Two pies last night. One bacon, one ground beef, pepper and tomato. Recipe was the same as I've been using, but over the summer we got a new pizza pan with the little holes in the bottom. This is my favorite pizza pan yet. The crust ends up almost perfectly crispy every time (and has fun black polka dots on the bottom. -Sandra). Turned the heat up a little (475), but otherwise I've settled into a pretty consistent recipe.

The big news last night was the lesson for our friend Sandra who was visiting for the weekend. It was a first time making pizza of any kind for her, and it turned out very well. Some of the diners would have preferred more sauce, but I thought the ratio was just right.

First, a little dough tossing lesson:


The student becomes the master:


In addition to making pizza, we also made fudge (my father's recipe; don't know where he got it) and chocolate chip cookies (Joy of Cooking). All told, a delicious meal.

Made a couple of pies the other night while friends were over. Same recipe as usual, but with all white flour. Used one of those metal pizza pans with holes in it. 14 minutes at about 500 degrees yielded a crust of just the right consistency.

Also, made some chocolate chip cookies while the dough was rising. Used roughly 4x baking powder instead of baking soda, and noticed no difference in the resultant cookies.

New Year's (Sort of)

I made 4 pies yesterday for a New Year's gathering. I made the dough on Friday night and let it rise in the refrigerator over night. The main difference was that I ground some pizza seasonings into the crust. It was not a very strong flavor, but I think it added a little interest to the meal. The pies were cooked at 500 degrees for between 9 and 11 minutes in an electric oven, and came out just right.

Long time coming

Well, finally had the time to make some pizza last night. Used the Joy of Cooking dough recipe as written, but with a little more sugar. I think I got the right mix of water temperature and sugar content for the yeast, because it really rose well.

Cooked one at 500 degrees for 13 minutes and got a firm, golde-brown crust. The other stayed in for about 16 minutes for a crisper crust. All in all, a success.

Ran out of pizza cheese and had to use some taco cheese. I suspect that the woman I live with used the pizza cheese earlier in the week on some non-pizza related project.

Diet Efficiency

I have been thinking lately about the efficiency of eating meat. I remember a rule of thumb from grade school science class that says at each step along the food chain only about 10% of the energy is passed along. So from the sun, to a food crop, to livestock to me is 100% x 0.1 x 0.1 x 0.1 = .1% efficient, on average. Not that great. And that's if I'm eating something that only eats plants. If I'm eating a secondary consumer of some kind, like a shark or an eagle, that's even worse. And if I eat a human cannibal, that adds at least two more steps in the chain dropping the efficiency down to about .001%.

Having read a recent Time article about biofuels, I have been thinking about what we use our arable land for. The headline of the article is a little alarmist, and erroneously suggests that biofuel proponents are somehow tricking people into hurting the environment, but the body of the article presents a pretty grim picture of the unintended consequences of using land inefficiently. I get most of my calories from fruits, vegetables and grains, but I probably have meat 5 or 6 days out of 7 for at least one meal. I like eating meat, but is it really worth the efficiency loss in the system? I don't know if I'm ready to cut meat completely out of my diet, but I can definitely stand to eat less of it.

Three hundred trout are needed to support one man for a year. The trout, in turn, must consume 90,000 frogs, that must consume 27 million grasshoppers that live off of 1,000 tons of grass.-- G. Tyler Miller, Jr., American Chemist (1971)

Grow food in dirt? Save time, eat dirt! --Goblin Farmer

I'll have to do some more research into how animal products (eggs, honey, milk, etc.) fit into the whole thing. I wonder if getting eggs out of a chicken for its whole lifetime, and then eating the chicken is more or less efficient than raising the chicken to a younger age and just eating it (fewer years of feeding, and fewer years of egg production). It would also need to be compared against just using the energy that made the chicken feed to make human feed instead. hmmm....

First time in a long time

I had time this weekend to make some pizza. I'm definitely ready to enjoy some home-cooked pies again, after about 8 weeks of not having the time to cook.

Tonight's Recipe:
1 cup white flour
2 cups whole wheat flour
1 1/3 cups warm water
1 packet yeast
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons olive oil

I cooked this at 500 degrees for about 12 minutes, and this produced a crisp crust without quite burning the cheese. The dough was workable, but the whole wheat flour makes it very brittle. Next time I'll go back to 2 cups white, 1 cup wheat.

Ran out of whole wheat flour

Last night's pizza was made with 3 cups of white flour and 1 1/4 cups of water. The other ingredients were the same. It took about 5 minutes more cooking time than usual to get the desired crispness of dough, and the dough was very sticky after rising.