Syzygies

Jan L. A. van de Snepscheut

The factor he's taking into account is the WAF. (Apparently the Mayan EVFO pizza is a myth.)

True, but we have access to authentic Neapolitan dough recipes, and many of us have worked out our dough recipes from scratch. I sometimes bake pizza at 600 F, when I'm confident that the stone itself isn't much hotter, and I still watch very carefully. Whatever the recipe, it gets much harder to bake successfully above that temperature. One can mitigate the "fire from below" issues, but not completely. My neighbor has four different rigs, counting his wood-fired pizza oven. The Komodo Kamado is a Swiss Army knife. It does a great job with pizza but it is definitely not specialized to the task.

Rosetta Costantino meant get a home oven as hot as it goes (without hacking the self-cleaning mode to get the door to open!). That's below reputed Neapolitan temperatures. She's an engineer by training, with a successful Silicon Valley career that gave her the chance to retire young. So I believe her when she told us she brought an infrared temperature shooter around Italy, and never saw temperatures as high as claimed, where the pizza actually landed in the ovens. Huh. At the same time, The Neapolitan Pizza book is clear that the oven floor must be brought to 380 C - 465 C (715 F - 870 F). What follows are heat transfer equations. Huh. I'm reminded of firing cones, for pottery kilns. While one can describe what happens in a kiln by final temperature, a "cone" is a canary in the mineshaft to witness and integrate the entire progress of the cook. We talk about temperatures as a result of modern-day indoctrination, as if the model replaces reality. Mathematicians are the worst offenders; their tendency to substitute idealized models for reality turns what should be fairly smart people into blithering idiots. (I try to avoid discussing politics with mathematicians; the world doesn't always work the way they think it does.) So 550 F is just a guideline; there are many ways to come up with this reading. The Tel-Tru thermometer reading the air temperature just inside that dome hole is simply there as a chance to say "oops, that fire got away". Infrared readings of the stone and the inside dome are more relevant. As others say, an older fire that burned too hot but is now calming down is easier to work with (like so many of us). We use a substantial proportion of home-ground whole wheat flour in our dough, and we're simply making food we want to eat, not reproducing an authentic standard. What I know is that when our KK gets too hot, the crust burns before the dough or toppings bake as we'd like. Perhaps the best description of a pizza, besides thickness and topping weight, would be cooking time. One can guess oven conditions from cooking time. A Neapolitan pizza bakes 60 to 90 seconds, according to the standards reported in The Neapolitan Pizza book. Our pizza bakes 6 to 7 minutes.

I experimented with many add-ins, including diastatic malt powder, figuring out sourdough bread in the KK. I stopped using it after a few tries. I want to bake my bread as long as feasible. A browning agent shortens this window with no compensating benefit that I could identify. We took a pizza class with Rosetta Costantino (author of My Calabria). She favors the hottest oven one can arrange, so she counsels stripping any dough recipe of any add-ins (sugar, oil) that increase browning. Like landing a plane in adverse conditions, one wants the longest possible runway. My neighbors installed a dedicated wood-fired pizza oven, which presents its own host of challenges. By comparison, the main challenge (in my experience) using a KK is properly contending with the "from below" heat source. Without a heat deflector, essentially all of the heat is coming up through the stone, and one ends up pan-roasting the pizza. Recall the often-given advice for wood burning pizza ovens: Measure the stone, not the air. There's considerable lag in the stone. In the worst case, a fire got away but one corrects, thinking the new lower air temperature means one can bake pizzas after all. The still-too-hot stone then incinerates the pizza crust before the topping cooks. My favorite way to bake/roast anything in the KK is to start the fire earlier than one thinks necessary, and cook after the fire is dying down, but the KK itself is very heat soaked. This is tricky to both time and manage, but then one is cooking more with radiant heat from the KK walls, for a more even effect like a dedicated wood-fired pizza oven.

Ok, the book came. Beautiful production values; the paper is so sturdy that I was sure I was skipping pages. Until page 100, dry and technical to a degree one wouldn't expect in a parody. How to fulfill the EU standards for making Neopolitan pizza. Some interesting details on proportions, mixing, rising. Pages 100 to 153 is an entirely different book. Each pair of pages is a stunning photograph, and a detailed description of a way pizza can go off the rails, and what to do about it. Worth the price of admission.

Sieve, regrind what doesn't pass through the sieve. My usual technique also for spices. For example, freshly ground turmeric can be sourced from multiple varieties of turmeric (Kalustyan's has whole Alleppy turmeric from Kerela, in addition to the usual turmeric, and Aleppo, Maras, and Urfa peppers), and tastes much better than preground (even grinding a month at a time, for multiple Indian and Moroccan meals). I bash whole turmeric into smallish pieces in a mortar, grind, sieve, grind, ... No picture, but I put my two quart Dutch oven smoke pot on top of my Solo Stove Campfire (still on sale a few more hours), to preheat it and get some initial lump charcoal embers to go underneath in a cradle of coco extruded lump. I was going to take a picture, but I saw the smoke pot off-gassing a small, beautiful flame, so I knew it was ready. For anyone who thinks I was already crazy to use flour paste to seal my smoke pot lid, I'm sorry to introduce the complication of preheating the Dutch oven. It however worked amazingly well. I'm willing to do whatever it takes to make the best food I can; the flour paste is a chance to meditate on the childhood reasons why I once feared complexity in cooking. And a chance to wonder why I never tried a stainless steel Klean Kanteen instead. They make an optional stainless cap; one would need to remove the silicon seal. I'd drill 1/8" holes as usual, along the side that faces down to burn off-gassing, and three or more in case one is unfortunately blocked by shifting wood. One doesn't want to create a bomb; the Dutch oven has the advantage that in the worst case it will simply blow it's lid. Huh. Meditation over, maybe I'll stick to Dutch ovens. They do hold more.

Last night's spareribs prep. By request for a 4th of July party. We have many Mexican markets nearby in California, making it easy to find great chiles.

I believe the color is from two sources: I hydrolyze the whole grain flours overnight, developing natural sugars. And I proof the yeast with a bit of honey. Baking at 435 F in a KK, these both contribute color if one is patient. Overall, this is a simplification of my sourdough batards, that you have made. Overnight hydrolyze, then knead in remaining ingredients using a stand mixer. Two to three hour bulk rise, ten minute bench rest, 90 minute proof in final loaf shape. I've played with many variations of the above. Wetter doughs are harder to work with, and transfer to the oven. The farro adds great flavor and texture. It's a mistake to add the starter the night before, or to knead too far in the stand mixer. And so forth. The form factor is very forgiving; one can go all whole grains, and leave out the AA. (The recipe assumes a 100% hydration starter, 2:1:1 white flour, red wheat, rye. The water handling is tuned so the hydrations of the two components match, for ease of mixing.)

Yes, Aleppo and Marash are quite similar. We have both, and sniff each of them to decide what to use. Use it like and along with black pepper; do as the Romans and start the black pepper, red pepper in your oil before adding anything else. While the potato onion dish is a great side by itself, we generally use it as an upgrade to replace frying the potatoes and onions for Tortilla Española (Spanish Egg and Potato Omelette).

I'm starting to get the hang of Moroccan bread. Some transfer from that pizza thread helped. Never start a fire without a plan for the after-party. Here, an idea I saw in a Spanish cookbook once: Toss potato slices and onion slices in black pepper, pimenton, Marash pepper, cumin, salt, and olive oil. Bake for an hour or two in a clay cazuela.

The physics of baking good pizza Yeah, that helps.

So I tried Enzo Coccia's Pizza integrale dough (20% freshly ground Giusto's Organic Wheat Berries (Hard Red), 80% Giusto's Organic “00” Unbleached Flour). Nice recipe; next time we'll double the whole wheat. Carefully following his kneading instructions, I obtained a dough that was better than I'd ever realized before at not forming thin spots or holes. (I'm sure others have long been here, but this was a welcome surprise for me.) My attempts at imitating his slapping technique for forming the pizzas was laughable. Yet, somehow, it worked.

Still working on my Moroccan bread recipe. A bit wet, so it doesn't hold its shape, transferring to the KK. Red wheat, farro, rye, kamut, semolina, sourdough starter.

Youtube links to videos by Enzo Coccia: Neapolitan pizza: the 6 most common mistakes (the above video) Neapolitan Pizza: original recipe by Enzo Coccia Whole wheat Italian Pizza recipe by Enzo Coccia 750g Farina in proporzione: 80% 600g Farina 00 (ceneri max 0,55) 20% 150g Farina Integrale (ceneri da 1,30 a 1,70) 1/2 liter Acqua 25g Sale 1g Lievito

This is the book he waives at the end. I couldn't find stock in Italian, but a few copies in English are still available from Italy. I paid € 38,90 ($46.30) delivered to California. What a spectacular video! Cooking is a balancing act. Even if one isn't tipping over so far as to call one's pizza an "error" it is good to recognize what makes the balance.

My original three holes were 1/8". The main concern is avoiding convection through the pot, which is why I sealed the lid with flour paste. (Also, an exercise in not fearing complexity; a flour seal simply isn't that hard. Also, a nod to Moroccans who seal their couscous pots that way. Ahh, the romance!) There is an art to getting the pot hot enough without losing control of the fire itself. I generally use weed burners to light the fire just under the dutch oven. More trouble than it's worth on most occasions, but I have sometimes needed to add a nicely smoking pot to an existing already hot fire. I'd get the smoke pot up to speed over a blazing second Weber fire, then move it. Way too much trouble, right? If you were paying Thomas Keller $300 for dinner you'd expect him to do this! I do this when I'm stuck, but my reputation is on the line.

Cleaning, pitting, and freezing eight pounds of sour cherries making their brief annual appearance at Berkeley Bowl. A tribute to my childhood tree.

The Komodo Kamado is designed to be used with charcoal. I have made experiments with wood. In my experience the effects were not desirable. The well-insulated KK is engineered with much less airflow than a typical wood-fired pit, so off aromas from incompletely burnt wood become much more apparent. The refined approach to wood is of course to have two fires. Get the embers perfect in the first fire, move them to the second fire, and cook with the second fire. One approach to preparing embers for a KK could be this nicely engineered unit: Solo Stove Bonfire (I have their campfire on order, as this can also be an issue with lump charcoal, if one has fussy tastebuds. I want one for the engineering; my excuse is to prepare embers for a Moroccan majmar. Think of it as a chimney of the gods.) Alternatively, it's not actually hard to make charcoal. If you have all that wood, you should figure out how. I also experimented with this, which lead me to come up with the "smoke pot" favored by various people here for controlling smoking wood.

What wood is your deck? Beautiful. We redid ours in ipe, I just pressure-washed and oiled it again this week.

Weber Grilling Basket KK Charcoal Basket Splitter A match made in heaven: The smaller Weber grilling basket, and a KK charcoal basket splitter. Swordfish is expensive; we splurged by using some of our dwindling supply of KK coffee lump charcoal. The basket splitter pays for itself, in economic use of good charcoal. Moroccan charmoula: 2 tsp cumin, 3 garlic cloves, 1 tsp sea salt, 1/4 finely chopped cilantro, 3 TB finely chopped parsley, 2 tsp sweet paprika, 1/4 tsp black pepper, pinch Marash or other hot pepper, juice of one lemon or rinsed pulp of a preserved lemon, 2 TB olive oil. Pound together with a mortar and pestle, spread on fish. Marinate. Grill.

Tagine.mp4

9" Moroccan Souss Tagine Charcoal Brazier - Majmar Majmars are far easier to control than I imagined. No directions; I soak mine for extra protection. Sand goes on bottom. Only smaller pieces of charcoal lump fit for refueling, without moving the tagine.

@ckreef Will do! While I'm using a community pottery studio (worth it for cleanup issues alone; they recycle the old clay and have barrels of cleanup water to avoid choking drain pipes), everyone there is into decorative glazed pottery. Even their standard bisque firing temperature is high for ideal cookware: In any earthenware pot exposed to direct flame, a higher kiln temperature makes the pot less prone to cracking when dropped, while a lower kiln temperature makes the pot less prone to cracking when exposed to flame. I take this advice with a bit of skepticism. First, one can buy heat diffusers as carbon steel disks from eBay, for a song. Second, many cultures have worked out curing clay pots to improve heat durability; simply soaking a pot that hasn't been recently used makes a big difference. All that a correct kiln temperature does is improve the odds and longevity. One needs to think like a Moroccan: when the pot inevitably breaks, go buy another one for $4. Add two or three zeros to that price for the best New Mexico pottery, and I can understand why people are careful. To put kiln temperatures on this, think of a leading zero on a firing "cone" temperature as a minus sign (you know this, but other readers might not). From cone 1 (final temp 2109 F) temperatures climb to cone 10 (final temp 2381 F) or descend to cone 04 (final temp 1971 F), cone 010 (final temp 1679 F) and so forth. My studio bisque fires to cone 04, and glaze fires to cone 10. The Mica Red Low fire (018 to 04) that I want to master needs to be fired cone 010 to 017 for cookware. No one else is doing this, so I'll need to pay for entire kiln runs in their smallest electric kiln, just to fire a few pots at a time. We haven't discussed this cost yet, but the place is price-conscious and assumes everyone is. I'm asking myself how many times I can run their kiln before it makes more sense to buy a $1,000 kiln to use at home. If one is willing to commit to low-firings only, such kilns are simpler and cost less for their size. I'm picturing one piece at a time, and I don't want to limit diameter (14" ??) or height (12" ??). The smallest kilns are clearly only for mugs and such.

The one thing an enclosure (Dutch oven, steel bowl) won't do is deliver a massive slam of initial heat, as the steam condenses on the dough. Ask me how I know: After a few drinks with the neighbors, I got careless and threw in water ungloved. (I usually use ice with the KK to buy time, but I'm using the upper grill for Moroccan bread, leaving me plenty of room to land water on my cast iron skillet and chains.) The hand in question isn't so bad (I didn't have to skip my pottery wheel class today), but discretion suggests not posting a picture.