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Pizza Heat

The reason you can't make restaurant-quality pizza at home is because good pizza needs at least 750 degrees. You saw what a proper oven can do, in the article a few days ago about the wood-fired clay oven my friend Tom baked up. You can do it at home by rigging your oven so you can open it during the self-clean cycle but now, there's a better way.

A new way to get proper-pizza heat at home comes from Serious Eats (which I picked up via Lifehacker). I haven't tried it but it's a sound idea. Simply: Turn on the broiler. Meanwhile, heat a cast iron pan on high heat for 20 minutes. Put the pan in the oven, upside down, under the broiler. Bake your pie on that searing platform for about 90 seconds.

Hey, someone please try this and add your finding to the Comments! I am traveling and won't be able to do this for weeks. I'm going to New York, where real pizza lives.

(By the way -- a great pan for this would be the 15-inch Lodge cast iron, about $40 from Amazon. I have this pan and it's very handy, and a very inexpensive way to get the monster pan you need occasionally.)

Ad Example

This billboard is cited by various marketing sites as a great example, of simple, single-message advertising aimed squarely at the customer's benefit.

But check the company's website:

Portable Pizza

 

I'm a bit of a snob about pizza. To me, unless it's from New York, Chicago, or Naples, it's not really pizza. And one of the most important pizza characteristics is a hot, hot, hot oven, preferably wood-fired. A proper pizza oven runs at 750 degrees F or more (many top 900) and turns out a pizza in a couple of minutes.

At an outdoor event sponsored by the East Bay Nation of Men, dinner was "gourmet" pizza. Now, I think the Bay Area is one of the finest food locations in the world and the pizza here is often very good — but never excellent and I didn't expect much at an outdoor venue. But my preconceived notions about pizza in the park were about to change.

Around  2 PM, a truck showed up with a trailer carrying what looked like an igloo. It drew a lot of attention and guesses. No one guessed that it was a wood-fired pizza oven, made by our friend Tom Gerstel. Yes, "made by." It turns out Tom's new business is wood-fired pizza catering, using the "portable" oven he built.

A crowd gathered as Tom lowered the trailer (whrrrrrrrrr, men love machinery) and wheeled the oven into place. Whrrrrrr again as a hydraulic lift raised the oven to working height and he attached the legs to its custom-welded frame (men love welding: Fire and molten metal, what's not to like?).

He started a fire with just a few pieces of hardwood (men love fire, too). The thickly insulated box takes a surprisingly small amount of wood to get to working temperature. But it does take a couple of hours.

It gets mighty hot in there but the temperature is not the whole story. The pizza sits on the brick floor and heats by conduction, the way your feet do on hot sand at the beach. It also gets a blast of hot air, like a convection oven, since the flue is a third of the way down from the top of the dome, creating a constant swirl of hot air from the fire, around the top, and out the chimney. A third heating mechanism comes from radiant heat, the way a toaster works. The dome delivers radiant heat from all directions.

Tom built this himself. The oven interior is from purchased parts, most of the rest is from scratch.
The oven is extremely well insulated. It was cool to the touch even while an inferno ran inside.

But we're not here to talk about fire brick and welded stainless steel. This is about the food.

Tom believes in good ingredients. He uses organic flour and an array of prepared toppings. He makes a thin pizza which crisps up like a cracker in the high heat. We had an array of pizzas with pesto, marinara, a four-cheese blend, pepperoni, basil, mushrooms, roast garlic, anchovies, feta, and more. Most of the pies were simple and sophisticated with two or three ingredients. But the beauty of this is that he'll make what people want. He even had some tofu — not a hit, I have to say.

He can turn out a pizza in 90 seconds and run at least three at a time, meaning he can feed many hundreds of people.

Sound good? You can reach Tom via his website, Copper Top Ovens.com (it's a pretty primitive site right now — I think he's been busy welding). But right now, I will close with some glamor shots. Click to see them full-size.

 

 

 

Food Week at Lifehacker

Lifehacker, one of my favorite sites, focused on food this week. In addition to the usual postings for the "get things done" crowd, were ten top food videos, how to freeze fruits and vegetables, how to season cast iron, what to get at McDonald's and Wendy's (and tips for making your own burgers), what to make for lunch, must-have utensils, and how to make your daily bread.

Classic French Omelet

Everyone knows how to make an omelet. And if you ask your favorite search engine for the "best omelet" recipe, you will find that a lot of people — a lot of people — think they have the secret to the "perfect" omelet.

Maybe they're all perfect. After all, aren't eggs a nearly perfect food? Stuff them with anything you like and what could be better?

I was looking for something specific, and it was not the classic American omelet, puffy and lightly browned, bulging with most of a pound of ingredients. I was looking for the classic French omelet, rare enough that many Americans haven't see one in the wild. This style is much smaller, thin and rolled, with mere ounces of filling. Elegant enough for dinner, it doesn't rely on a Big Bertha payload to achieve culinary excellence.

After a few decent tries, along came the January issue of Cook's Illustrated. In their usual, fastidious way, they optimized and tweaked. I've done this several times now and really like the results. Here is my version of their version of the great classic. 

This is more "technique" than recipe. Follow the steps in order, because timing matters. I don't usually do a lot of prep (I prefer to prepare ingredients as I go), but for this one, you want everything poised and ready.

1. Place a non-stick pan (yes, it must be non-stick) on the stove, on the lowest heat setting. Just leave it there. You want very even, very low heat and this long warmup erases any cool spots.
2. Start with about a tablespoon of butter per person, cut into small pieces. Place in a small dish (keep each portion separate) and put in the freezer.
3. Choose your filling ingredients. The French omelet won't carry a massive load, so think in terms of a few tablespoons of flavorful ingredients such as great cheese, bacon or prosciutto, herbs. Not too many — France is not Denver, folks!
4. All ingredients should be cooked and at room temperature or above. There will be little cooking time inside the omelet. You can cook in the same pan but wipe it out well and return to very low heat when you're done. Saute bacon, onions or other vegetables, mince everything well, set aside. Cheese need not be melted but it must be grated very fine.
5. Prepare the eggs: 1 egg yolk plus 2 whole eggs. No milk or water. A little salt (less than usual), a grind of pepper. That's all. Whisk very well, so there is no trace of separate yolk or white. If you are feeding several people, have each omelet's eggs in a separate bowl.
6. Set the table and make sure everything is ready. This is one time where people will wait for the food; the food must not be asked to wait.
7. Have a silicone spatula and two chopsticks handy.
8. Put half a tablespoon of butter in the pan. Leave the heat on low.
9. As it melts, get the bits of butter from the freezer. Toss one portion's worth (a tablespoon or so) into the eggs and whisk. Tilt the pan to spread the now-melted butter. Add the egg and frozen butter bits to the pan.
   
   
   
   Immediately start mixing the eggs with the chopsticks, stirring constantly and breaking up egg curds as they form.
   
    
10. Soon, the eggs will have cooked enough that there are gaps:
    
    
    At that point, you can stop stirring with the chopsticks, Shake the pan back and forth quickly to fill the gaps and follow up with the silicone spatula to smooth away any remaining gaps.
11. Add the filling and cover the pan.
    
    
    
    This as much filling as you want — usually, I use 2/3 as much as this.
12. Let it sit over low heat for 5-10 minutes, until the egg is nearly cooked through.
13. One the egg is cooked and the fillings are warmed and cheese is melted, remove the lid and prepare to roll the omelet onto the plate.
14. Hold the spatula in one hand, the pan in the other. Tilt the pan, to roll the omelet out, using the spatula to get the roll started. Separate the egg from the pan at the high side, working around the edges. Nudge the high edge down, to roll over the filling and continue to nudge as the omelet forms a roll and rolls out onto the plate. It's a lot easier than it sounds. Cook's Illustrated suggested sliding it onto a paper towel and using the towel to roll it, but I found it easy to roll out of the pan without any paper products.

Repeat for each person.

Ce n'est pas Gruyere?! Oui, c'est ça!

There is maybe a 50-50 chance the French in the title is correct, but it doesn't matter — the cheese is.

Click to see this full-size. C'est magnifique!

My friend Brad brought me a wedge of Gruyere from France. What a wonderful gift! It is quite unlike the gruyere cheeses I see here in the U.S. This cheese is quite hard with a thick rind that suggests long aging (Or so I have read), and a heady aroma. Not quite a stinky cheese (that's a technical term). It is much like a good parmesan reggiano and even has the white flecks typical in a good parmesan.

I used it this morning to make a French-style omelet. Wow.