Gravy's Cooking Thread

Butter and syrup is best. Fruit and sugars/creams I can tolerate. Chocolate is a no go for me.

I have done peanut butter and syrup before, that's a winning combination, but not something I'd do on the regular

Anything aside from butter (high five for unsalted butter!) and syrup of some kind is basically having a dessert for breakfast. Well or peanut butter. But chocolate, nutella, etc? Dessert! Belgian waffles always seemed like something you should eat after dinner, not shortly after you wake up.

I'm a butter and syrup kind of guy but the creme' and strawberries at Breadwinners is fucking insane. I wish I could make creme like that.

Khane_sl said:

Oh cool, now you can make shitty, burnt pizza wherever you go!

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Yes! Thank you!

There is a local wood-fired pizza place couple towns away from me that locals there just gush over. Their menu says "If you see black spots, your pizza is not burnt, it has been kissed by the flame." No you fuckwads you pizza is burnt and it tastes way shittier because of it.

A good pizza stone and a convection oven is all you need to make great pizza.

When I did some consulting work for the UC system in California, they had a lot of "it's ok if it's a little burnt. That means home cooked!" type situations. It took awhile, but I think myself and the other chefs convinced them that shit being burned was not home-style; it was burned. Especially when using standardized crusts.

opiate82_sl said:

A good pizza stone and a convection oven is all you need to make great pizza.

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Well, you need some ingredients, too.

Syrup only for me but none of that maple trash

Naan is fucking amazing. I don't mind woodfire pizza if it's done right, I've had a few terrible ones.

There is nothing wrong with woodfired pizza ovens, except for the fact that pretty much no restaurant that cooks their pizza that way makes good pizza. It's burnt garbage every single time.

I've learned to come to grips with the fact that people like terrible pizza. There is an abomination of a hipster bourbon and wood fired pizza place around the corner from my house that is 100% packed every night. The pizza is terrible, no flavor, crap sauce, no fresh toppings, all frozen nonsense. But the bartenders wear flannel and have ironic facial hair and take 20 minutes to make you a drink and since it's "wood fired" people go crazy for it. Everyone loves it. It's some of the worst pizza I've ever had in my life. Accompanied by even worse service.

Cracker barrel syrup is pretty good and not too expensive. It is 55% maple and 45% cane.

The problem with pizza is that generally the toppings/cheese cook at a different rate than the crust, with the toppings/cheese taking longer to finish than the crust. Most pizza ovens are convection style that will have an arrangement of fingers (blowers) above and below the pizza, usually twice as many above as below to ensure an even cook. Basically a majority of the heat is coming from the top down.

A hearthstone oven typically uses radiant heat and will have a heated domed top where the dome will be much hotter than the cooking surface. Because heathstone ovens are typically designed for very fast cooks they are very hot (900F on the cooking surface, up to 1200F in the dome) so they typically only accommodate a very thin crust. When you are running a hearthstone oven you basically put the pizza on the cooking surface until the crust is done then lift it into the dome to finish off the toppings.

The issue with wood-fired is generally the heat comes from the bottom up. So either your crust is done long before your toppings (meaning you burn the crust to cook the toppings) or you have to really really skimp on the the toppings to get them to finish with the crust. Most places I've seen go for the "burn the crust to cook the toppings" method. Even woodfired ovens that accommodate for this fact in their design still have flare-ups that will also add burned spots to your crust. Don't get me wrong, a well designed recipe and crust mix combined with someone with a lot of experience running a wood-fired oven can absolutely make a great pie. However, most places are just using an off-the-shelf dough mix and are hiring high-school/college aged kids who aren't even around long enough to learn the nuances of running a wood-fired oven.

This is why for at home I recommend a pizza stone combined with a convection oven. The stone provides a nice even cooking temperature for your crust but blocks the convection from hitting your crust, allowing your toppings to cook a bit faster and be properly finished by the time your crust is done.

chaos_sl said:

I can't imagine what British pizza is like.

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You don't need teeth to eat it.