On Tue, 03 May 2005 22:23:54 GMT
"jimmyjames" > wrote:

> of Pizzas! Only once a month. Imagine my chagrin when pizza just became
> food. Not being an expert on baking, I may have over stated the Pizza
> Stone remarks. All that I know is My pizzas are a good bit better than
> pizza hut, brick oven pizza, Dominos, any number of locally owned pizza
> parlors here in Albuquerque, NM... I don't use a pizza stone. I know I
> should, because all of the coolest members of the group use pizza
> stones. I can't stand the thought of Buying a pizza stone for some
> ridiculous price and have it break.


I paid $65 for my 20x15 Fibrament stone and it has a 10 year warranty.
It costs twice as much as the 14x16 stone sold by Williams-Sonoma but,
it's, bigger, and higher-tech. They've been in business since the 40's so i
have no concerns about them disappearing now.

It doesn't really feel like it was expensive. Sure, when i was between
jobs, for TWO YEARS, i resisted the purchase and used $5 worth of quarry
tiles instead.

But i also resisted expenses like . . . lemme put this in perspective
for you. I'd restarted my career for 6 months already, and long since paid
off all my debts, when i realized, in the middle of the grocery store, that
i can throw away mayonnaise that i don't like. I'd bought the wrong
product, and disliked it, and had been forcing myself to use it anyway. It
took me six months to realize that i can afford to throw out a dollar's
worth of food.

A few months after that i started buying unnecessary cheeses. some blue
here, some dubliner there, some basque, etc. I've probably spent $40 on
cheese in the last three months - that basque cheese isn't cheap,
especially considering that it turns out that it's not particularly grand
stuff.

Pizzahut uses a metal pan that's about 1.75 inches deep, with 1/3rd cup
of oil. Not all of that oil ends up in your pizza. I know this because I
worked there in a previous life. The thin crust, stuffed crust, and
hand-tossed varieties are baked on sheet pan. I forget if it's perforated
(something tells me that it's not). Their oven is also way hotter than
yours, has forced convection as well, and bakes the pizza in about 3
minutes. I think it's actually closer to 2.8 minutes but i forget. This
is actually stringently regulated by the regional offices, and a guy
actually shows up and tests the oven every few years.

If you like the way that pizzahut essentially fries the crust, you can
mostly accomplish that at home with a dark coated steel pan of similar
dimensions. You'll have to switch the oven to the broiler for the last
couple minutes to brown the toppings. I've done this, when i get a
hankering for that style.

I have to admit i respect their process and ingredients, since i spent 6
months working with them. I can do it at home, but sometimes it's more
labor than i'm interested in. I can keep balls of traditional pizza dough
in the freezer indefinitely and thaw one out whenever I'm hungry - just
roll it out, and it'll proof enough while I'm topping it. But the
pan-type dough doesn't work properly unless you proof it to about 2.5x it's
original size in the pan with the oil in a humid environment - basically a
proofing box.

Quality can vary depending on the management - There's one pizzahut unit
here that you should never order a pizza from *early in the day.

Franchise rules say that the produce is delivered fresh every morning.
Everything but the olives and pineapple are fresh. This one place in my
town, the manager has it in her diseased brain that throwing out last
night's veggies is wasteful, so she has the cooks wrap the table in plastic
and leave it out at room temperature for 12 hours until they start making
pizzas again. She's never sat down and considered that if this happens
every day, she's not saving anything by not throwing the stuff in the
dumpster like the manual says. If she wanted to save money, she'd have a
smaller produce order.

Being better than Domino's and little cheezers, etc, is pretty easy. All
you have to do is use better than the cheapest cheese you can find and an
actual sauce instead of a can of tomato paste. A little fennel in the
sausage, etc.