Genius Week 3: You've Got a Pizza My Heart

This past week was all about pizza. You may not know this, but in my home, pizza-making is most definitely not new. My dad has made pizza (a healthier version that uses more whole-wheat flour) a gazillion times, especially when my friends come over (so far, he's gotten very positive reviews). I've helped out a few times, but this past weekend was my first experience with making two entire pizzas. It turned out great.

Pun intended (creds)

In my opinion, "pizza margherita" was not a hard dish, especially compared to the salmon I made in Week 2. Overall, it probably took three-four hours max (counting the time spent on Friday and Saturday...yes it was a two-day process), which is most definitely an improvement.

Needless to say, I still ran into a few obstacles and setbacks. For instance, since we didn't have a pizza peel (the tool with a really flat and large head that pizza people use to put pizzas into the oven) to put the pizza on the steel plate (which had been in the oven at 475F for almost an hour), my parents and I had to be creative. We found a wooden board and sprinkled corn flour across it. When it came time to put a pizza in, the pizza was placed on the board. One person would attempt to slide the pizza onto the steel plate while the others would use tongs to help the pizza make its way slowly (without the toppings falling off or the dough piling up into a heap). This taught me that one must be flexible when working in the kitchen (and in life). One must strive to find solutions when there are problems, and one must not give up easily.

For the history folks. (creds)

Remember when I complained about my "frantic running around the kitchen" last week? This week, it definitely was not a problem. I read through and memorized the recipe word by word and step by step before cooking, and I gathered all of my ingredients to ensure a speedy cooking process. In my opinion, I'm starting to get the hang of cooking (my parents might have a different opinion, but oh well).

Over the past three-four weeks, I have most definitely gained an appreciation of the time and effort my dad puts in to make dinner every day. This old adage instantly comes to my mind when I think about cooking: "There is more than meets the eye." Looking and watching at someone cook is easy, but doing the cooking is a whole 'nother story. What I'm trying to get at is that my parents are a huge inspiration when it comes to cooking. They might not be pros like Nathan Myhrold, but they have experience and a "third sense" when working in a kitchen. They also carry things out in a methodical and scientific approach that guarantees a smooth cooking process (after all, it was my dad who suggested--more like demanded actually (since I was super-duper slow in the beginning)--that I begin to memorize recipes, and it was my mom who suggested that I visualize myself cooking a dish before I actually cook it).

Here's the updated timeline. We're getting awfully close to the final week!:

Week 0: Intro to Modernist Cuisine

Week 1: Blanching

Week 2: Sous Vide

Week 3: "Steel-Plate Cooking"
Week 4: Pressure Cooking

Week 5: Create My Own Dish

My recipe for the is featured below. As always, it came from the Modernist Cuisine at Home cookbook, although I did make a few modifications, such as...

Neapolitan Dough:

• Less is more - as always, less salt
• Stretching probs - I was kind of confused at what the book meant by "stretching" the dough. As you'll see in the video, I merely just "stretched" the dough...

 Original Recipe Pt. 2 (Neapolitan Pizza Dough)

 Original Recipe Pt. 1 (Neapolitan Dough)

Pizza Sauce:

• Measuring is for wimps - In the original recipe, the carrots and onions had distinct measurements. I merely "eyeballed" it.
• No pressure cooker! - My pressure cooker hasn't arrived yet, so I cooked the sauce in a standard pan while letting it boil slowly for forty-fifty minutes.



Original Recipe Pt. 2 (Pizza Sauce)

• No one needs salt and/or oil - The recipe calls for salt and olive oil at the end of the slow-boiling process to season the sauce. I completely disregarded it (actually b/c I forgot), but the sauce turned out great anyways.

 Original Recipe Pt. 1 (Pizza Sauce)

Pizza:

• Measuring is for wimps pt. 2 - As you will see in the video, I "eyeballed" the amount of sauce I put on my pizza
• Parmigiano Reggiano 4 lyfe - Instead of using "vacuum-dried buffalo mozzarella cheese" (which is such a mouthful to say...get it?), I used Parmesan cheese, which I had left over from Week 1's salad.

Original Recipe (Pizza Margherita)

Neapolitan Dough                                                           ❦❦❦❦❦❦❦❦❦❦❦❦ ******************************************************************************************************** Add 3 1/4 cups of flour, 2 tsp of honey, 1 1/2 tsp of salt, 1 1/2 tsp of wheat gluten, and 3/4 tsp of yeast into a mixing bowl. Add 1 1/3 cups of water into the mixing bowl. Mix using a mixer for five minutes at medium speed. Let the dough rest for ten minutes. Mix again for five minutes at medium speed. Then split the dough into four (can make four 12-14 inch pizzas) and stretch these portions of the dough. Roll these portions into small balls. Coat the balls with olive oil. Place in the dough balls in the refrigerator for 24 hours.

Pizza Sauce                                                           ❦❦❦❦❦❦❦❦❦❦❦❦ ******************************************************************************************************** Cut pieces of carrot and sweet onion. Put them in a food blender with 5-6 cloves of garlic. Blend until smooth. Saute in a pan for a few minutes at medium heat. Add in one large can of crushed tomatoes. Let it slowly boil for 20-30 minutes.

Pizza Margherita                                                           ❦❦❦❦❦❦❦❦❦❦❦❦ ******************************************************************************************************** Take the dough out an hour before it goes into the oven. Shape the dough into a circular shape (12-14 inches diameter). Make sure that the edges, which will be the crust, are higher and thicker than the "body" of the pizza. Spread the sauce out. Add green peppers and artichokes. Straight into the oven!

The pizza was great; I ended up eating four pieces (which is equivalent to one pizza). Compared to my dad's pizza, which is healthier, my pizza tasted more like "professional-restaurant pizza" (if you know what I mean). It was thin and crunchy, and the sauce was a bit salty--but regardless, it was pretty good.

If you sense a "red" theme with the kitchen appliances I've used so far, you're definitely onto something. I used my dad's mixer for the first time (he typically uses it to make bread), and it was a lot of fun. I know mixers may seem like ordinary kitchen equipment, but let's remember who didn't cook before this project and who is doing her project on cooking because of that (hint: you're reading her blog).

The Mixer

I also used a steel plate for baking the pizza (hence, the technique this week is called "steel plate cooking"). Typically, when my dad makes pizza, he uses a clay plate, but for this project, we decided to test out a steel plate. We did cook one pizza using the steel plate and the other using the clay plate just to compare and contrast taste and texture. I felt that there was no discernible difference between the two pizzas (both tasted great to me), but according to my parents, there is a subtle difference. 

According to the Modernist Cuisine at Home cookbook, a steel plate has a high thermal capacity that allows the pizza (esp. its crust) to be cooked evenly, while "pizza stone" (which I think is the same thing as our clay plate) has "even heat distribution and develops a good crust color." However, steel plates are expensive and heavy, and pizza stones have "lower thermal capacity and less temperature stability."

The steel plate

I found this fascinating article that compares and contrasts steel and stone when cooking pizza. The author, J. Kenji López-Alt, writes: "Metal conducts heat better than stone and it stores more heat per unit volume than stone—both key characteristics to creating a pizza that cooks up both light and crisp with the characteristic hole structure and char that you look for in a good Neapolitan or New York-style pie." López-Alt then makes different types of "pies" (pizzas) using steel and stone and contrasts them. He explains that holes in the pizza and crust "develop when air and water vapor trapped inside the dough matrix suddenly expand upon heating in a phenomenon known as oven spring". If faster energy is transferred to the dough, there will be bigger the bubbles, and  the crust will be "the airier and more delicate".

Comparison of different types of surfaces for baking pizzas

Here's the vid (enjoy!):

Sequence of Events (from the vid):

1. Putting flour into mixing bowl.
2. Putting salt into mixing bowl.
3. Putting wheat gluten into mixing bowl.
4. Putting honey into mixing bowl.
5. Putting yeast into mixing bowl.
6. Hooking up the bowl to the mixer.
7. Adding water and turning on the mixer to a medium speed.
8. Stretching the dough after it is mixed.
9. Splitting the dough into four smaller pieces.
10. Stretching a small piece of the dough and shaping it into a ball.
11. Brushing olive oil on the dough balls and putting them into the refrigerator.
12. Cutting carrots and placing them into the mixer.
13. Cutting onions.
14. Blending carrots, onions, and garlic in a food blender.
15. Adding oil to a pan.
16. Adding the blend of carrots, onions, and garlic.
17. Adding crushed tomatoes to the pan.
18. Taking the dough out and gradually shaping it into a pizza.
19. Adding tomato sauce.
20. Adding toppings.
21. End product.

The Before and After

Stay cool ☯,
~A

Links/Resources:

• This cool article about Modernist Cuisine, Nathan Myhrold, and many super awesome and yummy dishes.
• Check out this link to the Modernist Cuisine website that features one of its products: The Baking Steel (steel plate for pizza)
• Harvard's Science and Cooking Lectures: I'm currently making my way through the first lecture, which is incredibly interesting. I've already learned a great deal about science and cooking so far.

My Comments:

• Lil
• Josh
• Jess
• She Likes Sweet Potato on Her Pizza
• AL