 The Ongoing Modernist Pizza Review, Volume 2, Chapter 11, "Baking Pizza," Part 2 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 And now, “Transforming Dough Into Pizza.” As mentioned previously, I’m a big fan of the “T” word. I believe that the transformation of simple ingredients into the joy that is pizza is part of the reason for the ongoing fascination with pizza.
Every time you make pizza, it’s like a little bit of magic happens. And the Modernista description here of what goes on inside a pizza during the bake is a kind of marvel of thermodynamics meeting biochemistry all for our delight and dining pleasure. That said, I’m faced with a head-scratcher in this section. The description of why a Neapolitan pizza doesn’t get crispy belies my own experience with a wood oven. They tell me that a Neapolitan pizza doesn’t get crispy because the 60- to 90-second bake time is so short.
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Borrow the courage to launch your pizza like a pro, and you're on the way to freeing the pizza!3/18/2023  This will sound like it has nothing to do with pizza. It seems like it’s about sailboats. The good news is, you won’t get wet. And eventually, there’s a connection—especially if you think you need pizza screens or parchment paper.
Back when I used to go to sea in small sailboats a lot, there was always that moment. We’d cast off the lines, pull away from the dock, and I’d look back at the shoreline and feel a little adrenaline rush mixed with trepidation. We’re not talking the mythical “three-hour tour.” We’re talking about days or weeks at sea where the land is but a memory. I’ve even crossed the Atlantic in small sailboats. Crossing the North Atlantic from New England to the UK took a relatively fast 21 days with some atrocious weather. There was even a close encounter with a whale that shook the boat. (Didn't really think much of it, Just kept going.)  The Ongoing Modernist Pizza Review, Volume 2, Chapter 11, "Baking Pizza," Part 1Modernist 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 While I’m not one to claim there are absolute truths in pizza, following is an absolute truth. The good news is, I didn’t write it. Nobody cares what I think. Ready?
“You’ll find that understanding the basic science of how baking works makes the practice of baking your pizza easier and more interesting. After all, turning dough into a successful pizza is the result of a series of steps: properly proofing the dough, stretching it to the right thickness and safely transferring it to a hot oven (hopefully one that’s well suited to your specific pizza style) to bake.” Wow. Somebody might want to explain this to the guys (and it’s always guys) who keep posting their so-called pizzas on social media. They’ll say something like, “I got this new outdoor oven, and it keeps burning the crust! I’ve thrown away like 10 of these things! What am I doing wrong?”  Do you know what the world’s most popular topping pizza is? No, you don’t. Because the world is a big, crazy place with no two nation’s pizzas alike. But here in the US, where we think of ourselves as the center of the world, the favorite pizza topping by far is pepperoni.
All the rage right now is the notorious cupping pepperoni. You see it all over social media: ongoing pizza porntography of strangers’ pizzas awash in fleshy red meat cups that have been sizzling in an oven and are brown around the edges and filled with rendered fat to the point where each individual pepporono (I’m pretty sure that’s not a word but it fits with my scant understanding Italian and Latin grammar regarding singular versus plural constructs and I’m going with it) is like a tiny hot tub filled with rendered grease colored red from the ingredients contained within the meaty mass of the cured sausage product. What is going on here? How does one encourage such glorious cupping behavior in our sliced cased meat products?  The Ongoing Modernist Pizza Review, Volume 2, Chapter 10, "Toppings" 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 Order of assembly. Distribution. Weight. Preparation. Payload. Are we making pizza or going to the moon? Well, if the pizza is good enough, maybe both. But the word on the first page of “Toppings” lets you know that there’s real science going on. The word is: "biteability."
“Even though it’s a made-up word, we’re pretty sure you know what we mean: The ability to bite cleanly into a slice without dragging off all the toppings. Important, right?” Don’t try to tell me Mhyrvold & Migoya don’t cover the important stuff.  NOTE: All writing at Free The Pizza and all the pizzas depicted are made with 100% human intelligence and not a speck of AI cereal. Several years ago, I first peeked inside The Pizza Bible by Tony Gemignani. I was confronted with a daunting mystery ingredient: diastatic malt.
Tony Gemignani is one of the most highly respected pizza people in the world. And if he wants me to use diastatic malt—why? What is it? Where do I find it? Why didn’t my own favorite pizza preacher, Peter Reinhart ever mention it in American Pie? I did the easy thing with diastatic malt: I ignored it. In the nine years since selecting ignorance on diastatic malt, I’ve run into it in various places. In the year since I wrote and subsequently published Free The Pizza!, I’ve continued to wonder if ignoring diastatic malt is a personal failing. In the six months since making endless batches of New York-style pizza, I have finally reached a conclusion about diastatic malt. Ready?  The Ongoing Modernist Pizza Review, Volume 2, Chapter 9, "Cheese," Part II 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 Welcome to “The Importance Of Portioning.” Sounds thrilling, right? Or maybe not. But what is laudable is that Mhyrvold & Migoya seem to always be aware of how their audience is made up of a range of pizzamakers, from pros to hobbyists.
“If you’re making pizza at home, do you need to have precise portions of toppings? Not really, as long as you don’t overdo it. Follow our common sense steps in the chapter starting on page 3:3 and you’ll be fine. If you own a pizzeria, though, it’s a different story.”  This is the Elusive Butterfly of pizza stories that has it all. There’s an anonymous pizzaiolo, a hard-to-find location, an LA Times #1 rating, and that fabled west-coast snow leopard of pizza: a legit New Jersey slice in the City Of Angels, a trendy, tinselized town where a decent pizza fears to tread.
(I lived in Los Angeles for about two decades, and it was the land of pizza disappointment. Everybody was still residually agog enough over celebrity chefs cranking out small pizzas dotted with smoky fish, stinky cheese and carpet tacks that they didn't really care about the crust beneath the smoky fish, stinky cheese and carpet tacks. Somebody turned that pizza model into a chain of pizza joints and the rest is global pizza history. Things are somewhat better now. But I digress.)  The Ongoing Modernist Pizza Review, Volume 2, Chapter 9, "Cheese," Part I 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 Does the phrase “ooey-gooey” make you want to turn the page? Maybe it’s just me. But the Modernistas went there. It’s at the very beginning of Volume 2, Chapter 9, the chapter on Cheese.
They first acknowledge that the only cheese-less pizza most people expect is Pizza Marinara. They then say that people generally expect cheese. And finally, they reference the many advertising images of “ooey-gooey cheese.” Ack. I guess this confirms that while Mhyrvold & Migoya are science-based thinkers, they also live in the real world. Personally, I’ve tried to avoid the phrase “ooey-gooey” for my entire career as a writer. This might be the first time I’ve ever even committed it to print. That said, I have not tried to avoid cheese in any way. And this is a head-first dive into cheesy delights.  “No self-respecting Neapolitan pizzaiolo would ever do it that way.”
“Pizza sauce should NEVER be cooked!” “Use parchment paper!” Here’s a word of advice: Be wary of any advice you get from the Toxic Global Opinionsphere of PizzaNet. Why should you take my advice on that? Maybe you shouldn’t. Just because I’ve written an award-winning, #1 bestselling book on pizza making and it’s available at Amazon, it doesn’t mean I actually know anything about making pizza. (It’s true. The first two sentences of the book are, “I am not a professional chef. I don’t know what I’m talking about.”) |
AuthorBlaine Parker is the award-winning author of the new, 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, professional-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
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