Unamerican Pie
April 6th, 2010The Urge to Annoy Nerds Overcomes Me
I guess I’m childish, but I can’t help wanting to poke a hole in the Neapolitan pizza fad.
In case you aren’t up on your fads, Neapolitan pizza is thin pizza cooked at over 700 degrees. The really cool places go a thousand. The pizza is very thin, it’s burned (understandably), and it tends to come with disgusting, silly toppings like goat cheese, arugula, and squash blossoms (I’m guessing on that last one).
Mind you, I’m talking about American yuppie Neapolitan. For all I know, the stuff they eat in Naples actually tastes good.
Pizza nerds cut up their Weber kettles all the time, trying to jack up the heat. It makes a real mess, and it’s a lot of work. When I saw them talking about this on a forum, I asked why they didn’t just go on Craigslist and buy used pottery kilns. For a couple of hundred dollars, you can get a 120-volt deal that will cook a pretty big pizza at 1500 degrees. If that’s what turns you on. They didn’t get too excited about it, though.
Yesterday I got the urge to tinker. Propane burns at nearly 3000 degrees. I’m thinking I should be able to get to a thousand or so by putting a stone on my cajun burner. I’ll need heat from above, too, so I’m thinking I could make a thin steel box to cover the stone (with room for a pizza inside) and hang a second burner above the box, aimed downward. Might work. Heat would go out the sides, but I think a good hot stone and radiant heat from the box above ought to more than compensate. I could put some kind of thin metal deflector under the stone to keep the center from getting too hot.
Will it work? I don’t know, but it would cost about fifty bucks to find out, and it would be fun to prove that you don’t need to bankrupt yourself or make a mess to get bona fide nerd pizza. I should be able to put the box and burner on a shelf in the garage, neatly out of the way, unlike a hacked up Weber kettle full of fire bricks.
I guess the first step is to put the stone directly over the heat and see if it explodes. If not, the project may work. If it blows up, I spent twenty bucks to find out I had a bad idea.
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Okay, let’s file that under “bad idea.”
April 6th, 2010 at 2:17 PM
I have had “pizza Napoli” in Napoli.
It was just pizza. It was thin but it wasn’t terribly burned. It was good but not better than anything I’d ever had or worth going nuts over. Nerds are annoying.
April 6th, 2010 at 4:12 PM
Steve- Greetings from the cold and rainy PNW where “April is the cruelest month” from a fellow sinner and ‘armorbearer’ who rediscovered your renamed site after diligently searching for ‘HogOnIce’.(old computer crashed some time ago and am diligently trying to remember my faves on this laptop from a fading 60yr. old mind!).
Hallelujah, brother! Thanks to you I think I’ve found ‘manna’ on the earth-ie your recipe for deepdish Sicilian pizza, the first pizza I’ve attempted, was rapaciously and deliciously devoured by myself, wife, her daughter and two neighbors in less than five minutes- we’re never buying a mass-market or store bought pizzapie again. Oh, and Willie and Kaiser, our two Dachsunds, gave it eight paws up!
Instead of purchasing a pizza joint, have you thought about a mobile van?-should be alot of used postal vehicles soon- with a propane oven, refrigerator, maybe 3 or 4 choices of premade pies, the dulcet tune of Deano’s’ Whenna the Moona issa in thea Sky…’ blaring from loudspeakers, as you navigate the ‘hood- “Hot pizza in ten minutes! Get it while it’s Hot!”
Of course, you’d have to uparmor the van, maybe a Stryker or MRAP would offer more protection- then there’s the Level lIII vest and civilian-legal-semi-automatic-military-style rifle with extra mags…
Okay, let’s file that under “bad idea”.
I’m with you on the pretentious nerds, of which this place(Seattle area) is a particularly pernicious spawning ground for same- oh, and don’t forget the capers on your burnt, black cracker!
Good to see you in the faith, your insights into God’s Prophets(His prosecutors) are interesting and sound theology- at least there’ll be one lawyer in Heaven! Ha!
You have a valuable resource in Florida in the person of R.C.Sproul of the Orlando area. He’s a noted theolgian and teacher- Ligonier Ministries, ‘Tabletalk’ magazine, and many wonderful and intelligent books including the ‘Reformation Study Bible’, all of which I highly recommend for your continued edification in Christian Apologistics.
Though your posts have ‘mellowed’ somewhat, keep your sword sharp to prick the cant and hypocrisy that this world is mired in- and do it with a smile and humor. The left, progressives, socialists, statists absolutely hate it when you laugh at their absurd, failed, miserable ideas.
I’ll leave you with a Christopher Walken experience I had not too long ago- working as a carpenter with my fellows, repairing a condo ‘village’, one of the painters was a stocky young lesbian covered in tattoos from her ankles to her wrists- she was actually quite funny and didn’t cop the usual man-hating attitudes of many of her sisters. She walks over to us on a break wanting to show us her new tattoo- yes, you guessed it!- on the inside of her left forearm was a three-inch oval portrait of the unsmiling facial visage with those very strange brooding dark eyes of our favorite weird poster boy. “Why?”, I inquired. “He’s just so….COOL!”- go figure!
Talk at you later- from a ‘bitter-clinger’ who feels comforted holding a Bible in one hand and a Socum 16 M1a 20rd 7.62×51 rifle in the other.
Pray for the peace of Jerusalem. Best-Bert
April 6th, 2010 at 4:17 PM
Well, it wasn’t Naples, but I had a piece of pizza in Balogna and it was fine. It was nice pizza.
April 6th, 2010 at 4:24 PM
No edit function- sorry for the brain freeze- but it should read ‘Apologetics’ instead of ‘Aplogistics’-Thanks-Bert
April 6th, 2010 at 5:02 PM
Feh. You just proved that a pizza stone is inadequate to your needs.
You need pizza STEEL.
And a robot to pick it up for you.
April 6th, 2010 at 9:36 PM
“Neapolitan” means you aren’t special enough to actually order this item and if you do, you won’t like it!
April 7th, 2010 at 9:32 AM
Any nerd could get the same effect by buying some fire bricks and assembling a dry-stone oven on his lawn or driveway (cement or gravel – no asphalt.) Charcoal fire, move it to the edges, and bang you gotta da pizza oven.
I’m not sure what he could use for a top to the oven. Go to it, nerds.