Microsoft Pizza

Programers love pizza and coke. One may wonder what kind of pizza is served in Microsoft cafeteria?

Well, it is a standard, fat dripping pizza Americana. You can pick one with "pepperoni" if you want to consume even more junk.

It is not even a remote relative to Italian DOC pizza, but it taste good for all junk food eaters.

Tip: you can wipe extra fat from top with napkin and take Diet Coke to feel better inside: American diet. :-)
Do not forget to take two slices while you at it so!

Bon Apetito!

What is Baumkuchen and how to make one at home

Take a look what Japanese made out of German desert: Baumkuchen from Villon
Is not this just amazing?

No wonder Japanese like layers: they have a very yammy scrambled egg, that is baked just like that, but flat.

This is an idea that Baumkuchen use to make it at home. Not every body have a "vertical Shvarma" device needed for a round cake.

Here is a link on how people do it. Try :-) Here is link

And if you want to go all NINE YARDS, you can probably get the machine :-) ( here is a link from this post comments )

THE MACHINE

Pizza party for two

Weather was kind of NW typical weekend weather: sun & rain.

Maestro Mario moved his party to Sunday and we was not planing to have a grande party: I made rice and miso soup, but, sun shine for a moment convinced me that we can rock and roll. So I asked my dear to make a dough.

Granted, when I started to bake pizza, rain started to drizzle. Luckily, it was not a strong rain, so I could bake a lot of pizza for just a few guest: Mario managed to come over.

I think pizza turned out OK.

I even made on SUPER HOT PIZZA for Maya.

Here is a recipe for Super Hot Chines Pizza by me :-)

1) Roll out a pizza base
2) Put Thailand hot paste instead of tomato souse
3) Dress it with Mexican fire baked papers.
4) Add some smoked Tempei - yam yam
5) Sparkel with Blue Cheese
6) Some olive oil on top.
7) Bake to perfection
8) Presto ! ( I wrapped it in foil for Maya)



And finally, as usual, last pizza is Nutela pizza. I made a square one :-) for a change. Everybody like it.
( Just bake a crust without anything and dress it with Nutela). Mario some times bake it with Nutela on, but I do not like it,
it burnes Nutela. Also, you can put some olive oil on crust, but I think, the best is just bake pie without anything: like a Pita bread and put Nutela on top. Eat hot!.

Build pizza oven a Lifehacker way!

Here is how

This looks very cool and while does not look like a "correct oven", they claim

"despite concern that it might not hold up to repeated use, the basic clay bricks and Portland cement held up perfectly. The original oven was built almost 20 years ago, and is still in service."

WOW ! This is amazing.

I never used a regular bricks for my oven internals. Even my Japanese "temporary" oven has firebricks inside.

I also always use some kind of insulation. Temporary oven has a light bricks around and they helped to keep heat inside.

My backyard oven has a TONS of insulation. First it has a Italian "fire mold" inside. There are A LOT of fiber and reflective insulation around it. Finally, it has a regular red bricks around. This mainly protect oven from elements and for decorations ( I did a sloppy job in a harry and it looks a bit rustic compare to the on on link)

But make no mistake: I put FUNCTION over look ( even so I LOVE a good look very much).

One more advice: make sure you have ENOUGH room inside your oven. You need room for wood and you need room for pizza and you need some space. While oven may look balky outside, make sure it is big inside.

My backyard oven is probably the smallest oven you should build. Smaller than that is very hard for regular use. You can find a dimensions on my blog below.

Friday Night pizza party

I run one to try it out. Here is report.

1) I was able to make a dough all by myself - just like in old times and timing was good.
2) party was some how less fun for a number of reasons: it is harder to unwind when you run a big party all by yourself. Need to attend to kids and adults alike and run oven and pizza is a lot of work and no time to rest my ass, that got a bit tired in the evening ;-)
3) pizza was good and fire at night was romantic and overall it was good party

Why the front of my oven is black?

Right now my chimney looks different. It was redesigned. I use a barbeque starter from Home Deport. Stole the idea from master Mario. :-) I cover it with a ceramic tile, as I do not have roof, when not in use. I try not to forget to remove it before starting fire or I will get smoke in the face.

We have a lot of rain here and some times I even bake pizza when weather is far from perfect. Summers are good so.

As for black part: all wood burning ovens I saw have this. I believe it mostly happens when I start the fire: first there is no air flow yet trough the chimney and second I put wood very close to the mouth ( and under the chimney). So, when a with a still wet wood and no established fire and flow there are a lot of "fat" smoke. That make this black thing.

After fire is established and I move it to the back of the oven, there is virtually no smoke and you can even see "afterburner" fire going from the chimney if you load too much wood at once. :-) Dig in my blog, I should have some SPECTACULAR picture of "firing" chimney at night: it looks very surrealistic :-)

Talking about oven: this one use "Italian heart", special mold and it come with some steel chimney. So what you see outside is just mainly a decorations, that play a very small role in performance. They only thing about chimeny, is not make it too long or it will draw hot air and insulation of the oven is also a very important thing. If oven is not hot enough it will not bake a proper pizza and in cold weather it is very hard to keep a small oven hot.

So how big or tall the chimney is and if it "covered" with roof all have to be tried and tested, to get results you like. The key point is not have a chimney that sucks all hot air out and does not allow any smoke from front ( that may be very important for indoor - smoke can be nasty and very dangerous and if you ask me, I do not even fire my fireplace anymore; even the best design let smoke into the house if you use wood (gas do not have that problem). What you want to check if how good oven work when fire is established ( 30min-60min) and if temperature not dropping rapidly when oven is "ready".

If you see that fire is not burning right you need a bigger and taller chimney. If oven loosing heat and pizza can not be properly baked in 90 sec without burning ( fire should be calmer when you bake, just to maintain the heat) you need to reduce the flow.

Note, that door or "mouth" is used for air / heat control a lot. When you start the fire, it is wide open, hence this black on front. When fire is going up, you half close it, but you should still let air in, or oven will chock. :)

What I like to do for my oven: I have unusually big front table ( that I like a lot ) I put a door parallel to the mouth but about 5 inches from it. That reflects heat back to the oven, but air can still get from sides. With other models you may half close or put door at an angle to achieve same results.


Hope this helps :-)

Chinese brown sugar Orange Bols ice cream with Belgian chocolad and rum candyed zest

I was fantasizing about some cool taste to make ice cream for the party. After crazy Fireworks ice cream I made on 4 of July I was ready to a chalange.

I started with standard half-and-half milk and egg yolks custurd but used Blue Agave Syrup instead of sugar. In separate utensils I mixed Chinese brown sugar, that have to be dissolved from bricks and some Orange Bols liqueur with some Dark Rum and orange skin shavings and almost caramelized it on fire adding some pectin to the mix as well. I mixed it with custard and let orange skin shavings dry. Icecream maker did the job and I loaded chopped shavings and shredef chocolate to finish.

Result tastes nice, like Italian gelato, but with reach flavor twist and orange aroma. Chocolate and orange skins caramels adds some chewy surprise to otherwise very smooth texture.

I think it was (we finished it already - that say for itself) a nice and intriguing ice cream, definitely not boring and not one you can find on shelf in store :-)