The Ongoing Modernist Pizza Review, Volume 1, Chapter 4, "Pizza Dough Ingredients" (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 back to the epic Roller Coaster of Pizza Dough Ingredients. Last time, we were reviewing the Modernist Pizza discussion about water, flour, salt and yeast. In one short section of the chapter, this grand book pulls back the curtain on all kinds of mysteries related to basic pizza dough and the attendant water, flour, salt and yeast. They've covered the essentials. Next up, the incidentals…
SUGAR Reading and quoting from Modernist Pizza is always interesting. They’re approaching pizza scientifically, but seem to be aware that this is not a college textbook. It’s hard to imagine anything like this appearing in a scholarly tome in any of my science classes: “All organisms need sugar to survive, but yeast cells might have the biggest sweet tooth of all—it’s the only food they eat. Enzymes turn the starch in flour into an all-you-can-eat buffet of sugars, which the yeast cells metabolize into energy, alcohol and carbon dioxide, and the other byproducts of fermentation. The meal is a slow crawl that lasts hours—the concentration of sugar in the dough is limited by the pace of the enzymes.”
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The Ongoing Modernist Pizza Review, Volume 1, Chapter 4, "Pizza Dough Ingredients" (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 Amazon discount price as of 03/08/23: $294.99 For the last few installments of the Modernist Pizza review, we’ve been traveling the world with the Modernistas. They’ve been eating pizza from New York to New Haven, Tokyo to Chicago, and pretty much anywhere else that pizza is a force.
Here’s where all that changes. Now, in Modernist Pizza, Volume 1, Chapter 4, "Pizza Dough Ingredients," we start getting into the hands-on, home-pizzamaker-relevant aspects of pizza. And it all starts with… Pizza Dough Ingredients! Like so many of us, the folks at Modernist Cuisine are amazed that simple ingredients like water, flour, salt and yeast, and sometimes oil and/or sugar, can “yield crusts with incredibly divergent flavors and textures, from the chewy, wide-open rim of Neapolitan pizza to the crackerlike crispness of thin crust pizza. The Ongoing Modernist Pizza Review, Volume 1, Chapter 3, "Pizza Travels" (Part III)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 Legendary pizza can lead to legendary disappointment. To wit: a crust that is “Dry and dense, almost like hardtack,” “charred to the point of being burnt,” “very low on salt,” “lackluster sauce," "toppings tossed on haphazardly, and a paltry grating of Pecorino.”
Welcome back to Pizza Travels with the Modernist Pizza crew. When we saw you last time, we were talking about the challenges of nostalgia. Such challenges infect certain objects of New York-style pizza love. But perhaps nowhere did the Modernistas experience the dangerous challenges of nostalgia as they did in New Haven. The list of shortcomings in the first paragraph above were leveled at some of the most beloved pizza in the United States: That of the legendary New Haven. Their research took them to all the big, important icons of New Haven pizza. And their report? Talk about a slap in the face with a wet slice. The Ongoing Modernist Pizza Review, Volume 1, Chapter 3, "Pizza Travels" (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 When we left you last time, we’d been diving into pizza in São Paolo. As one of the world’s major pizza cities, it has a unique and vibrant pizza culture with a per-capita incidence of pizza restaurants that makes it outweigh the 900-pound pizza gorilla of New York City. As much of a shocker as that was, get ready for this little slice of pizza madness…
The city of Buenos Aires is equally as mythologized as New York or New Haven. And in contrast to Sāo Paolo’s sit-down, fine-dining pizza culture, Buenos Aires is a slice culture like New York’s. The pizza joint proprietors are reportedly a lot more like New Yorkers in their demeanor—and even in their suspicion of anyone wanting to do what the Modernist Cuisiners are doing. Pizza in Buenos Aires is eaten mostly while standing at a counter. The slices are thick and heavy and “smothered with cheese.” The Modernist crew actually decided that it is possible to have too much cheese. They referred to the slices there as “weighty” and said they’d like the volume “dialed back.” I admit, it does make me wonder whether there’s a cholesterol problem in Buenos Aires. The Ongoing Modernist Pizza Review, Volume 1, Chapter 3, "Pizza Travels" (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 In the pantheon of Modernist Cuisine cookbooks, it seems that Modernist Pizza is the first one with a travelogue. And an engaging, tasty, myth-busting travelogue it is.
In an effort to find the best pizzas on earth, the Modernistas hit what they refer to as the first-generation pizza cities: New York, New Haven, Naples, Buenos Aires and São Paolo. They also ventured to the style-related cities like Chicago, California and Rome. The visited a lot of pizzerias—yet the journey covered only about one one-thousandth of a percent of the world’s total pizza joints. And once again, there is the potential for fistfights. But it’s hard to argue with such a team of smart people with mad skills making the trek so we don’t have to. Even though we kinda wish we could. The Ongoing Modernist Pizza Review, Volume 1, Chapter 2, "World Of Pizza" (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 When we left you last time, we promised to explain Culinary Stockholm Syndrome, among other things. And shortly, we’ll be doing exactly that—and we’ll be speaking of some important philosophy from the Modernist camp. We just have to do a little more business before getting there.
So, our last “World Of Pizza” observation is that there is no true “Roman style pizza.” Roman “style” actually covers range of styles and lots of hype. The Modernistas believe this is unfair to Rome’s rich culinary tradition. So it goes. One of the interesting developments here in the land of Modernist Pizza is something that I believe explains a lot of vitriol. There’s a widespread and vocal hatred of Chicago deep-dish pizza exhibited by many. For me, Chicago deep-dish is simply uninteresting. I’ve certainly never said, “I could eat a doorstop right now, but there aren’t any nearby. Where’s the nearest Pizzeria Uno? The Ongoing Modernist Pizza Review, Volume 1, Chapter 2, "World Of Pizza" (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 Stockholm syndrome: a condition in which hostages in captivity develop a psychological bond with their captors.
What does that have to do with pizza? We’ll be getting to that. It involves many beloved pizzas and their questionable veracity as exemplars of the craft. It’s all part of Modernist Pizza’s Volume 1, Chapter 2 foray into the "World Of Pizza." And when they say “world,” they mean it. You can get pizza in almost every country on earth. And they point out the couple of places where you just can’t. (Doesn't that contrarian inside you just want to go to one of those two places and order a pizza? The Ongoing Modernist Pizza Review, Volume 1, Chapter 1, "History Of Pizza"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 Word for the day: Apocrypha-- /əˈpäkrəfə/ noun, writings or reports not considered genuine. The lesson of Modernist Pizza Chapter 1, "Pizza History," could be called: “Beware The Apocrypha,” of which there is much about pizza. The history of pizza is a complicated undertaking—in part because there is very little recorded history of pizza before the mid-1900s. Pizza is largely undocumented in Italy. That is how there are persistent myths about its stature in Naples. Myths are just about all there is. And those myths have been exploded by the team at Modernist Cuisine Things historical improve somewhat after pizza’s migration to New York and New Haven. But those things you think you know about pizza’s surging popularity in the United States? They might also be wrong. (Do not credit the GIs who ostensibly experienced pizza in Italy during World War II—a time when there was no flour available.)
Modernist Pizza opens with a history of pizza pursued with a diligence that is impressive. From its roots as a food of the poor, to its disparagement by famous people who visited Italy and found it gruesome, to its evolution into a trendy food item in post-war United States, the team at Modernist Cuisine did their work here. Despite all the remaining question marks, they’ve pieced together a chronicle of everyone’s favorite food and the various styles that evolved. The archival photography is excellent, especially if you’re interested in historical New York City. From the birth of the nation of Italy through pizza migration to, and evolution in the big pizza cities (New York, New Haven, São Paolo and Buenos Aires among them), this is an epic story stemming from a great Neapolitan diaspora. Of course, Americans have done all kinds of things to pizza. Yes, that includes chain restaurants and frozen product. But it also includes making it better, making it gourmet, making it more desirable in Italy. (Even prohibition plays a part in pizza. No history of pizza is complete without alcohol.) Yes, this is just the first chapter of an epic and sprawling multi-volume set. In this chapter, it’s a history book impeccably researched and illustrated. And Chapter 1, “Pizza History,” is comprehensive. It also takes up a full quarter of the entire first volume. Next installment, Chapter 2: “The World Of Pizza.” Soon. When we get around to it. In a week, I hope. The Ongoing Modernist Pizza Review, Introduction 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 The amazing thing is a book. What’s inside? A brief history of pizza. A single recommended dough recipe. An explanation about how to bake pizza in your home oven.
If you’ve read Free The Pizza!, that description might sound familiar. But, it’s obviously not my book. In fact, it’s the complete opposite of my book. It’s also a stunning example of why I wrote my book in the first place: there's a lot of pizza information out there. Not everyone needs that much intel at the beginning. But if you’re the right person, you may demand this book. I’ve just received and started reading Modernist Pizza. If you don’t know about this pizza epic, it is extraordinary. Weighing more than 30 pounds (including the 7 pounds of ink required to print it), Nathan Mhyrvold and Francisco Migoya’s masterpiece is a great idea—IF you know what you’re getting into. I thought I did. |
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
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