Pizza pi

A round pizza with radius 'z' and thickness 'a' has the volume pi*z*z*a. That and other math jokes are available on Wikipedia. Don't you love it when people explain jokes:

In this case, DEAD refers to a hexadecimal number (57005 base 10), not the state of being no longer alive.

High larious. (via reddit)

A pizza oven grows in Brooklyn

Adam Kuban interviewed my friend Mark about the pizza oven he built in his Brooklyn backyard.

It is actually pretty amazing how well the oven works. The first thing we made after pizza was a roasted chicken. I just can't describe how amazing it was. Not to mention the pizzas. They cook in about 90 seconds, and when I pulled the first one out of the oven, and the backyard smelled like a pizzeria, we knew all the work was worth it.

Mark and I work in the same office and it's nice to hear that his daily phone conversations about stucco, stucco suppliers, stucco styles, and stucco application techniques have resulted in success.

NYC tap water wins again

A year ago, I collected a bunch of links related to what makes NYC pizza taste like it does. New York's fantastic tap water was a leading candidate. In a recent blind taste test of identical pies, a panel of judges -- including some noted NYC pizza chefs -- chose a pizza made with NYC municipal water over those made from LA and Chicago water.

Also, I just ran across this map showing NYC pizzerias which are outfitted with coal ovens. There are many more than I would have thought.

Inside a frozen pizza factory

Video of the inner workings of a mostly automatic Irish frozen pizza factory. I like the tomato sauce shooter (the way it tracks along with the pizzas briefly as they whiz by on the conveyor belt) and the writhing pepperoni sticks.

Update: Inside an Austrian bread factory where they still made bread by hand.

Why is New York-style pizza so difficult

Why is New York-style pizza so difficult to replicate in other areas of the world? Perhaps the answer lies with NYC's legendary tap water.

"Water," Batali says. "Water is huge. It's probably one of California's biggest problems with pizza." Water binds the dough's few ingredients. Nearly every chemical reaction that produces flavor occurs in water, says Chris Loss, a food scientist with the Culinary Institute of America. "So, naturally, the minerals and chemicals in it will affect every aspect of the way something tastes."

Update: That legendary tap water was supposedly responsible for NYC-style bagels as well until Finagle A Bagel founder Larry Smith drove some Boston tap water to NYC and compared bagels made with the water from the two cities.

"There was absolutely no difference between them," Smith reported. "What makes the difference is equipment, process and ingredients."

Well, ingredients except water. (thx, darrin)

Update: Jeffrey Steingarten, among others, believes that temperature is the key to great pizza and that coal is the key to great temperatures. (thx, hillel)

Update: I knew we'd eventually end up on Slice...the web's premiere pizza site hosts an account of Jeff Varasano's attempt to reverse engineer a NYC pizza, specifically from the 117th St. Patsy's. Among his findings:

There are a lot of variables for such a simple food. But these 3 FAR outweigh the others:

1. High Heat
2. Kneading Technique
3. The kind of yeast culture or "starter" used along with proper fermentation technique

All other factors pale in comparison to these 3. I know that people fuss over the brand of flour, the kind of sauce, etc. I discuss all of these things, but if you don't have the 3 fundamentals above handled, you will be limited.

(thx, ian)

Over at Slice (the pizza blog!), Adam

Over at Slice (the pizza blog!), Adam Kuban has compiled a list of all the different pizza styles found in the US.

Once the Italian immigrants brought their Naples-style pies to the States, it evolved a bit in the Italian neighborhoods of New York to something I've seen referred to as "New York-Neapolitan." This is basically what all the coal-oven pizzerias of New York serve. It follows the tenets of Neapolitan style in that it's thin-crusted, cooked in an ultra-hot oven, and uses a judicious amount of cheese and sauce (sauce which is typically fresh San Marzano tomatoes, as in Naples). It deviates from Naples-style in that it's typically larger, a tad thinner, and more crisp.

There's a surprising number of styles.

This page generates a random pizza for

This page generates a random pizza for you. I got a thin crust pie with red sauce, topped with mozzarella, red peppers, tomatoes, black olives, green peppers, and breaded chicken. Yum?

"Pizza upskirt" is the term for a

"Pizza upskirt" is the term for a from-underneath-the-crust photo of a slice of pizza. Example. Does that make this a hamburger down blouse?

SupersizedMeals.com is a blog documenting "foodstuffs

SupersizedMeals.com is a blog documenting "foodstuffs of epic proportions". Recently featured were a 100-patty burger, a 29" pizza, and a sandwich made from an entire loaf of bread sliced lengthwise.

Adam from Slice documented all of the

Adam from Slice documented all of the pizzerias on his 8.2 mile walk to work this morning (more). (thx, janelle)