^^^ I think that was a compliment, so thank you. Really, you said it all when you said the pies have that "here-it-is-je-ne-se-quoi." I'm not a chef, I just like to cook. But my technique of cooking food has reached a point where what I cook has a distinct flavor and tastes like something that was cooked by ME. It just has that certain "here-it-is-je-ne-se-quoi." So, thanks again.

Btw, if I lived somewhere other than Alaska, I'd have a wood-burning pizza oven and would be cranking out pies that could hang with the best of them. No New York water for me. Just Dasani filtered, bottled water. I'd use local tap water, but I've heard that fluoride can mess with the yeast.

It should mess with about everything in your body. Alex Jones can't be wrong. Fine work there. Just the mushrooms on the second one featuring them look a bit old. Mushrooms tend to change their taste when they open up. It's the spores.

Frozen: Not Baked

Sir, I've fed Gian Jerkins octopus. You can be sure it's a compliment.

As to the water, though, it's an indisputable fact. Growing up in NYC, you always hear it anecdotally. But I wound up living in haight-ashbury selling acid to hippie tourists* for a few months in the early '90s (LONG story) and, yadda-yaadda-yadda there's this place on Haight called Escape From New York Pizza.

I walk in there and find out it's run by an ex-cop from Brooklyn who knows exactly what he's doing (as I'm talking to himself) and he says 'try this.' I take a slice, I look at him, he looks at me and we nod, 'cause it's that thing we always hear about...


"It's the water."





*My employers, throughout the years, have always been aware of this, for those who wanna rake muck...

Just "special" water won't give you a good pizza. Good raw material is so a must. I'd keep it mostly simple and pay up for the good stuff. Organic seems to work pretty well. Good year and all.

You just confused Tritone and Panzer with that word. They're sitting there now trying to figure out if it's really pronounced Jenny Sea Kooey.

Ummmm, yeah, I don't think I'm going to be the only one to tell you there's nothing "special" about NYC tap water, and it's certainly not "organic."

It does, though, make the difference, as does altitude (Hello, Denver) and some other factors that weren't relevant to the SF discussion but apply more to other towns (Chicago, DC...)

Flip side of the coin: They have sourdough...

All this by the slice business hopefully isn't playing out to the detriment of freshness, like directly from the oven. Key factor.

I'll put it to you, Greg: Have YOU ever had a slice directly from a NYC oven? I think not. I'm wagering your whine's the only thing that's crossed the Rhine.

See, the thing with the mushrooms is, I pre-cook them. Fresh mushrooms on a pizza = water everywhere. Mushrooms release all kindsa water when they're hit by heat. The one pic of my neapolitan-style pizza has fresh, uncooked mushrooms. That pizza was in the oven for such a short time that it didn't really matter. Anyway, this is just yet another of the endless variables that go into making a great pie.

And into referential mode again. It's the difference between US and Italian pizza. I guess both can be good. It's just like with bread, the freshly-baked aroma doesn't last very long.

The fact that alaskans understand pie more than californians is gonna make me chuckle for days.

^^^ It's not an Alaskan thing. I'm Greek. As far as food-service goes, Greeks are the Mexicans of Europe. I hope that made sense.

Neither does your relevance and, in a day, you've exhausted your supply for 2012. Go figure.

On one level it does. I've mentioned before that I spent a number of years in the food service industry.

At the same time, it makes no sense because I have never seen a Greek or person of Greek decent ever make any Italian food I'd ever eat.

I'm sorry. That's just the way it is. Which makes me question how Greek you are*, since that pie looked decent.




*This should not be taken to mean "How 'advanced' is your sexuality.

Well shoot,

I'd say that 50%+ of the Italian restaurants in Anchorage are owned by Greeks. And, in general, we work well in kitchens. I don't know what else to say.

You said it all by saying "Anchorage." There's nothing else for you to say.

Having said that myself, though, I'll add that some of the best goddamn chefs I've ever worked beside in NYC were Greek born or of Greek decent...


...you guys simply cook Italian.

And, for what it's worth, and for the record, your Alaskan Greek Pie looks better than Gunker's Portland Pizza.

It isn't just the water. I'm sure NYC Papa John's sucks as bad as Indiana Papa John's, but it is the water that separates NYC baked goods (pizza, bagels, bread) from elsewhere. I saw a news segment once on a bagel guy in Florida that set up a mini treatment system to try and make the water there like NYC's. All the old retired New Yorkers in his area made the shop a success.

No expert by any means, but your pies are very good looking, steez. The king crab one would be right up my alley. I might have to take a stab at something like that.

Is that the Brooklyn Water Bagel Co.? Larry King has a big stake in it and whenever he's on a show he pimps some 14 stage water machine they use to make things taste just like in Brooklyn. And they're HQ'd and most of the locations are in Florida.

I'd guess so. It was a while back, and I don't remember the name. But yeah, if you want to be specific, Brooklyn baked goods are better than the other boroughs.

share your magic steezo,i know you said the ingredients,but what amount.also what temperature and do you know how i can get the dough to taste similar to papa johns(i.e. sweetness)?im guessing sugar but itd have to be the right amount.

I'd rather not post the whole recipe. But, a good start would be to get the cookbook American Pie by Peter Reinhart. They are about 20 different types of dough recipes in there.

I'll see if I can find a recipe for a Papa John's dough for you. I know they do put a lot of sugar into both the dough and the sauce. I'm a diabetic and I literally cannot take enough insulin to eat their pizza.

steez... that breakfast pie and all the others for that matter look fucken delicious.

figgs..http://www.redrocksunrise.com/recipes/Papa%20Johns%20Pizza%20Dough%20Recipe.htm

It's called high fructose corn syrup and whatever other fake food crap poor people aka fat asses like yourself pretend is food.

Organic raw pizza doesn't work.

Actually, I don't like raw pizza. Fine, if you're into fresh tomato sauce and sliced veggies on bread (raw bread is usually made from seeds and very tasty), but I'd rather eat other raw meals. Vegan pizza is hit or miss. Depends on the cheese. Some places pull it off. Not sure what cheese they use. Padova could answer this one.

Often vegan cheeses used is a mix of tapioca and arrowroot flour with some oils like coconut oil, safflower oil, yeast and xanthum gum to give it the cheesy texture. Kinda funk nasty in my opinion. Or made of soy which is more gross. If you're gonna be Vegan, just eat the foods of the damn earth instead of this crap.

^^^ co-sign. i was vegan for 2 years, and found other things more interesting to eat than that. some restaurants can pull off vegan cheese as an ingredient, but i had no interest in buying vegan cheese, trying to emulate cheese dishes. i found so many other vegan dishes so tasty. especially years later when i got into raw vegan. you know, actual veggies, fruits i was now eating more of. you'd be surprised at how many vegetarians and vegans load up on simple carbs and lack fruits and veggies. currently, i eat mostly raw vegan and occasionally meat. i'm way healthier than when i was vegan or veg simply because my diet is mostly uncooked vegs/fruits.

Organic then, I guess. The other stuff tastes odd mostly, might look okay though. It's highly ideologically laden in any case. Mention it around the preachers of mild oral chemotherapy and it's on.

I've made decent pizza dough using only salt, water, olive oil, yeast, and just a pinch of sugar to give some "food" for the yeast to use. Commercial pizza shops may add some sugar to their dough but I suspect they also add it to their tomato sauce.

Italians (and Argentines and Uruguayans by extension) make a pizza-type food called "fainá," using chick pea flour. Might make an interesting pie.

Fainá - estilo uruguayo

Fainá or Farinata

thanks for that gia,im sorry im not as cultured as ex whores.and lou thanks for the recipe.

Gotta love it when the pretentious come down from on high to remind us how bad we're living.

hey man... i just googled that recipe for him. wtf?.

He might have meant Gia when she went on about food simulations. She actually has a point. Coloring agents are okay and fit for single malt scotch, for example. Why? Vegetables which tend to look good and are almost tasteless. Why? Meat laden with hormones and it's meant to be all fine and harmless. Why? Why, why, why? It's quite simple, actually. Get the good stuff, pay up. Be cheap and get mildly poisoned. The more stubborn among the poor know this and get angry.

Simp, is that you?

That's what I meant. At least the first part. But I do like it when pretentious Lou comes down from on high to dump on us too.

Anyone have an opinion on Papa Murphy's Take and Bake? I've never tried it myself, but it might be a nice switch from the occasional frozen pie. As far as fast-food pizza places go, I usually limit myself to Round Table. I did try an Artisan pizza from Domino's not that long ago and found it to be OK, in that it had a fairly light crust and not a huge amount of heavy toppings.

Whoever Simp was or is, isn't me.

I like Papa Murphy's. They're better than the chains and about 5 steps up from frozen. They'll substitute with no hassle and are pretty liberal with toppings.

its good,they opened up one down the street an i got a freebie just for walking in.everything tastes pretty fresh and the dough gets nice and crunchy.they have a decent amount of variety and i think they might make custom pies too.

They'll do custom. I agree with the freshness. It's kind of Subwayish. You watch it being built. They have a pepper sauce that's great. Almost a glaze. Very tasty and has a nice bite to it.

I'm only seeing 3 sauces listed on their website menu:

"Choose your Sauce:
Traditional Red Sauce | Herb Tomato | Creamy Garlic"

Maybe I'll give one of their thin crust deLITE pizza's a try with the garlic sauce.

Steezo, if you've got a pizza stone, the Papa Murphy's Take-N-Bake is probably a good option. It's not an incredibly delicious pizza, but that's not its selling point. Freshness is the Papa Murphy's selling point. Possibly price is a close second. For the quantity of toppings, and the variety, it is hard to beat a Papa Murphy's shopping for yourself.

I'm interested for a number of reasons. My own homemade shit is obviously better, but it's a lot of work and I always have leftover toppings. I like frozen pizza sometimes because if I pick the right kind, I can eat the whole thing and keep it to around 1,000 calories. But. even with the best frozen pizza, the crust always tastes somewhat cardboard-ey.

My next goal with my homemade pizza is to weigh and measure everything out just right to make a 1,000 calorie pizza using all fresh ingredients. The nice thing about being able to make a really good dough is that it you can stretch it to be about as thin as you want. I've always felt that a good dough, stretched out super-thin, resembles the skin of a bat's wing. You'd have to make your own pizza dough to know what I'm talking about.

I worked in a Pizzeria for a few years in college. Figure at least one 50 lb sack of flour per day, I must have made, minimum, twenty tons of dough.

I have no idea what you're talking about.

Well, the dough is alive for one thing. When you stretch it, it looks and feels kind of like thinly stretched skin...like a bat's wing. The thinly stretched out dough has gluten strands that look just like the fibers in the skin of the pic below. If you don't know what I'm talking about, I don't know what to say. It makes sense to me. Maybe you never stretched your dough out as thin.

[img]http://forum.jerkoffzone.net/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php?ubb=download&Number=44972&filename=bat's%20wing.jpg[/img]

No. I've simply never stretched a bat wing before.