Adjustable thickness rolling pin for perfect crusts and pasta

Low-cost alternative, equally effective: make some stackable risers from basswood strips.

Go to a hobby/craft store (one that isn’t Hobby Lobby). Buy two 1"x24" strips of 1/8" thick basswood and one that’s 1/16" thick. Cut ‘em in half. Stack as needed, rubber band the ends and get rollin’.

For obvious reasons, this will only work with straight rolling pins. But man, does it work. You will get exactly the thickness of the stacked and banded strips.

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I was coming here to post exactly this! If I’m not throwing slabs I’ll usually lay down rulers or small wooden strips of the same depth on either side of the clay I’m rolling out and use those as guides to a even thickness. However the ability to adjust the depth of the slab in even increments that this rolling pin might give… that would be nice.

(Not my photo. I don’t work with red clay.)

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Alton Brown with rubber bands:

http://www.goodeatsfanpage.com/season7/cookieii/cookieii.htm

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You should have looked at your substantiating evidence more closely.

From your linked page and in Alton’s own words:

“Rolling pin spaces are available at most kitchen stores.”

(I believe they meant to transcribe “spacers” not “spaces”)

That’s what I’m talking about. And while the one you see may be rubber they are now made of silicone for cleanliness. They are not “rubber bands” in anything other than the most literal sense.

Do you know what a petard is?

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Nope.

More info here from another episode:

http://www.goodeatsfanpage.com/season2/crust/crusttranscript.htm

“Now of course anybody whose tried to do any serious rolling knows how tough it is to get a disk of dough down to one quarter of an inch thickness. Luckily this is a McGyverable dilemma. The answer of course is rubber bands used as spacers on either end.”

Why yes, I do know what a petard is. And you have a nice one! :sunglasses:

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He’s wrong. Nothing here adresses my points let alone the fact that he directs you to a kitchen store to get spacers, the product I suggest.

Amazingly enough I’m capable of being comfortable disagreeing with Alton Brown on this.

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For the pie crust, he just uses a rubber band. It isn’t a single tasker.

Cook’s Illustrated:

One product, a set of rubber rings, slide onto the end of a rolling pin to serve as guides; you simply roll out the dough until the rings reach the surface on which you’re rolling. A nice idea, but not without problems. The rings appear to be one-size-fits-all, but many failed to fit a single roller in the test kitchen. In addition, the rings shortened the usable length on tapered, French-style rolling pins (our favorite) by almost half.

Make your own out of broccoli rubber bands:

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wood does not chill like a glass bottle

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I’ve never heard of MN style pizza… please explain. It’s not like that casserole that Chicago calls pizza is it?

But anyway… it seems like Mark buys lots of crapgadgets. Why not just get good at using a regular rolling pin?

This thread and especially the red clay photo are a great inspiration for a future project, thank you to all involved.

I guess I need to make myself a new king size rolling pin and some risers. There’s always some leftovers to put on a pizza, and I hope 2017 will have some great apples too.

Alternative:

http://www.leevalley.com/en/garden/page.aspx?p=74678&cat=2,40733,75046

This comes with various thicknesses of guide strips. It shouldn’t be hard to make a set.

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Very flat (usually rolled out in a big rolling machine), with a crust that is crispy all the way across, and then cut into squares. Often with big chunks of sausage, one per pizza square.

I can think of at least five archetype MN-style places that were owned by Greek immigrants, but I’m not clear on if that’s some kind of cabal or ethnic influence or just a coincidence.

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I do, but I’m unclear how a bomb would help here.

Well, here’s my vision of how it could help:

Controlled explosives for fun and profit!

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