Even though one in three of Italy’s pizza makers isn’t Italian, the UNESCO Intergovernmental Committee for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage has named Neapolitan pizza an Intangible Cultural Heritage.
“The art of the Neapolitan ‘Pizzaiuolo’ is a culinary practice comprising four different phases relating to the preparation of the dough and its baking in a wood-fired oven, involving a rotatory movement by the baker. The element originates in Naples, the capital of the Campania Region, where about 3,000 Pizzaiuoli now live and perform.” — UNESCO (more…)
Bread baking at Shamsullo Dustov’s house in Kumsangir, Tajikistan, near the Afghan border. A film by John Wendle, selected for the National Geographic Short Film Showcase.
_____________ Short link: http://wp.me/p6sb6-nAm
Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, concise, and not boring or obscene. Comments may be edited for clarity and length.
The chalkboard outside Eastern Market’s Silver Spork (above) reminds us that it’s time for autumn pies. Is omission of sweet potato pie an index of neighborhood gentrification?
Anyway, that chart is fine for November, but over at Modern Farmer Molly Birnbaum and Omar Lee have baked up a 4-season pie chart.
“Soggy bottoms and burnt crusts could be a thing of the past for troubled cooks who are making pizzas from scratch at home. A mathematician claims to have come up with the first-ever formula for the ‘perfectly proportioned’ pizza, taking into account factors like the ratio of topping to base. Dr. Eugenia Cheng said pizza lovers get more topping per bite in a smaller pizza, but a more even spread of bites in a larger pizza.”
— “Formula for the perfect PIZZA revealed: Mathematician creates equation to ensure you don’t burn – or undercook – a margherita,” Sarah Griffiths, Daily Mail (links added)
On July 7, 1928 the Chillicothe Baking Company began selling pre-sliced loaves of Kleen-Maid Bread. Iowa inventor Otto Rohwedder had recently invented a machine that sliced bread into uniform slices and wrapped each loaf. “Just think of it!” read an advertisement:
“Every slice perfect and CORRECT, far better than you could cut it yourself….There was a time when you ground coffee. Now you buy it ground. Well, this is the same sort of sensible, logical improvement.”
One result: New-fangedelectric toasters began, um, popping up on kitchen counters all over America.
More:
“A Brief History of Sliced Bread,” Kaitlyn Boettcher, Mental Floss
Hungry, but Domino’s is closed? Three words: Pizza vending machines. They’re coming.
“Let’s Pizza machines say they’re a cut above factory farmed pizzas. Here’s the fresh factor: After customers pay, they begin by selecting one of four kinds of pizza available. Inside, a machine mixes flour and water together and kneads it into dough, which is then rolled flat. After toppings are added, the pizza is cooked in an infrared oven and dispensed in a take-home box. Voila, your very own 10.5-inch pie in under three minutes.”
— “Pizza Vending Machines Coming to U.S.,” Nic Halverson, DiscoveryNews
“… the linear or helical hand motions commonly used by pizza chefs … for single tosses maximize energy efficiency and the dough’s airborne rotational speed; on the other hand, the semielliptical hand motions used for multiple tosses make it easier to maintain dough rotation at the maximum speed.”
“Rotating bouncing disks, tossing pizza dough, and the behavior of ultrasonic motors,” KC Liu, J. Friend, L. Yeo, Physical Review E: Statistical, Nonlinear, and Soft Matter Physics, in “The physics of tossing pizza dough,” Discover Magazine Discoblog
Image (“And God Created Pizza, after the Bible Moralisée, ca. 1250”) by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com
Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, concise, and not boring or obscene. Comments may be edited for clarity and length.
National Pie Day – January 23, 2011
“Grab a Slice of Life.”
“Created by the American Pie Council®, National Pie Day is dedicated to the celebration of pie. As part of our American heritage, this day is a perfect opportunity to pass on the love and enjoyment of pie eating and pie making to future generations.”
