paulraphael’s Profile
Recent Comments
have pizza making questions?
One of the secrets to great crust, especially if you have an oven that only goes to 500° or 550°, is to use a very high hydration dough. In addition to allowing fantastic gluten development (without much work), and big airy bubbles, it keeps the dough from drying and toughening during the longer baking times in a low oven.
My baking times at 550 are between 7 and 8 minutes; way longer than what you'd get in a wood or coal oven. But the results are still airy and light, with just the right amount (IMO) of crunch and chew.
The catch is that the dough is VERY hard to handle. Think glue. The best solution I've found is to use a flat baking sheet for a peel, and to build and bake the pie on a sheet of parchment. This is non-traditional, but it works brilliantly. The parchment just slides in. Only drawbacks are very slightly less char on the bottom, and the mess of blackened paper on the floor of the oven.
My techniques are a mix of Peter Reinhart's and Jeff Varasano's. I've written them out in painful detail here: www.under-belly.org/recipes/pizza.pdf
The Best Steak in NYC Might Not Be in a Steakhouse
Ooops. I take back my previous bitching about price. Didn't see that these were 32 oz portions. Enough for 4. The price seems about right!
The Worst Seafood Display Ever? Or the Most Brilliant? You Decide
I was disturbed when I saw that (in person, at Whole Foods). Not that I'm squeamish ... this is exactly the kind of thing I'd expect to get fired for doing if I worked there!
The trouble is the context. The quality of the seafood at Whole Foods (at Houston St. where I shop every week, and at all the other stores I've visited) is relentlessly grim. The fish all appears to be 48 hours older than it aught to be, all the time. The gap in quality between the sea food department and the produce department is disturbing. It seems that either no one knows ANYTHING about fish, or else no one gives a shit.
Against the background of this profound neglect, jokes like the fish eating the fish don't seem inspired. They seem like attention put in all the wrong places. And in this case the result is particularly gruesome, because it looks less like fish eating fish than old corpse eating old corpse.
See more comments by paulraphael »
Recent Posts
paulraphael hasn't written a post yet.
Recent Favorites
paulraphael hasn't favorited a post yet.
Recent Polls
paulraphael hasn't answered any polls yet.
Recent Quizzes
paulraphael hasn't taken any quizzes yet.
About paulraphael
Website: http://info@under-belly.org
Location: Brooklyn
About: Gastronaut
Favorite foods:
Last bite on earth:
I think there are variables you're not taking into account. I always salt before chilling and grinding, simply so that I don't have to overwork the ground meat to mix in the salt evenly.
Texture is always loose and tender. In fact, looser or more tender than what I get would be a fault. I've never seen anything that looks like that meat block you call burger #3!
One thing I notice is the quantity of salt. Did you actually eat these burgers? 2% salt by weight is a stupefying amount of salt for a burger. I wouldn't be able to choke that down (although to be fair, I generally find fast food burgers to be so salty that I can't taste anything else). I find 0.75% salt by weight to be perfect. Even so, the times I've oversalted haven't led to a meat brick like what you're showing.