Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

Great article. Roberto is a nice man, I wish him all the best.

@Alberto
Hi! I've used a v. similar recipe (less salt, less yeast) and it worked OK.
1/3 tbsp=1tsp=~3g which is around the 0.17% mark
Actually that's high, because the recipe calls for fresh yeast. For IDY you should use less.
Anyway - I'm sure it will be fine. It will probably rise sooner than you might expect so keep an eye on it!
Cheers,
FP

banana and peanut butter- most filling snack there is that is still somewhat nutritious. i don't know how you can just have cereal- that doesnt fill me up at all!

Daynine, I'm glad! Sometimes when I'm feeling wicked I add backfat to the meatballs, but usually the tofu is delightful on its own.

@Alberto
Many people use the fridge for convenience and because the temperature is regulated. Neapolitan style is often fermented at a 'cool' room temperature (60-70F) but the choice is yours.
Always keep the dough covered.

FP

@pizzablogger, I am dumping off extra poolish before each feeding. Unless of course I need a bunch of it for bread or pizza. When I feed I dump all but two cups of poolish. Then to that add about 1 1/4 cups KA bread flour and 1 cup warm water. Always dump the 2 reserved cups into a clean container at the feedings.

If trying to build up, I don't dump, but add in the same amount of flour/water as I have already developed poolish. Does that make sense? 4 cups poolish is fed with 2 cups water and about 2 1/2 cups flour.

I am doing all of this at home for home consumption so keep that in mind when looking at amounts. The Varasano recipe was such an eye opener for a home cook. Having so much pertinent information all in the same spot was wonderful.

Right now I am using the propane grill with a stone on it. Too hot even here to fire up the modified electric oven to 850F. So not getting the "leopard spotting" I would love to see. But still good results.

@Climbhighak: Drinking and posting is more fun!

When feeding the sourdough, are you also "dumping off" some of the already existing culture to lessen the amount of active lactobacilli (and subsequently lowering the potential for over acidification of the wild yeast stock culture), are you splitting the culture into multiple containers or just using one container?

Just curious. Always good to see another wild yeast brother-in-arms! --K

The Crazy Brit said: "you can do that but honestly the best organisms for surviving in a flour/water-fed sourdough culture are the ones already present in the flour!"

Yeppers, I agree.

From what I can gather about the class, it seems it was aimed at the beginning to intermediate home pizza maker. A natural/wild yeast starter is most definitely above this skill level.

A highly developed level of flavors can be acheived when using pre-ferments (Biga, Sponge, Poolish, etc) whose fermentation is started with Baker's Yeast. By the time the pre-ferment has spooled up, around 14-24 hours, is incorporated into the remainder of the dough bill to initiate further fermentation and final fermentation is complete, there can be a good deal of developed flavors in the finished crust, which is a different set of flavors than what a sourdough would impart to the finished crust.

I very recently heard from another very competent pizza maker, making him the fifth or so pizzamaker I have heard this from, that they feel the tanginess of some sourdough cultures clashes with the clean, subtle sweetness of a good tomato sauce. This is an interesting point and one I cannot disagree with.

That being said, I ultimately do prefer a sourdough crust, so much so that I took what was a very good Baker's Yeast leavened recipe, tossed it out the window and completely reformulated my pizzas to use a sourdough starter......putting me all the way back to square one, so to speak. Grrrrrrrrrrrr --PB

I gotta say that this guy is selling us a bill of goods. With that recipe you will never get a pie with the flavor and texture of a natural yeast recipe. It is almost the same recipe hawked on every food recipe site around the world. A natural yeast poolish is an absolute must.

Also I thought that the addition of sugar to the dough is against Vera Pizza Napoletana.

Wondering why ">http://www.varasanos.com/PizzaRecipe.htm"> Varasano’s Pizza Recipe hasn't been mentioned. It has really taken my pies to another level. I am using a sourdough starter based on Nancy Silverton's grape based recipe. Also saw one I would like to try recently on Ruhlman's Blog that uses cabbage leaves to start the poolish.

Dear Favorite Professor,

Though I have never had the pleasure of trying it, your description of taho makes me wonder if there really wasn’t any taste of soy in this dessert. When we were standing in the kitchen tasting the firm tofu from the package, you claimed that it was bland. But to my palate, the most noticeable quality about the tofu was its taste of soy. So are you sure? Because your description of taho reminds me of the Cantonese dim sum staple, in which freshly made silken tofu is drizzled with a very sweet ginger syrup. In the Cantonese version, the taste of soy is retained in the tofu, and the texture is very custardy as well.

Can any seriouseaters shed light on this dispute? Taho: soy-tasting or not?

Anyway, try this argument on for size:

My premise is that within the gamut of flavors, textures, and so forth, there can be minor disputes and variations, but the fundamental question of whether or not something tastes good can be answered objectively. To understand why certain tastes and preferences are “good,” we can examine the influences of culture, locale, and physiology. The former two are certainly varied but the physiological standard is not. Putrid, for example, can never be “good” because we’re biologically designed to prefer that which is safe, but “fatty” is generally a good thing because we all possess taste buds that respond specifically to the taste of fat.

With regards to the locale factor, it’s certainly true that different regions of the world yield a variety of indigenous foods, but I think that the ways in which cultures have responded are more similar than not. So many cuisines have their own version of a meaty filling encased in dough, or a fisherman’s stew, for instance. While an Asian dumpling is different from a pierogi, both emphasize a well-kneaded dough that is slightly chewy, encasing a soft filling. Likewise, bouillabaisse may differ from a clam chowder or any other type of seafood soup, but all cooks are careful not to overcook seafood, which is always “bad.”

Similarly, our gauge of whether or not a steak tastes “good,” can be broken down to a few key factors:

1. beefiness
2. tenderness
3. a developed or somewhat browned crust

These criteria derive from the way in which we respond, again, to the presence of fat, as well as our penchant for items that have been browned (Maillard reaction) or somehow seared. Different cuisines may add different spices or apply different cooking techniques, but a steak is a steak, no?

You ask if it’s at all meaningful for a judgment to be an “aggregation of personal taste.” I think that an aggregation is the best we have. If we can all recognize tastes (sweet, salty, umami) and textures that we like (crispy, tender, chewy, and so forth) in certain contexts, then we are already doing much to standardize the matter of taste. I’m not sure whether we can ever “prove” that good taste is true in the same way that we can talk about the sciences as being objective, but I don’t think that this alone should deter us from explaining our culinary judgments in reasonable terms.

Anyway, you’ve probably predicted much of my response already. It’s a working theory, of course, but I’m not ready to give up on it!

Breads, sausages and cheeses would be nice. pumpernickel, anadama, white, summer sausage, pepperoni, cheddar, provolone,

nightowl's right--it's not really a Rubik's cube if two sides on an edge are the same color. If you cut the mini-cubes diagonally, you could fix that. The corners would be more tricky--all three sides have to be a different color there.