
How an Engineer Does Pizza - eavc
http://www.varasanos.com/PizzaRecipe.htm
======
erikpukinskis
Awesome. Apparently my dough has been too dry my whole life. I love this point
he makes:

 _Specialty flour is not a huge factor in this process. It's like when you see
people arguing about the relative merits of 2 different tensions pulls on
$1,000 tennis rackets, meanwhile they go out and miss the ball by 8 feet.
Forget it. Maybe if you are making pies at the 99.8th percentile and you want
to move to the 99.9th, then you should be worrying about this. Otherwise, let
it go. Work on the BIG 3 factors: high heat, a good sourdough starter and
technique (mixing and fermenting). This is where you will move from the 50th
percentile to the 99th._

I'm constantly baffled by people who have $1500 bicycles but are... well,
slow. I think in some cases, having expensive tools actually will make you
WORSE. Are you going to train harder if you slip through 5 seconds ahead of
your peer, or 5 seconds behind?

Don't buy cheap crap. Know how your tools work. But buying super-pro tools
when you're intermediate is stupid.

~~~
iuguy
It's funny. A lot of my friends say that I'm good at photography, but I use a
mid-range point and shoot (and even do some stuff with my iphone 4). When they
ask me what SLR they should buy I tell them I don't have one and would rather
blow the cash on a cheap camera and a good meal than an expensive camera with
features I won't use. I will eventually get one, but I'll want to use it for
specific things rather than just for general use (and I haven't decided what
those things are yet).

Incidentally if you use a point and shoot, about half an hour of reading here
(<http://www.geofflawrence.com/photography_tutorials.htm>) will do much more
for your shots than an SLR would.

~~~
mcav
But if you're actually going to invest time in learning the craft of
photography, an SLR makes a world of difference. It doesn't have to be a high-
end SLR by any means, but it _does_ enable you to capture many things that a
point and shoot would not.

~~~
iuguy
I absolutely agree, but there's no point buying the SLR until you're
comfortable with concepts like composition, exposure, lighting and colour
theory. If you take poor pictures with a point and shoot, all that will happen
with an SLR is that you'll continue to take poor pictures in more detail.

One day I will buy an SLR, but I'm not good enough (IMHO) nor do I have a
particular preference for certain types of shot that justify it.

~~~
rbranson
I also think that being able to carry around a P+S in your pocket (like my
credit-card-sized Panasonic DMC-FX35 -- with it's fantastic 25mm-equivalent
Leica Lens) gives you more opportunities to take shots you would have not been
able to take otherwise. Most of the time, a $200-$300 pocket-sized P+S is
going to focus and expose your photos way better than you'd ever be able to do
manually.

[http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3602/3620370987_e9a89ca652_b....](http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3602/3620370987_e9a89ca652_b.jpg)
[http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3113/2761953972_e1844d6c60_b....](http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3113/2761953972_e1844d6c60_b.jpg)

~~~
iuguy
Actually I use a Panasonic P&S with a Leica lens too. Fantastic piece of kit
and not too pricey.

I've been using Digital cameras since I first used an old Nikon that took
floppy disks (the first camera I bought was a Kodak DC215 that could play MAME
roms) and the Panasonic is the best I've had.

------
ccollins
I've been following Jeff's pizza advice for about 1.5 years. It's great! A few
notes:

0) crank your oven up as much as possible, and let it preheat for at least 20
minutes.

1) dough is super important - a slow rise in the fridge > 1 1/2 hour rise > 1
hour rise > store-bought dough.

2) Tomatoes in a can are always better than fresh tomatoes because they have
already been cooked (trust me).

3) use the best mozzarella you can find, preferably mozzarella di bufala (made
from water buffalo milk)

4) for the dough, use King Arthur Flour and bottled water - it makes a
noticeable difference.

~~~
lucasjung
"Tomatoes in a can are always better than fresh tomatoes because they have
already been cooked (trust me)."

Completely true, but not just because they've been cooked: tomatoes in a can
were usually picked ripe, so they actually taste like, you know, tomatoes.
Fresh tomatoes from a grocery, even "vine ripened" ones, aren't truly ripe and
will almost always be lacking in flavor.

I make my own salsa, and I typically use a mix of fresh and canned (diced)
tomatoes: the fresh ones for the proper texture, the canned ones for flavor.
It's not ideal, but it's better than either alone. The ideal solution would be
to grow my own, but I inherited my mother's black thumb.

~~~
ramidarigaz
Completely true, unless you can _guarantee_ that the tomatoes were picked
fresh. My parents live near a little organic farm that we've been buying from
for about a decade. We can drive to the farm stand and buy a bag of ripe,
delicious tomatoes that was literally picked an hour before. Those made some
of the best tomato sauce and salsa I've ever had.

------
heyrhett
My pizza engineer taught me that the volume of a pizza with radius 'z' and
height 'a' is, in fact, pizza.

~~~
xenophanes
pi * z * z * a

edit: oh wow I just got it, lol... I typed it in the right order and not using
z^2 notation by coincidence.

~~~
sliverstorm
come to think of it, it could be neat to call your pizza joint "piz^2a"

(I am mildly disappointed that I cannot use <sup>2</sup> or something of the
like. Are HN comments pto?)

~~~
sesqu
piz²a. Use Unicode.

~~~
Vivtek
Calling your pizza joint "piz^2a" could either get extra geek points, or be
one geekiness too far.

------
jellicle
Alton Brown (not mentioned so far in 64 comments, odd) has a couple of thin-
crust pizza techniques for the home chef.

Technique 1 involves using barbecue grill turned up high, oiling the grill
rack, and grilling the pizza. Technique 2 involves using a wire cooling rack,
a pair of pliers to hold it, and a gas stovetop, to toast or char the bottom
of the dough.

[http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/grilled-
pizza...](http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/grilled-pizza-three-
ways-recipe/index.html)

My personal technique is to put a pizza stone in the bottom of the oven, turn
it all the way up, and cook like that. 550F on a hot stone is not as hot as
some people manage, but it will still cook a pizza in 4 minutes and produce a
very nice char on the bottom, plus it's unlikely to set the house on fire.
It's a dangerous enterprise, however, as any pizza mismanagement will set off
your smoke alarms. My pizzas come out looking very much like Mr. Varasano's
examples. Varasano's talk about mixing, resting, and kneading is very accurate
and correct - it's technique, not ingredients, which produces good pizza
dough. For home ovens at 550F, you want something less wet than Varasano's
pictures, but still "wet" and slack compared to many doughs that you would
normally work with.

------
ajays
What, no mention of Pizza Hacker? <http://www.thepizzahacker.com/>

:-)

I've tried Pizza Hacker's pizzas a couple of times. They're quite good; but
just the fact that there you are, on a sidewalk, getting freshly-made pizza
out of a Weber-grill-oven, makes it all worthwhile.

Plus he has "hacker" in his name, which must count for something. ;-)

~~~
paulirish
Pizza Hacker suggested to my gf to try out cooking a pizza on the oven's Self-
Clean cycle, as it'll get hotter than maxing out the dial.

~~~
cperciva
If your oven has the same 'lock the door and refuse to let it open until the
oven has cooled down' feature as mine, that will get you a rather overcooked
pizza.

~~~
dfox
That seems like perfect example of misfeature. As you almost always want to
put things to bake into already hot oven and take them out before it all cools
down :)

Also, I never understood why most home ovens today have some complex timers,
that not only can turn the oven off or ring some bell (which both might be
useful), but also turn the oven on at predetermined time (what is that good
for?).

~~~
randallsquared
I'm not sure if you're kidding...

If you expect that the oven will have a lot of smoke from crud being burned
off at high temp, keeping the oven locked during that period probably seems
like a safety feature.

As for turning the oven on at a specified time: if you want to cook something
on low heat for 6 hours, there's no way to make that dish on a workday for
most people _without_ such an oven. But with that feature, you can just time
it to be done an hour after you expect to be home, and all is well.

------
meowzero
Finally I see Jeff's site on Hacker news. His pizzas are great, I've been to
several of his pizza parties in Atlanta before he opened his restaurant.

Too bad he's only known for his pizza (and his rubix cube). He is also a very
good hacker and developed a pretty snazzy C++ application framework.

~~~
eavc
He's proving to be a good restaurateur as well, don't forget.

~~~
meowzero
He is improving in that area. But I think he still has some of the negative
stigma left over from his Web site when he said all Atlanta pizza places suck
(those comments were written before he even thought about opening a
restaurant). That made some people come to his restaurant with a super-
critical eye. And you can see there are some bias with some of the reviewers.

------
enko
This article reminds me to ask: why do Americans call pizza "pies"? Numerous
times, the article refers to pizzas as if they are a variant of pies, and I
have heard it elsewhere, too.

To me, an Australian, a pizza and a pie are completely different things. The
idea of calling a pizza a pie is ludicrous, and vice versa. Anyone care to
explain?

~~~
erikpukinskis
When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie? That's amoré.

~~~
iuguy
When you're swimming in the sea and an eel bites your knee, that's a Moray.

~~~
jasonkester
When a guy's riding by on a bike in a tie, that's a Morman.

------
Groxx
I suppose this would be a valid time to link to this awesome site:
<http://www.cookingforengineers.com/>

My dad's an electrical engineer; my mom busted a gut when I showed this to her
:) Still one of my favorite recipe sites. And I _love_ those recipe grids.

~~~
aw3c2
It is a huge shame that the recipes are not "free" with a GNU FDL or Creative
Commons license.

~~~
sp332
Actually the _recipe_ isn't protected by copyright, but the _text_ describing
the procedure. In other words, if you can describe to someone how to make the
food in your own words, without copying the text of the description, you're
OK. <http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-protect.html#recipe>

~~~
aw3c2
Thanks for the clarification. I did mean the text though, more specifically
the whole "database of textually described recipes".

------
vikram
Get a oven thermometer every oven is different, and you want temp of atleast
220 C, wood ovens have temps of 500 C, so the higher the better. I would even
put the grill on. And put the tray into the oven while it preheats.

For the dough... Instead of room temp water use cold water (even ice cold
water). For the second rise, leave it in the fridge overnight, the idea is to
let it rise slowly for a long period of time.

After 2 minutes of pizza being in the oven. Spray with water, I just use the
garden water spray. You want mist rather than a pool of water. This will
reduce the temp a little, but will give the crust, without having to burn the
pizza.

------
burgerbrain
Unfortunately the cooking temperatures are well above what most standard
kitchens can achieve, at a sizzling 850F.

Speaking from personal experience however, it is possible to make a good pizza
with a standard oven with some experimentation.

~~~
eavc
Actually...

Do a ctrl-f for, "I've got my oven cranked up to over 800 F," and read from
there.

He was using a standard oven that he'd modified to cook using the cleaning
cycle.

~~~
burgerbrain
Yeah, I read that bit. Warranty voiding oven hacks kind of scare the crap out
of me, I think it's pretty safe to say that with your average oven/oven-owner
combination, you're generally not going to get above 500F.

Seriously though, if you burn your house down pulling that kind of stunt I
really doubt your insurance company will be amused. Over-clocking PCs is one
thing, but ovens?

~~~
ars
It's not really overclocking though - the oven already can handle those
temperatures.

The difference is he modifies it so he can open the door when it's doing that.
It's not a fire hazard, it's a burn hazard (well obviously there is a fire
hazard, but stuff burns at 500 too).

~~~
nazgulnarsil
IIRC it has been mentioned that sauce splattering onto the glass at those
temps can shatter it.

~~~
ars
I think that's his worry, not that it actually can happen.

Because if it would happen it would happen at 500 degree too.

~~~
marze
It can and does happen at both temperatures.

------
snowmaker
I have an all new respect for pizza. I knew making a great pizza was hard but
the amount of careful experimentation and analysis that went into this is
incredible.

It is a bit intimidating though. I think I will leave this for the pros.

~~~
diego_moita
By any means NO! Do it, man; it is worth trying!

I am a amateur cooker & baker. And you just can't imagine how many times I
failed in so many disastrous ways.

But getting a perfect bread or pizza right, once in a while, and having your
wife saying "tonight, you really deserve good sex!" is just priceless.

------
ErrantX
Ah Pizza.... food of the gods... this is some serious effort just to get it
"just so" :)

FWIW "Tom's subjective best pizza place in the world" is a little restaurant
in a back street in Urbino, Italy. Quite similar to this pizza, but with less
sauce (mostly consisting of sundried tomato), a little garlic, mozzarella,
pancetta and rocket. Cooked extremely fast in a brick oven and served drizzled
with chilli flavoured olive oil.

It's a much less "wet" pizza than I've seen eaten in the US (and even the rest
of Italy); the dough is quite moist to make up for it :)

Yum.

------
ANH
This was one of the pages that helped me formulate my current recipe. High
moisture content and not overworking the dough are key for me. It can be a
sticky situation while kneading with all that water, but the result is worth
the messy hands. One of the better ones I've made:
<http://www.flickr.com/photos/midnightzulu/3517525006/>

FWIW, best pizza I've ever had was at Apizza Scholl's in Portland, OR. Second
best was my own.

------
socksy
The attitude taken reminds me of the scientific like precision Heston
Blumenthal goes through to create his food...

I can't find many videos online, only the results of the various experiments.
For example chips (as in Fish & Chips):
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCB9jIpNGzY>

------
phugoid
Check out "The Art of Pizza Making: Trade Secrets and Recipes" by Dominick
DeAngelis. He's holds a PhD in engineering, and has done a lot of research to
compile a simple pizza book. His recipes are a bit sweet for my taste, but his
book helped me diagnose the main problems in my pizza-making approach.

------
ekanes
If you like this stuff, you will _love_ Jeff Potter's "Cooking for Geeks"

[http://www.amazon.com/Cooking-Geeks-Science-Great-
Hacks/dp/0...](http://www.amazon.com/Cooking-Geeks-Science-Great-
Hacks/dp/0596805888)

------
apinstein
I actually went there for dinner last night, and it is fantastic pizza.

:)

------
abraham
Now I'm hungry.

------
iphoneedbot
I gotta admit, I love this write up on his Pizza! Anyone know of a good write
up on Ramen?

~~~
Samuel_Michon
[http://www.kitchenexperiments.net/2008/07/homemade-ramen-
wit...](http://www.kitchenexperiments.net/2008/07/homemade-ramen-with-
julienne-medley.html)

------
pedanticfreak
Correction, this is how an engineer does pizza:

<http://www.robotfoodtech.com/content/pizza/en>

------
bedroomfireflys
Nice burnt crust, I don't see why anyone would find these images appealing.
Cancer anyone?

~~~
Panoramix
I don't see why you were downvoted so low. It's not like you were rude or
something. This kind pizza does not look that appealing to me either, but it's
always nice to read from people who are passionate about making something.

------
m4wk3r
so the secret to cooking pizza like an engineer is to find a recipe you like
and spend 6 years trying to reverse-engineer it? you must work for [your
employer here] hrrhrr.. a hacker would have slipped one of the chefs, preps,
or servers an andrew jackson and walked out with the recipe the same day.

also, what's up with people calling a flat piece of bread with half a diced
tomato, 5 slices of cheese, and a sprig of basil to make it look "pretty",
pizza? that's not "pizza", that's a dressed up keema naan at best.

where's the meat? whole wheat crust? olives? bacon? onions? ham? sausage?
shrimp? artichoke hearts? red/black beans? bell peppers?

~~~
ericb
> pizza? that's not "pizza", that's a dressed up keema naan at best.

May I ask where you live? In some US states it is tough to find pizza good
enough to make you see why this type of pizza can be so amazing. If my first
hamburger had been ordered in England, I'm pretty sure I'd think hamburgers
were terrible and pointless.

~~~
m4wk3r
sf bay area.. though i dont think i've eaten any of the pizza out here.. i
usually just make it myself.. throw in a bottle of wine and a dvd and you've
got the makings of a decent date. subtract the human counterpart, add an
"Innie" model [ <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1986883> ] and you'll
have twice as much pizza left for the next day!

