Infallible Cheese

I just finished a biscuit-flour pizza made with reduced sauce and no vinegar, with no fat inside the dough. It was spectacular.

This is frustrating. It seems like every time I make a pizza, it’s really good, but I can’t decide which way I like it best. It’s like having to choose among seven different girlfriends.

Plus Pizza Ruminations

Tragedy is always with us. Back to lighter topics.

I had a big–HUGE–breakthrough last night while practicing the piano.

I recently decided to resume piano, but instead of trying to learn pieces, my only goal was to learn to sight-read fluently. If you can’t sight read (and you’re not a savant), you can’t truly understand music, and composing will be very tough. It will be like using the hunt-and-peck method to type a novel. That’s not the only reason I wanted to learn. My memory just isn’t good enough to allow me to store piano pieces over the long term. I was advised to learn to sight read in order to be develop the ability to play things I had learned in the past. The sheet music helps you over the rough spots.

For weeks, I’ve been using a boring sight-reading book for an hour a day. That’s all I could stand. I put in fifteen minutes of note reading with each hand, and I also did half an hour of timing training.

I got to the point where the book was frustrating. There was very little material in it, and I had a problem with the exercises getting into my memory. Once that happens, you’re not sight-reading. You’re playing from memory, so your sight-reading skills get no workout.

I moved on to a boring book of horrendous Bach pieces, plus a book of easy classics. That helped a lot, but I was frustrated because I wasn’t yet mixing note-reading with timing practice. When I practiced timing, I used the sight-reading book, which features a bunch of exercises using one “A” key for each hand. When I practiced note reading, I ignored the timing, because I couldn’t focus on timing and finger placement at the same time.

Last night I found some very simple pieces in my books, and I started putting the notes and timing together. It works. I played abominably, but I managed to get through the measures. I only used one hand, but it was still great progress. Now I don’t have to suffer with separate exercises for notes and timing, and what I play sort of resembles music, so it’s not as boring. It goes much faster, and it’s much more satisfying to do. And I’m not forced to rely on a training book. Instead of gritting my teeth and quitting the instant the timer rings, I enjoy this enough to go past an hour. That should make a gigantic difference in my progress.

I’d like to write some Christian music. The industry seems to be in a slump right now. It could use a shot in the arm. Maybe I could make a contribution. I ask God for his help all the time. I ask him to help me master music. It seems to be paying off. Whether or not I ever publish anything, at least I’ll be able to read music properly and write it without struggling. That’s a tremendous gift. I’m thrilled about it. Last night, in my head, I heard the wildest variation on Vince Guaraldi’s “Linus and Lucy.” I’d love to put it in MIDI form, just for fun. Can’t do that if I can’t write music.

Christian music sounds dull, right? Wrong. Amazing Grace. Handel’s Messiah. Good Christian music appeals to everyone. Only the lame stuff is dull.

What else is going on? I still struggle with pizza. I flirted with cheddar for a while, but then I got some more Costco mozzarella, and I felt like a philanderer. That’s some cheese, that Costco cheese. Might be better if it had a little more sourness to it, but it’s just about perfect. Adding cheddar is just about pointless. I can use it straight.

The problem with that is that it affects the sauce. Mike advised me to use white vinegar in my tomato sauce, and it works, but recent pizzas lead me to suspect that the main reason the vinegar is necessary is the inadequacy of the cheese. When I use Costco cheese, I have to cut way back on the vinegar. Today I plan to make a pie with no vinegar at all. It’s not gluttony. It’s research. I am actually looking forward to eating something else for lunch. I love pizza and I want it constantly (even while I’m asleep), but even a small one makes it necessary for me to watch my intake for the rest of the day, and it makes my diet unbalanced.

Another odd thing: better cheese seems to reduce the need for sauce.

I’m thinking I might start making tiny pizzas with half a cup of flour, but here’s a funny fact: to test a recipe, you need a certain amount of food. One bite doesn’t tell you much. A 12″ pizza is about the minimum for a quality trial. If I halve the flour, I’ll end up with pizzas about 8 1/2″ in diameter, which is not too bad, but not optimal.

The dough is also on my mind. I’ve been using bread flour and no fat, and then I’ve been putting olive oil on the outside of the dough so it won’t crack when I toss it. But I had a lot of great biscuit-flour pizzas in the past, and I’m wondering if I should try it again, with the oil on the outside. Low-gluten biscuit flour tends to crack more easily than bread flour, so it may be a challenge.

Today I’m going to make a biscuit-flour pie with little or no vinegar in the sauce. I guess I’ll learn something.

It’s good that I exist to do all this testing. I think I’m bringing the world valuable information. Imagine having to do all this for yourselves.

To the best of my knowledge, pizza is the single hardest food to make well. I have never come across another culinary challenge that even came close. I suppose this is fitting, because pizza is the best food there is. Some would say it’s wrong to claim one food is better than all others. That it’s subjective. No; pizza is king. That is an absolute truth, predating the creation of the universe. If I denied it, my head would explode.

Time to Check Drudge

I made a list. I did some of the things on the list.

Then I got woozy and had to make pizza.

Dang this virus.

Made me Happy, Though

I know everyone thinks the space heater miracle is stupid, so I’ll make things worse.

Until February 12, I’ll be putting in an hour of prayer every day, in the middle of the afternoon. Today when I went in to get started, I noticed that MY NEW SPACE HEATER WAS NOT WORKING. I moved it to another outlet and fiddled with it. No dice.

I could have gone to the hardware store and held hostages until they got me a new heater, but I reminded myself that there is always a reward for doing the right thing, and I got down to prayer. Eventually, I got around to the heater. I prayed that I would be able to get it to work.

And before I finished praying, I heard a little sound like “ting,” and I turned the heater on, and it ran.

I’m not kidding. And it gets weirder. After a while, the heater started to go WAAAAHHHHWAHWAHWAH for some unknown reason, and since the prayer session was still underway, I prayed that I would be able to fix it. And while I was lying there, I reached over and moved it a little bit, and it quit making the noise.

By now I figured I could get anything I asked for. But I managed to restrain myself and ask for things my family and I actually needed and which I figured would please God. Otherwise I might be typing this from inside a Bentley, with Aisha Tyler in the passenger seat.

The heater made a little more noise later on, but I believe I have it figured out, and anyway, it works.

I thought it might be silly to tell this story, because there probably is such a thing as meaningless coincidence, but then I thought it would be worse to have a prayer answered and not give credit. We’re supposed to pray about little unimportant things as well as major items, so why shouldn’t God answer?

Dinner was excellent. I made a pizza with two thirds divine Costco mozzarella and one third extra sharp cheddar. I think 20% cheddar would be perfect, but this was very good. The cheddar threw off a little more fat than I really wanted, and it made the pie slightly more acidic than it should have been, but other than that, it was great. Reducing the amount should fix it. Making the cheese more acidic, by adding cheddar, may allow me to cut back on the vinegar in the sauce.

I can’t get over that amazing Costco cheese. I’ve used Grande, which has no bad points, but I honestly think Costco is better. I believe I paid $2.15 per pound. Grande is over four bucks per pound online, plus shipping. One of these days I’ll find a way to beat Stanislaus sauce with supermarket ingredients, and they’ll have to put me away to keep me from eating pizza nine times a day.

I think I’ve settled on a crust formula. I’m omitting the fat INSIDE the dough and applying oil OUTSIDE while it rises. That way, the crust doesn’t crack and tear while you toss it, but you don’t get the flavor of rancid oil. It seems like nearly all olive oil has a slightly rancid taste, which is exacerbated when you use it inside bread dough. Maybe I’m wrong.

The crust was much better than the last one I made. I used this:

1 cup bread flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1 rounded teaspoon dry yeast
~4 ounces water

I ran it through the food processor earlier in the day, and then I oiled it and stuck it in a Pyrex dish in the fridge until I needed it. I think lowering the yeast from a tablespoon was a good move, and I think the time in the fridge did the dough some good. It tossed perfectly, except for a pinhole which was easily fixed. When you keep oil out of the dough, the bread flavor really comes through.

If you’re not putting pepper in your dough, you’re missing out. It doesn’t taste like pepper when you bake it. It tastes more like cherries. You have to try it to understand. I leave it out of garlic rolls, but it’s a must in pizza dough.

I cook so well these days I don’t really have much motivation to make anything new. I guess cooking is like that. There are only so many dishes a person wants to make well. It’s not like music, where you could write a new piece every day and never be satisfied.

Onward and Upward

I don’t remember who suggested using cheddar in pizza cheese, but it works. I added two ounces of cheddar to six ounces of mozzarella/provolone mix, and it came out very well. I was afraid there would be an odd conflict between the cheddar and the tomato sauce, but it worked out fine. The cheese laid down nicely, and it was chewy and had a little more flavor than usual. I couldn’t even see the cheddar in the finished product. The orange color disappeared into the mozzarella.

A place near me uses Muenster cheese, but it’s not nearly as good. Mike says his kids insist on cheddar.

I should have started mass-producing frozen pizza components long ago. It’s the only way to avoid wasting cheap Costco and Gordon Food Service ingredients.

I weighed out a bunch of two-ounce portions of sauce base, depositing each on a square of foil. I’m going to freeze them and vacuum-seal them. It’s a lot of aggravation, but I can get almost 50 portions from a $5.25 can. Let’s say they cost 12¢ each, which is an inflated figure. The cheese runs about $1.25. The flour is about 20¢. The olive oil is about 20¢. Add it up, and you get $1.77 for a better 12″ pizza than anything available in a restaurant. The cost of the yeast, sugar, salt, and seasonings is negligible.

The danged vacuum bags aren’t free, but they would have to cost a ton to make this anything other than a steal. You can always use foil.

I suppose women who have raised families will be amused to see someone so excited about home economics, but you know how men are. We order, we pay, and we tip generously. We go through the checkout line without coupons. We have no idea what’s on sale. Carping about pennies…that’s downright effeminate. Plus it’s work.

This is why cab drivers and waiters can’t stand women. It’s why a cab driver will drive past five women and pick up a man. But I guess it costs men a lot of money.

I think I may cut back on the white vinegar in the sauce. Next time:

2 ounces (weight) Stanislaus Super Dolce sauce
4 teaspoons cheap olive oil
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon dry oregano
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon white vinegar
water

I still think I’m on the right track when I say pizza sauce is more like salad dressing than pasta sauce.

Life is sweet. It’s good to succeed at something as important as pizza.

Best Pizza in Town, for Pennies, ON DEMAND

The Prefab Pizza Project is going well. I have three dough portions in the freezer, two on the counter, and two in the food processor. I kept one aside so I can have pizza for lunch.

I couldn’t find shredded white cheddar for the cheese test, so I bought orange cheddar. I don’t see what difference it makes. I got the sharpest shredded cheddar they had.

Olive oil was on sale for not too much more than the Costco price. Hard to complain about that.

This is going to make life so much easier, and boy, is it cheap. One cup of flour, two tablespoons of oil, two ounces of sauce concentrate, and eight ounces of $2.50/pound cheese per 12″ pie. It’s virtually FREE. And so much better than any pizza I can buy.

No single human being should have this much power.

This morning I got an earful of negativity and unbelief over the phone. It depressed me for a while, because I was already (in my opinion) under attack. I was concerned about it. I thought maybe I should fast for a day. But the good Lord cleared it up before I could do anything. I found new resolve and new joy, out of nowhere. I am not going to allow myself to be offended by two weeks of illness and the bad attitude of one other Christian. I have been given the strength to rebound, and I am accepting it with gratitude and relief.

Have you ever been in a position where you had to tell another Christian, “Shut up and go home. I’m going on without you”? Ultimately, every one of us is alone with God and the angels. Never rely on another human being unless you have no choice. It’s too easy for the enemy to take them down or turn them against you. Working with others and accepting their help is essential, but it’s dangerous to be dependent on them.

I guess the new batch of yeast is ready. Back to the Cuisinart.

I Feel Like I Invented the Freezer

Once again, I am drawing from Mike’s vast well of culinary expertise. I am making pizza dough and freezing it. It’s too cold to do anything else. I’m letting the dough rise partially, and then I’ll freeze it, and that will make it suitable for storage in vacuum bags. It’s hard to vacuum-seal soft food, but freezing will firm it up.

I also plan to break my sauce into two-ounce portions and freeze it. Each one is enough for a 12″ pizza. I won’t put any water or oil in it. Just the sauce base. Then I can staple the sauce bags to the dough bags, and I’ll have frozen pizza, ready to rock!

I may also break the cheese into 8-ounce portions. I’ll oil it before I freeze it. I made pizza with oiled cheese yesterday, and I’m sold on the idea.

This should be fantastic. Frozen dough is better than fresh, and oiled Gordon Food Service cheese is very good. And I won’t have to buy a gallon can of sauce every time I want a small pizza for lunch. Stapling the bags together will assure that everything is there when I need it.

Sadly, I have to go out in the chill to get more oil. But I think it’s worth it.

A reader suggested putting white cheddar in my cheese. I think I’ll try that today at lunch. The cheese I’m using is excellent (when oiled), but the flavor is not absolutely perfect.

Plus Frozen Dough

Time to bless you with more pizza information.

A week ago, I was interrupted while making pizza. I took the risen dough and wrapped it in foil and stuck it in the freezer. Today I needed lunch, and I remembered the dough. I thawed it out and used it.

In the past, I’ve noted that dough improves with age, but I was too lazy to experiment and give definite results. This week I experimented accidentally, bypassing laziness. And the results were excellent. The crust had more flavor and a better texture than my usual one-hour dough. So I’m going to do what Mike does. I’m going to make a pile of dough portions and freeze them. This will make pizza more convenient and less messy, since I’ll only use the food processor once.

I plan to freeze the dough in disks, not balls. A disk will thaw faster, and it takes less work to turn a disk into a pizza. Mike uses balls. He also hits them with microwaves for about 45 seconds to thaw them. That probably won’t work as well with disks, because they have thinner parts which may overcook. I went 40 seconds today, but that was as far as I was willing to take it. I had to leave the dough out for maybe an hour and a half before I could turn it into a pie.

The dough was coated with olive oil twice. First, when I made it. I put it in a Pyrex dish with a light coating of oil, and I let it rise. Then I was interrupted, and I froze it. When I took it out today, I applied a little more oil to keep it from drying while it thawed. It worked great.

It seems like pizza dough gets better and better the more it rises. If you go too far, you can always punch it down.

I think I made this pie with bread flour. I can’t remember.

Second thing: I have new information about improving bad cheese. I’m using Gordon Food Supply’s mozzarella/provolone mix, which is fairly good but too low in fat. In the past, I’ve added a small amount of butter to improve it. This keeps it from burning, makes it chewier, and prevents it from tasting like vinyl. Today I added butter to one half and olive oil to the other half. I used between a teaspoon and a tablespoon of fat for four ounces (weight) of cheese. Just enough to coat it. I didn’t use a real measuring spoon, but I would guess I used two teaspoons per four-ounce half, and it was ample.

The olive oil side was better. Butter can make the cheese too rich. The olive oil added flavor without making the cheese too greasy. And the cheese laid down better when it melted. So I highly recommend it. Just don’t overdo it. This will be a lot easier than driving to Costco to get their flawless mozzarella. I have a feeling it will also work on supermarket cheese.

This pie was truly excellent. I think I got my mojo back.

I may also divide my sauce into two-ounce portions and seal it in vacuum bags. It’s almost a month old, and it’s going to go bad if I don’t do something. Those gallon cans are so wasteful. The Stanislaus people should wake up and start selling small retail cans.

Warding Off the Prince of Persia

I am trying to figure out what to do for the next 40 days.

Every year my church has a 40-day thing. You can fast for 40 days or make some other sacrifice during this time. You’re supposed to sign up. I was sick all week, so I forgot about it until I went to church on Sunday. They had a form to fill out, and there was no way I was going to come up with something during the service, so I held onto the form. I guess I can turn it in this weekend.

I decided to spend one hour in prayer every afternoon until February 12. That’s a good one. This illness has wrecked my prayer routine, and I am desperate to get it back in shape. Mid-day prayer is very powerful. But that still leaves the question of fasting.

I considered doing a “Daniel fast.” This means you cut out bread, flour, rice, meat, wine, sweets, and all beverages other than water, for 21 days. It was tempting at first, but the more I think about it, the more it sounds like a giant bummer. And I don’t have a lot of faith in partial fasts. I got fantastic results with a water-only fast this summer. I was relieved of some self-control issues, including a lifelong tendency to overeat. But would I get that kind of payback from a Daniel fast? Not sure.

I already have regular fasts built into the month. Maybe I should add one day a week.

Fasting with no particular goal seems like a dubious practice.

Maybe the prayer-hour thing is enough. You can make yourself crazy with unnecessary asceticism.

In my opinion, this stuff means nothing unless accompanied by prayer. Perry Stone seems to agree. He says that when you fast, you’re not supposed to lie around watching TV, waiting for the day to end. The point of the exercise is to enhance your communication with God, so I guess it should be obvious that the prayer part is more important than the fasting part.

Now that my illness is fading, I’m going to get back on track. I’ll be able to get up earlier and resume my morning prayer routine. That will set me up great for the afternoons.

My Fein Multimaster arrived. I have no idea what to do with it. It was really just a way of avoiding letting credit-card points expire. I should find an excuse to plunge-cut some holes in something.

I guess it was a reasonably smart buy. There is no way I would have spent actual money on this thing, so this is the only way I would ever have gotten one.

I’m taking a break from sight-reading practice. I think I finally figured out how to practice correctly. I should have listened to my piano teacher. He said he would open books of sheet music at random and just play. I tried software and sight-reading books instead. For the timing, the programs and books are fine, but they don’t work for note-reading. Why? Because they’re repetitious. Sight-reading is playing music at sight, which means “not by memory.” If you play a sight-reading exercise twice, the third time, your memory kicks in. That renders the exercise useless. You need a continuous supply of unmemorized material. That’s why random sheet music is better.

Boy, was I stupid. I didn’t understand the importance of what he was telling me. I don’t think he did, either. When you’ve always done something right, maybe it’s hard to guide people who do it wrong.

Memory doesn’t seem to interfere with timing practice. I guess it’s easier to memorize pitch patterns than time patterns.

If this works, I won’t have to break the piano up for kindling. I’ll be able to use it. That would be a dream come true. I am hoping God will help me become a competent musician so I can make use of my gifts. Wasted potential is an ugly thing. It would be a thrill to compose some decent songs. I’d love to be able to write music fluently instead of one note every five minutes.

I was insanely gifted at languages when I was a kid. I barely worked, but I won prizes. My college French instructor asked if I had lived in France. Then I got old and my memory weakened, and memory is a big part of it. If I can get my memory working halfway right again, I should regain a lot of my ability to learn symbolic systems. And music is a symbolic system, very much like a language. Maybe ability will trump old age to some extent. I seem to be picking sight-reading up pretty quickly now. Tonight I found myself skipping pieces because they were too simple. These were really easy pieces, but still.

I’m hitting the B1 and sleeping long hours and losing weight. I memorize psalms every day. I can’t think of anything else that might help, except for gingko biloba, and I’m afraid to take it because I have no idea what it does.

You can’t cry about lost opportunities. You have to strengthen what remains and keep moving. I managed to do a good job of maximizing my writing ability. That’s worth something. A lot of people would be happy to do one thing well. Maybe some day I can find a young person who is wasting his talents, and I can kick him in the rear end until he realizes what he has. If you can’t be a success, you can be a warning to others.

I make a great cheesecake. When I question my self-worth, I can always remember that. And maybe music will still pay off.

Start Here

Someone asked me to post my pizza recipe. I am getting rusty, but I think this will work.

CRUST

1 cup flour
1 tablespoon dry yeast
4 oz. water
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons olive oil

Warm the water to make the yeast happy. Dissolve the yeast in it. I usually dissolve half a teaspoon of sugar in it to give them something to feed on. When the yeast foams up, you’re ready to make dough.

Put everything except the water mixture in a Cuisinart with a regular blade. Turn the Cuisinart on. Dribble the water mixture in until the flour forms a single big glob. Continue to process for one minute. For bigger amounts (over two cups of flour), you may want to use the special dough blade.

At this point, you should have a dough that is squishy enough to work, but not sticky. If it’s too sticky to work, blend a little flour in. If it’s too dry, add water.

You can use ordinary all-purpose biscuit or bread flour. If you love gluten, you can use bread flour and add a spoonful of gluten flour. If you hate gluten, use biscuit flour.

You don’t need fancy 00 flour, but there is no reason you can’t use it if it makes you happy.

You don’t have to put oil in the dough. If you don’t, however, it may be impossible to toss, because the outside will dry and crack while you work it. This doesn’t matter if you roll it. A tossed crust will usually be a little better than a rolled crust, and it’s easier to get the flour off of it.

Form the dough into a disk. Coat the disk with a thin layer of olive oil. Put in a covered dish to rise. I oil the dish lightly. When the dough has at least doubled in size, it’s ready to form into a pizza. This amount of dough will make a thin 12″ pie with a half-inch lip. Toss it or roll it. Put it on a pizza screen.

If the dough holes while you’re working it, you can smoosh the edges of the holes back together and keep going.

SAUCE

4 oz. Stanislaus Super Dolce sauce
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2-1 teaspoon sugar
1 tablespoon white vinegar
dry oregano to taste
1-2 tablespoons olive oil

Add enough water to the sauce to make it loose enough so it won’t form peaks. This is probably more sauce than you need for a 12″ pie, but you don’t want to err on the light side. Put enough sauce on the dough to make it red, but don’t bury it. The best tool for spreading sauce is your fingers. They are less likely to weld the dough to the screen.

Almost all supermarket tomato products are bad.

Use 6 ounces (weight) of Costco shredded mozzarella. You can also use sliced whole-milk mozzarella from the deli counter at a grocery. If you want to go all-out, find a place that sells Grande brand cheese. When the cheese is on the pie, sprinkle about half a teaspoon of oregano on it.

Scamorza cheese is also good, and you might enjoy a blend of mozzarella and provolone. Be careful about using part-skim cheese. It may burn too fast. If you end up with cheese that doesn’t have enough fat in it, you may be able to save it by tossing it in a tablespoon of melted butter before you put it on the pie. You can add flavor by adding grated cheese.

Almost all shredded supermarket cheese is bad.

Dump the pizza on a stone in a 550-degree oven. Cook for four minutes. Using an aluminum peel, remove the screen and leave the pizza on the stone. Bake for 2 1/2-3 minutes.

That’s it.

This may not be your favorite type of pizza, but it will give you a safe place to start. If you can stand to make dough a day in advance and refrigerate it, it will probably be better. You don’t have to use a screen, but it’s easier than using semolina and a peel.

Cheese pizza is the real test of a recipe. Any pizza tastes good when you cover it with crap. While you’re trying to get your recipe right, your best bet is to make cheese pizza over and over before you use toppings.

Enjoy.

I was a Fool to Believe

Does it make sense to use the word “disappoint” when you’re referring to something that fulfilled your low expectations? Doesn’t disappointment necessarily include surprise?

Whatever. The Domino’s pizza I ordered was not good, and I guess I’m not disappointed, because I’m not surprised.

Here is the rundown.

1. Cheese. Seems like the old cheese to me. It was a lot like vinyl, and it was browned in many places, suggesting it’s too low in fat.

2. Crust. Still soft and flavorless, like Wonder Bread. But now it has a fishy-tasting, salty coating of grease on the edge. I can’t figure that out. The fishy taste suggests canola oil is involved; canola is naturally fishy-tasting. But maybe there was some kind of anchovy contamination at the local store.

3. Sauce. Can’t tell the difference between the new and the old.

I wanted to like it, but it’s just not good. They need to get real cheese with fat in it. They need a crust that has a little yeast flavor in it; the main reason people like pizza is that it tastes like fresh bread. They need a sauce you can taste. And that fishy grease has to go. I don’t even understand that stuff.

Maybe they were trying to imitate Pizza Hut’s spray-can butter. That’s a mistake. It does not take a genius to realize that butter was never meant to be an aerosol.

If you want to make pizza with very low risk of failure, use Grande or Costco cheese, Stanislaus Super Dolce sauce, and a simple crust made from flour, yeast, water, salt, pepper, and maybe a little olive oil. This business of hiring dubious chefs and rounding up focus groups is not the way to go.

I wonder why the pizza was so much better back in the Eighties. The new ingredients must be processed industrial waste from China. There has to be an explanation for a decline this steep.

Domino’s Gives it a Shot

Finally, something interesting in the news. Domino’s has decided to improve its pizza.

I worked for Domino’s about a thousand years ago. At that time, the pizza was very good. I saw the ingredients as they were delivered, and it was all good stuff. Real cheese. Real meat. Quality dough. The pizza wasn’t the New York style I prefer, but it was satisfying.

I don’t know why it got so bad after that. I suspect lawyers are part of the reason. The last time I had a Domino’s pizza, the crust was a lot like Wonder Bread. Spongy. Too easy to chew. I couldn’t figure out why they would ruin it by making it soft. Then a bell rang. Liability. Somewhere, someone has probably sued Domino’s because their dentures came out when they bit into a slice. Another possibility: a lot of food companies intentionally make their products bland and wimpy because that way, they offend the fewest customers. Consider Budweiser. It’s a pathetic excuse for a beer. It’s basically sweetened water with carbonation. But the lack of flavor makes it easy to drink, provided you keep it very cold. And it’s cheap.

Don’t ask me why the sauce went downhill. When I worked at Domino’s, they told me Tom Monaghan himself had created the recipe.

Now Domino’s says it’s sorry. They claim their new pizza is worth eating, and they even have a sale going, with a guarantee.

I have to try this. My policy is to try any new pizza restaurant that shows up near me and any restaurant that makes a significant change.

I have a feeling I’ll be disappointed. Good cooks are hard to find; traditional hiring strategies tend to locate people who are aggressive, hard-working, or connected. Those characteristics have nothing to do with good food. The fact that a person got A’s at cooking school says absolutely nothing about his ability to make food you will want to go back for over and over.

In my mind’s eye, I picture a bunch of enthusiastic but talentless corporate types, doing “trust exercises” and fire-walking and singing the company song and so on, when they should really be looking for someone who can cook. Screaming “WE’RE NUMBER ONE” really loud at corporate meetings doesn’t actually improve your pizza.

I’m disturbed that they say they added cayenne to their sauce. Pizza Hut makes spicy sauce, and it’s a mistake. Italy is not Mexico. But I can’t issue a ruling until I try it. I think I’ll order a pie for dinner.

I feel like Charlie Brown, running up to kick the football again. Will Lucy pull it away at the last moment? Probably. But if you don’t do the research, you don’t find the best pizza.

Japan Enters Cookware Fray

The Internet is an endless source of vital information, provided you are a seasoned Boolean-logic miner. Today I found some good news concerning cast iron cookware.

First, the current status of my collection. I have Griswold large-logo skillets in sizes 6 through 9, although I haven’t been able to make myself season and use my #7, because the bottom appears to have been damaged by sitting liquid. I have three Benjamin & Medwin skillets from Target (a set). I have a couple of big Lodge skillets. Other than that, I have a Dutch oven and some other irrelevant items.

The #9 is the ultimate breakfast skillet. Eggs slide right out, and they have that “cast iron fried egg” taste.

I wanted to complete the Griswold collection, but it looks like that won’t be possible. Sort of. I like the skillets without heat rings, because they sit directly on the range top. A heat ring lifts the skillet up a fraction of an inch. I just looked in my Griswold and Wagner reference book (why are you staring at me?), and it turns out my skillets were never made in sizes larger than 10. So I can get a 10, but that’s about it. I have no interest in the smaller sizes. I can’t figure out what they’re for.

If I want to go bigger, I’m going to have to pick a new brand, and it looks like Wagner will do. Their skillets sell a little cheaper, but they’re just as good.

I was considering fly-cutting the insides of my Lodge skillets to make them as good as my old Griswolds. They heat unevenly, and they’re rough. I may still do it, but it’s a perilous enterprise. I have no idea how uniform a skillet bottom has to be to conduct heat evenly, so I don’t know what I’m shooting for. I’m not sure how flat the undersides of the skillets are, either, and if I used the fly cutter, the undersides would be my references (think about it), so if they’re screwed up, the machining will also be screwed up. Even more aggravating: I have no tools suitable for measuring skillet-bottom-thickness.

Lodge skillets are just no good. I’m sorry. It’s that simple. I’d give mine away if I knew anyone who would want them. I only have two, plus a Dutch oven. I guess the oven is okay, since the finish is not as critical. Also, I never use it.

Oddly, the Target skillets seem okay. I had to polish them with a drill and an attachment, but they seem to work all right. Maybe they were made in a nicer part of China. Unfortunately, only one is in a useful size. One is really small, and the other is just barely wrong for cornbread. If you make cast iron skillets, you should know 9″ is standard for cornbread.

Speaking of the Far East, it turns out the Japanese make excellent cast iron pans. If you root around on the web, you can find a company called Iwachu. Like, “You better not shoplift in my convenience store, because Iwachu.” Or something. They make skillets. One size, as far as I can tell. I haven’t seen one up close, but people on the web say nice things about them.

I found another Japanese company called Nakedpan that makes skillets.

The Japanese make very high-quality cast iron. Big shock there. You can even get fancy teapots. Girly stuff. Very nice, if that’s what turns your crank.

I also checked Wagner’s site. They still exist, and they sell crappy Chinese (I assume) skillets. But wait! All is not lost! A few years back, I bought a new Wagner polished skillet. They take the crappy skillets and mill out the insides. They’re not as smooth as a Griswold, but the one I have has performed perfectly. It’s a #6, and I use it for cornbread.

I wanted to get more of these, but there was some reason why I didn’t. I think they only offered one size, or their website went down. I can’t remember. But now the site is up, and they offer skillets up to 13.5″ across. I’m inclined to get a couple. They won’t increase in value like Griswolds, but they may actually work better, and I won’t care if I destroy them, and I won’t have to sit watching Ebay for nine months to get a good price.

Here’s why I think they may work better. New cast iron is thick; that’s good, because it means heat retention and, maybe, better heat distribution. Old cast iron is thin. That’s good, because it reflects the high quality of the castings. The new stuff is cruder. My theory is that a new skillet that has been machined will have the heating qualities (and maybe warping resistance) of a new Lodge, with the smoothness and uniformity of an old Griswold.

I think it’s worth fifty bucks to find out. That’s what a big Wagner costs.

I wanted to tell Mike this important news, but for some reason he is wasting his afternoon cooking dinner for his family.

I came across a cast iron know-it-all on a forum. He was telling everyone what iron to get and how to treat it. He seemed to know absolutely everything you could want to know about the subject. He talked about polymers and other things I know nothing about. Interesting thing: his conclusions were pretty much identical to the ones I’ve come to via trial-and-error, bullheadedness, and pure ignorance. That happens to me a lot.

1. Season iron at 450, not 350.
2. Lodge is no good.
3. Pork fat for seasoning. He also recommended Crisco. He did not like light oils.

He also said you can’t remove seasoning with soap and water. That may be true, but you can definitely wreck the nonstick qualities, so it still seems like a bad idea.

He said the finish you get at 350 degrees isn’t even seasoning. You have to burn the fat to get the kind of molecules that make real seasoning. I guess the 350-degree finish is more like varnish. It certainly smells like it. It gets rancid when you don’t use the skillet.

Okay, to sum up:

1. Mike has ridiculous priorities.
2. Wagner polished skillets seem okay.
3. I am right about everything that matters.

Must be the Hash Browns

I feel wonderful today, but I can’t figure out why. Is it because I’m getting over the virus that has slowed me down for a week? Is it one of those mysterious Christian things? Or is it the fact that I just had a MAGNIFICENT MCDONALD’S BREAKFAST WITH REAL COFFEE INSTEAD OF DECAF????

Cynics will move directly to the third option.

This virus is extremely odd. It makes one part of my body sick. Then that part of my body gets well. Then another part gets sick. It’s as if every part of my body has to develop its own resistance. I know that makes no sense. It started out in the upper part of my throat, and then that went away, and night before last, it went to the lower part of my throat. Now that’s breaking loose. It spent some time in my nose and sinuses, too. Where will it go next?

When I was in law school I had a bug like this, and when it got done with the rest of me, it made stuff come out of my eyes. I mean, come on. Give up, already. You lost. Get out. This is starting to seem like pettiness.

When I was a kid, my mother passed on a helpful tip from my great-grandmother. Her remedy for colds and the flu was to wrap up in quilts and sit by the fireplace, roasting her feet. I think this probably works, although I have dismissed other old Kentucky remedies, such as drinking sheep manure tea to make chickenpox pustules break. For several days, upon waking up, I’ve been cranking up the heat in the electric mattress pad and lying there until I get uncomfortably warm. Seems to make for a much better day. This is as close as I can get to roasting my feet by a fireplace. Maybe I could roast my feet by the plasma cutter.

I feel better today, but the improvement is mostly emotional, not physical. My symptoms have improved a lot, but I would not call myself well.

Whatever it is, I’ll take it. It’s better to feel happy than well.

I have to get off my butt and go to church today. I missed all sorts of stuff this week. I could have spent two days looking after a big-time Christian musical act while they visited the church. That would have been great. I missed the New Year’s services. I missed my prayer group this morning; I wanted to go, but it was 50° outside, and I was afraid I would be inviting a relapse by getting up too early and driving to Hallandale with wet hair. And I figured I’d give the bug to the other guys in the group, as well as the nice waitress who takes care of us. Then she’d be dead, and we’d be banned from Denny’s.

I considered going to the doctor today just to make sure what’s happening to me is normal and harmless. Then I remembered something. I saw a mezuzah in his office. Do I really want to see a Jewish doctor on Saturday? Wouldn’t I be contributing to the delinquency of a backslider, or something? The last time I saw him, it was on Saturday, and I didn’t even think about this.

I want to DO something today. I wonder how active I can be without inviting death. I could put the VFD on my drill press. I could try to fix the questionable ergonomics in the garage. Sooner or later, I am going to have to bite the bullet and part with my workbench. I have to get a dust collector, and I don’t need the bench any more, because my table saw provides me with, like, thirty square feet of horizontal surface.

AUUUGHHH I feel liquid running down inside my ear! Is this the virus’s latest attack?

Wait. It’s water from the shower.

Never mind.

“Quiet” Tool-Obsessed Neighbor Amassed Arsenal of Lethal Peppers

I decided to torture my virus with more hot food. I hit the store and got ingredients for doro wat. The plan was to make it even hotter than the curry I made a few days ago. I picked four habanero golds plus one big Trinidad Scorpion to season it.

Now I have the stew bubbling on the stove, but it seems like the virus just went away. My head opened up, and I feel much better. Maybe it was the fumes from the burning onions, toasting spices, and minced peppers. Or maybe I’m really cured.

I have to ask myself: do I still want to eat this stuff if I’m not sick?

Of course I do. Let’s not kid ourselves.

I’m planning to make rotis instead of injera. I can’t help it. Rotis are better. And I bought sour cream to wrap up in there with the doro wat.

Tomorrow I may have something that makes a virus seem pleasant.

More

Ohhh…that was amazing. My brain actually melted and ran down my throat. I can’t say I miss it. I haven’t used it since 1996.

Take my word for it. Rotis are ten times better than injera. Dump a big pile of doro wat on one, make sure there’s a boiled egg in there somewhere, add a big blog of sour cream, fold it up like a burrito, and GO.