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LabRat ... what is that rig on your weber ? Is that a home made thing ?

edit: found it.

http://www.2stonepizzagrill.com/

$289. Yikes.

on the other hand, that's only 15 pizzas from coalfire

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Ed Fisher
my chicago food photos

RIP LTH.

I wish I had enough room for a metal shop to make things like this, but no. I bought mine very early on, before he was selling them as a business, and it was quite a bit cheaper then. I think I paid around $190 for it. It works pretty well though, I've measured the bottom stone temp as high as 950 degrees. Only got to about 750 degrees for the pizza in the picture, didn't have enough charcoal to fill the chimney. I just got a new supply of Caputo 00 pizza flour and Ezzo pepperoni, so I'm gonna try and make at least one pizza a week this season!

http://blahgtech.blogspot.com/2010/04/m ... grill.html

Inspired by this thread, Friday movie night has become Friday homemade pizza night. One of our favorites:



Thanks for the inspiration, everyone!

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Heres' a little video I made about how I make pizza sauce. Really, it was more of an exercise to test some new video stuff, but it does show exactly how I make sauce. Best in HD mode:

Great video, Bill.

I'll have to start keeping the seeds in my sauce.
Hmm..funny, I pictured you looking like The Rock

Funny thing is that I'm also called "The Rock", but that comes from a kidney stone I passed back in 1993.

Thanks for the video, Bill. I definitely like the "how to" format. I hope you keep it up.

One question: If someone is working with a home oven (capable of 550, at best) do you recommend simmering the sauce down a bit to thicken and remove some moisture?

I've essentially been doing just that: taking a basic crushed tomato sauce, cooking it down gently to a more usable thickness and then adjusting seasoning for balance.

Best,
Michael

I'm not Bill (and have nowhere near his knowledge about this), but I'll note that I've been using hand-crushed, unsimmered tomatoes for my home oven pizzas and have been happy with the results. It's possible that I do a little extra draining off the side of the spoon before spreading the sauce onto the pizza.

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So cooking the tomatoes has 2 separate aspects: 1) It changes the flavor which can be influenced by the additives in the can, the amount of juice/puree you add, additional ingredients, etc. Matter of personal taste. Most pizzas sold in this country are topped with cooked sauce. 2) Consistency will, of course, thicken with additional cooking. For pies baked in a conventional oven, I would cook the tomatoes down to the desired consistency, but I would minimize the amount of juice/puree in the sauce. I usually reserve any leftover liquid for Arroz a la Mexicana.

BTW, YouTube has a new feature that displays machine-translated captions. Those Google machines just crack me up - far funnier than I could ever be. Warning about the Sauce video I posted yesterday. NSFW. But just a little.

I prefer San Marzano canned tomatoes, peeled, seeded, roughly chopped and gently pressed through a strainer to remove excess moisture. Raw over simmered tastes so much better to me.

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Nice video, Bill!
I've not made sauce for pizza, but sauce concentrates for pasta and other uses, similarly. With fresh tomatoes, I peel and then puree and concentrate, or used canned ones which are already peeled. The inner pulp and seeds have glutamic acid and other compounds* high in deep umami taste.
Here is some related content that may be of interest.

Heston Blumenthal/ In Search of Perfection /Tomato sauce [youtube video; 1min 27s]
Science of Umami in tomato sauce
J. Agric. Food Chem., 2007, 55 (14), pp 5776–5780 DOI: 10.1021/jf070791p (probably the one you mention in your vid)

ETA: With fresh tomatoes, I reserve some of the liquid to add to the simmered concentrated liquid for the fresh flavor. I am yet to try concentrating tomato liquid with minimal heating.

*The glutamic acid and ribonucleotides provide the deep umami flavor. AFAIK, umami is from guanosine and inosine (which is similar); guanosine is the G - one of the four DNA or RNA residues. Hence many food additives (maggi seasoning sauce, for example) have guanosine or inosine (or even hydrolysed yeast - which essentially blasts open yeast cells spilling out the umami tasting G). Also note that the G (and inosine) is synergistic with glutamate in umami taste**

**Yamaguchi, S. The synergistic taste effect of monosodium glutamate and disodium 5’-inosinate. J. Food Sci. 32, 473–478 (1967).link to abstract

Thanks, Sazerac, for that info. I'll be doing a video on how I use fresh tomatoes for my pizzas as soon as my plants start producing. With fresh tomatoes, I barely cook them. I'll take a sauce made with really fresh tomatoes any day over a canned one. I'll take canned tomatoes over crappy fresh ones.

I just remembered - I think that my multi-purpose tomato sauce is based on a pizza sauce recipe I saw somewhere long back. I do add a bit of sugar and also half a carrot, grated at the beginning (and sweat some garlic and discard - done first).

I tried making the crust with about 1/4 whole wheat flour. I really liked the flavor although the dough was a little denser.

Asparagus, red onion, cream, parmesan, garlic and manchego: The asparagus was from my CSA (Genesis Growers) and it was incredible!!



Eggplant, tomato, olive, goat cheese, basil, a little parm.

Leftovers from Cinco de Mayo dinner made into pizza
chicken, black beans, red peppers & onions, salsa verde, Chihuahua cheese
and hot sauce.

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Daughter's pizza tonight

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my food shots

That cinco de mayo leftovers pizza really caught my eye. You have a knack with those Mexican/Southwest-inspired pizzas mhill95149

I can't get enough of the asparagus that I've been getting in my CSA--it tastes great on pizza. Here's another manchego, asparagus, red onion with a bechamel base.





Here's a Thai-inspired shrimp pizza. It tasted good but the whole shrimp made it unwieldy to eat. I think next time, I'll use little shrimp or cut them up.



Bill is definitely right about adding pesto after the pizza cooks. The flavors are so much brighter. For this pizza, I made a chunky almond-basil pesto and used fresh mozzarella and tomatoes and a little parm

I wouldn't dream of posting a picture of the C+ results of my attempt at homemade pizza last night. Sweet Baboo was very happy with the sauce and toppings, but I was annoyed that the dough stuck to the pan I used, due to insufficient oil, I suppose.

Also, I used Trader Joe's pizza dough, and the instructions said cook at 350 for 10-12 minutes, but that seemed too low a temperature. Ended up having to cook it nearly twice as long and crank up the oven temperature to 450 near the end to get it to finish. Anyone have any advice on a better time/temperature combo for TJ's dough? I did let it warm up to room temperature for about 30 minutes before I started.

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"I would gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today."

I use the TJ dough all the time.
Here's what I do:

out of fridge and onto the counter (mess of flour on counter)
form a brick and divide into 2 or up to 4 pieces ( about 110-125 grams for 1/4 of dough)
Reform into dough balls, dust with flour and cover with a dish towel for an hour or so.
An hour later I start to stretch the dough into pizzas. I like to let them rest 15 min. once and then
do a final stretch right as I'm going to make and fire the pizzas.
dust my wooden peel with cornmeal and make sure the dough is not sticking to peel
make pizza on peel (testing the slip factor a few times)

The oven (with pizza stone) has been pre-heating for about an hour at 475˚convection

Pizzas cook for about 7 min.

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I'd hate to open a can of tomato worms here but I thought I could lend some info about canned tomatoes that I found helpful a few years ago.

Apparently in the late 80's or early 90's, the U.S. imposed high tariffs on imported fruits and vegetables (not sure if these laws have changed but as or 2008, I think the info was still accurate). Because of this, Italian tomato producers started packing their tomatoes in puree and not juice. Packed in juice, they're considered a vegetable, incurring a high tariff; packed in puree, they're considered "sauce," thus a lower tariff. Some Italian labels incorrectly list "juice" but it is really puree.

The problem with this is that puree is cooked and can impart that flavor to the whole tomatoes packed in it; while the "juice" does not. Tomatoes packed in puree may also have a sweeter (cooked tomato) or metallic flavor. Many domestic tomatoes are packed in juice, not puree and therefore, can have a fresher taste.

Also, many of the domestics will add calcium chloride which is used to preserve the tomato's firmness. Without it, the tomato may seem mealy or mushy.

Like Bill, I'm a fan of the Carmelina brand (found at Whole Foods). I don't care for the calcium chloride, not that I consider it harmful, but rather usually don't mind the mushier texture due to the fact that I usually use these for cooked pasta sauce. Also, I prefer a canned plum variety over a round tomato and plum varieties are harder to find in domestic brands. It's all personal preference but if you're looking for a "fresher" tasting canned tomato, you may want to experiment with one of the domestic brands packed in juice as a comparison. I'm sorry if this has been brought up before but I didn't see it in the thread.

I really enjoy this thread. Also, great video Bill. Cheers...

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"It's not that I'm on commission, it's just I've sifted through a lot of stuff and it's not worth filling up on the bland when the extraordinary is within equidistant tasting distance." - David Lebovitz

lunch today

maybe a bit too much cheese....

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Thanks for the tips on how to use the TJ dough, mhill!

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"I would gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today."

The NY Times dining section had this article today about homemade pizza.

NICE! Way to re-cycle some left overs and make a SWEET pie!!
Cbot likes the status of that pizza....

Serrano Ham, Manchego Cheese, and Arugula Pizza with Ridiculously Puffy Crust. Not shown in this video is another pie that also had piquillo peppers. View in HD if you can.

Hi Bill,

I always learn something new from your posts.

After you patted it out, you did some dough manipulations with your hands. Sometime could you do detail (maybe even in slow motion) of this technique? I'm sure I'm not alone in wanting to emulate this.

Thank you!

Regards,

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Cathy2

"You'll be remembered long after you're dead if you make good gravy, mashed potatoes and biscuits." -- Nathalie Dupree
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Cathy2,

It is the "Neapolitan slap" method of stretching dough. It serves 3 purposes: 1) it allows the pizzamaker to stretch out the dough very quickly and evenly, which is essential for a high-volume operation; 2) the dough is stretched rather than pressed. Pressing out the voids created by proofing can result in a denser crust (obviously not a problem for my dough!); and 3) it looks cool and is great fun!

I'll definitely prepare a video that demonstrates this in slow motion - once I get much better at it. There are plenty of YouTube videos of pros using this method, but the action goes by too fast to clearly see the movements in detail.

Best,
Bill

Bill,

Thanks for the tip on the method's name. I'll check out youtube as you suggested.

While you feel you still need to practice, it looked pretty good to me.

Regards,

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Cathy2

"You'll be remembered long after you're dead if you make good gravy, mashed potatoes and biscuits." -- Nathalie Dupree
Facebook, Twitter, Greater Midwest Foodways, Road Food 2012: Podcast

Watch this real professional and you'll see why I need to practice a lot more (5-second rule applies to the one he dropped):