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> You won't achieve wok hei on your stove Not true. Pull out that blowtorch. > your oven will not be ablr to achieve the high temperatures required for the b

by bsder 2y ago

> You won't achieve wok hei on your stove Not true. Pull out that blowtorch. > your oven will not be ablr to achieve the high temperatures required for the best versions of certain foods Get a steel or aluminum plate for your oven. The conductivity can make up for a lot of the heat differential. Yeah, a true Neapolitan at 900F is out of reach, but almost everything else is just fine. > restaurants in your area will get priority from suppliers over what you find in the grocery store This might be true, but from what I have seen most of the restaurants are barely even reaching SysCo/USFoods level of quality ingredients. Your local grocery store is probably just fine until you are a very good cook. At that point, you might have to start looking at more niche grocery stores. And, if you get better than that, well, you're likely sufficiently obsessive that you will find a way. > You start getting into fine dining or a Michelin experience with teams of people preparing the food and it's an entirely different level of impossibility to make at home. It's more sheer technique and attention to fussy detail than teams of people. A patissier is simply WAY better than you are at making desserts, for example. They know all the tricks; they will also have all the necessary equipment. However, yeah, Michelin restaurants are definitely next level.

joezydeco 2y ago
Yeah, a true Neapolitan at 900F is out of reach... Go look for the folks that hack off the safety latch on their self-cleaning ovens. It's kind of nuts.
- UIUC_06 2y ago
  I've heard of them. I'd hate to have to explain that to my insurance inspector after a house fire, though.
  - joezydeco 2y ago
    Thankfully these miniature outdoor pizza ovens are taking some of the thrill away from the firestarters.
UIUC_06 2y ago
> Get a steel or aluminum plate for your oven. The conductivity can make up for a lot of the heat differential. Yeah, a true Neapolitan at 900F is out of reach, but almost everything else is just fine. I have a steel plate. An hour at 500F only gets it to around 400F. Which is fine for pizza, actually, so you're right about that. If you ask big US pizzerias (I don't know about the famous Naples ones) what temp they use, it's usually 650-750. At 900F you have zero margin for error.
awithrow 2y ago
You can get a standalone pizza over for a couple hundred. I've got an Ooni and it gets up to 900 in about 15 minutes. Its obviously not for indoor use but its great nonetheless. It still takes a good bit of technique to get the dough and timing right but its great to be able to cook a pizza in little more than a minute.
- AlbertCory 2y ago
  Have you actually pointed an IR thermometer at it? On mine (which I sold), it was 900 at the back and 600 at the front. It was just too much trouble. A pizza steel in a kitchen oven, preheated, works very well; maybe not as good as a 700F oven but WAY easier. And 5 minutes instead of 1 minute is not a big sacrifice.
  - ghaff 2y ago
    It's not perfect but those Naan flatbreads available in many US markets plus a pizza stone at 500 degrees F work fine for the occasional homemade pizza if I don't want to get takeout from one of a couple of local pizzarias. One of which is more convenient and the other is brick-over/better.
  - throwaway2037 2y ago
    Hey, this is a great post. I have read similar complaints about Ooni pizza ovens, where it is very difficult to achieve the 900F temp and impossible in the front. Great point about 5 mins vs 1 min. Can you share: Do you think normie home cooks can taste the difference between a 5min and 1min pizza? I am unsure. For example, is the 5min pizza much drier? (I assume no.)
    - AlbertCory 2y ago
      Thanks, you know, I think the brick oven pizza IS better. Yes, you probably could taste the difference. Whether the 5 min is dryer: maybe, could be. My decision to sell my Ooni, after about 6 tries, was because my actual results were nowhere close to a pizzeria's, and way more trouble than my kitchen oven's. Since you can't just open the door as you can with the kitchen oven, you have much less tolerance for error. In the kitchen, you just open after 5 minutes and decide, "OK, it's done" or "One more minute." I guess I decided the brick oven pizzeria results are just not attainable at home. The kitchen results are damn good; way better than a frozen pizza.
ghaff 2y ago
For most people, it's also not just the technique (and, to a lesser degree, gear), it's also the sheer number of fresh ingredients often required. Desserts may actually lean more towards technique/time and less towards ingredients. I took a croissant class and produced at least serviceable croissants (with a chef correcting things here and there). But much as I like a hard to source fresh croissant I'm not going to routinely spend half a day making a batch.

by bsder 2y ago

joezydeco 2y ago

Yeah, a true Neapolitan at 900F is out of reach... Go look for the folks that hack off the safety latch on their self-cleaning ovens. It's kind of nuts.

UIUC_06 2y ago
I've heard of them. I'd hate to have to explain that to my insurance inspector after a house fire, though.
- joezydeco 2y ago
  Thankfully these miniature outdoor pizza ovens are taking some of the thrill away from the firestarters.

UIUC_06 2y ago

> Get a steel or aluminum plate for your oven. The conductivity can make up for a lot of the heat differential. Yeah, a true Neapolitan at 900F is out of reach, but almost everything else is just fine. I have a steel plate. An hour at 500F only gets it to around 400F. Which is fine for pizza, actually, so you're right about that. If you ask big US pizzerias (I don't know about the famous Naples ones) what temp they use, it's usually 650-750. At 900F you have zero margin for error.

awithrow 2y ago

You can get a standalone pizza over for a couple hundred. I've got an Ooni and it gets up to 900 in about 15 minutes. Its obviously not for indoor use but its great nonetheless. It still takes a good bit of technique to get the dough and timing right but its great to be able to cook a pizza in little more than a minute.

AlbertCory 2y ago
Have you actually pointed an IR thermometer at it? On mine (which I sold), it was 900 at the back and 600 at the front. It was just too much trouble. A pizza steel in a kitchen oven, preheated, works very well; maybe not as good as a 700F oven but WAY easier. And 5 minutes instead of 1 minute is not a big sacrifice.
- ghaff 2y ago
  It's not perfect but those Naan flatbreads available in many US markets plus a pizza stone at 500 degrees F work fine for the occasional homemade pizza if I don't want to get takeout from one of a couple of local pizzarias. One of which is more convenient and the other is brick-over/better.
- throwaway2037 2y ago
  Hey, this is a great post. I have read similar complaints about Ooni pizza ovens, where it is very difficult to achieve the 900F temp and impossible in the front. Great point about 5 mins vs 1 min. Can you share: Do you think normie home cooks can taste the difference between a 5min and 1min pizza? I am unsure. For example, is the 5min pizza much drier? (I assume no.)
  - AlbertCory 2y ago
    Thanks, you know, I think the brick oven pizza IS better. Yes, you probably could taste the difference. Whether the 5 min is dryer: maybe, could be. My decision to sell my Ooni, after about 6 tries, was because my actual results were nowhere close to a pizzeria's, and way more trouble than my kitchen oven's. Since you can't just open the door as you can with the kitchen oven, you have much less tolerance for error. In the kitchen, you just open after 5 minutes and decide, "OK, it's done" or "One more minute." I guess I decided the brick oven pizzeria results are just not attainable at home. The kitchen results are damn good; way better than a frozen pizza.

ghaff 2y ago

For most people, it's also not just the technique (and, to a lesser degree, gear), it's also the sheer number of fresh ingredients often required. Desserts may actually lean more towards technique/time and less towards ingredients. I took a croissant class and produced at least serviceable croissants (with a chef correcting things here and there). But much as I like a hard to source fresh croissant I'm not going to routinely spend half a day making a batch.