Comment by ggm | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ggm | Hacker News Reader

Yea. His legal disclaimer is necessary. Modding your oven interlocks for pizza..

There are good small high-temp pizza oven options. If you care enough about the quality you're heading to something in that space, or building out a brick furnace in the backyard.

I think home pizza is great. I love making it, but its nothing on the stuff i get from the two italian joints up the road, professionals get better results.

Same with coffee: I'd rather pay a competent barista.. But if I lived in the woods in vermont I might feel different: and I'd have room to make a pizza oven too!

If you live in a unit with a wired in oven, and you mod your oven to cook on the clean cycle.. your home insurance is probably void. If you rent: you're probably now in breach of your rental agreement.

Not getting his results, we pre-heat some ceramic (we use a plate but friends went to the hardware store and got a large clay floortile) and this, combined with direct radiant heat from the elements, gets a pretty good outcome: fast cook base and crispy finish on the toppings.

Also: this americanism to refer to Pizza PIE. Thats Chicago, and is abhorrent sloppy nonsense. I've had one. its tomato sauce in a piecrust. its like eating lukewarm dense tomato soup with cheese topping. I can't imagine why people do this except I also gross out on dirty fries so I kind-of get it, its comfort food for the locals. But anywhere else, pizza means thin crust, and arguments about how much beyond basil and cheese goes on it.

(I am australian. I do not put pineapple on pizza. Tandoori Lamb is pretty good mind you.)

While Chicago deep dish pizza more resembles pie, the term pizza pie most likely originated in NYC. Also you're missing out by skipping on pineapple.

https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/263732/where-doe...

I call it a 'Pizza inspired casserole'.

I don't know what you're referring to, but that absolutely does not describe any Chicago pizza. And while I'm sure some do, I can't think of many Chicagoans who call it "pie". At all. I dare you to go to Pequod's or Burt's Place or Labriola and tell me it isn't as good as any pizza you've had anywhere. If you think of deepdish as "soup" the you had an unfortunate experience. And Lou Malnati's buttercrust is...everything. There are astonishingly good Chicago-style hole in the walls all around Chicago. So many. But what you described...I think you're talking about something else.

I'm talking about the kind of sit-down joint you find off wacker drive, as a tourist of IETF attendee, in a clutch of other people none of whom are local. Probably the mistake was allowing somebody to say "lets do pizza" instead of sampling the richer food choices beyond the tourism hub.

I've had many fine meals in Chicago. "deep dish" Pizza isn't one of them.

His pizzas look better than any homemade pizza (NY style) I have ever seen by far.

I got ok at making pizza, but not on this guy's level.

He said it, and it's true; it's about the crust.

I have almost completely given up on good bread though. I once heard that the book Julia Child's really valued--La Bonne--didn't have a chapter on making bread. The author said something like the best bread is bought from a good bakery. (It's basically sourdough bread I gave up on.)

Consider Ken Forkish’s “Flour, Water, Salt, Yeast”. I’ve been happily making bakery-quality sourdough with it.

I've decided good bread at home is too much damn work. I've done the sourdough thing, I've done Flour, Water, Salt, Yeast, I've done baguettes the slow & hard, correct way. I've put a lot of time into it. Results far too mixed, and never amazing. I still make bread but I don't bother with fancy shit anymore. Just mix up a simple ratio dough in the standing mixer, rest it, and bake. I use lame dry-instant yeast—I've discovered, after much trying, that I hate basically everything about keeping sourdough starters. The space they take up in the fridge, the mess, the way they look, having to "feed" them, the waste (don't listen to hip eco-conscious mommy bloggers, you can't use excess starter to make pancakes—I'm still haunted by that one). The care require in prepping it to even maybe get a half-decent rise. Nope, never again.

But you can use excess starter / discard to make damn fine waffles.

https://www.seriouseats.com/bread-baking-sourdough-waffles-r...

> I hate basically everything about keeping sourdough starters. The space they take up in the fridge, the mess, the way they look, having to "feed" them, the waste

After a few months you don't need to feed it anymore. I just put 50 grams in the fridge and forget about it until I run out of bread or decide to bake a loaf for friends. 50 grams makes enough levain for two loaves; I just take 10 grams out of the levain and mix it with 20 grams water and 20 grams flour, let it rise for a day, put it back in the fridge and then forget about it again... Rinse and repeat, no waste.

> It's basically sourdough bread I gave up on.

And I can't eat store bought bread anymore, even the artisan stuff. Which kind of figures, I spend about 30 minutes of actual work on 2 loaves and there's no way a professional operation would spend that much time on theirs.

> Also: this americanism to refer to Pizza PIE. Thats Chicago, and is abhorrent sloppy nonsense.

First person I knew IRL who regularly referred to it as "pie" (to the amusement of the midwesterners he was working with—that's rare usage here) was a born & bred New Yorker. Americanism, yes, but AFAIK it's not at all confined to, or even resulting from, either of Chicago's major pizza styles.

I've made two brick ovens in totally different places with very different types of bricks. The thing that surprised me was how similar baked goods come out of each. It's kinda magical.

I've often wondered what it is that does the trick and I'm not entirely sure anyone's theories are quite right. It's probably a few things: high heat for a toasting/char effect, with radiant heat providing some kind of specific heating mechanism. But I also have started wondering if there's something about the humidity that's different in most wood-fired brick ovens.

I'd love to try one of those tabletop pizza ovens but haven't gotten around to it yet.

Those pictures make me want to go out and start churning out pizzas.

>But I also have started wondering if there's something about the humidity that's different in most wood-fired brick ovens.

Major byproduct of burning hydrocarbons is water. That'll definitely raise the humidity.

I noticed a huge difference when I moved from an electric oven to gas. Electric heat felt much drier.

> arguments about how much beyond basil and cheese goes on it.

Perhaps my most controversial stance is not thinking cheese is all that important as a pizza topping.

My favourite pizza to make is a big mound of spinach (however much you think is way too much will shrink down to nothing) and dollops of ricotta. But if they're not available, I have some grilled vegetables (whatever really) and then find myself grating some cheese on for no reason other than that's what pizza is 'supposed to be like'.

I prefer homemade pizza for one simple reason, I can choose the toppings and their proportions myself. This more than makes up for the deficiencies.

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