza Written by Nathan Myhrvold and Francisco Migoya Published by The Cooking Lab; First edition, October 19, 2021 Hardcover: 1708 pages, 32.7 pounds, 13.78 x 10.24 x 15.94 inches List Price: $425.00 Amazon discount price as of 03/08/23: $294.99 Perhaps there is hope for us regular folks as pizzamakers after all. The section of Chapter 12, "Iconic Recipes," beginning “Thick Crust Pizza” is another excellent, concise overview of pan pizza technical details and aesthetics. And something in there is eerily familiar.
In the section of “Thick-Crust Key Characteristics," there’s a photo of an “open crumb structure” crust. That photo makes me feel better about my own Detroit-style pizzas. They look shockingly similar. If I’m approaching anything Mhyrvold & Migoya approve as desirable, it makes me feel like I’m yet again doing something else correctly. The photos in Modernist Pizza can be very helpful in providing an aesthetically pleasing yet technically useful illustration of what this stuff should look like in process. This includes the beauty shots (of which there are many, many alluring examples). But it's also about the process shots within the recipes. And once again, who doesn’t love an exploded view photo of a pizza? This time, it’s a Detroit-style Red Top Pizza, as they call it (or a “red stripe” pizza as I originally learned it).  This is one of the easiest possible pizzas to make. And it happens by not trying to make pizza.
OK, what does that mean, and is it some kind of stupid zen koan about pizza? Granted, that could be the case. I have all kinds of half-baked zen thoughts about the "not doing" of things. But that’s not what’s going on here. This is much simpler and more on-the-nose. |
AuthorBlaine Parker is the award-winning author of the bestselling, unusual and amusing how-to pizza book, Free The Pizza. Also known as The Pizza Geek and "Hey, Pizza Man!", Blaine is fanatical about the idea that true, pro-quality pizza can be made at home. His home. Your home. Anyone's home. After 20 years of honing his craft and making pizza in standard consumer ovens across the nation, he's sharing what he's learned with home cooks like you. Are you ready to pizza? Archives
May 2023
Categories
All
|
RSS Feed