Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/05/31/if-you-have-been-wanting-to-ma.html
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They wanted to charge $200.00 for basically an hour of YouTube videos on the oh-so-elusive art of making a pizza? Yeah, I can see why this is over 90% off. Pretty sure this information is readily available for free to anyone who looks, so $13.99 might still be unreasonable if the instructions and techniques aren’t really, really exceptional.
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Soooo nothing’s been newsworthy enough for Boing to post about since 9:21 in the morning yesterday, and that’s why we’re getting four ads in a row?
Nothing?
Really?
Nothing?
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Typical weekend on the BB these days. I guess america burning isn’t worth getting out of bed for.
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WAT.
(rereads ad)
WAT.
And oh, oh so famously difficult, too. I mean… you have to mix flour, water and yeast, let it sit and then roll it out! You have to take some canned tomatoes and stick them in a blender! (Maybe with some garlic, even!) You have to grate some cheese! Sorry, this is so complicated, it’s making my head spin already!*
*Ok, it’s true, that doesn’t necessarily describe authentic Italian pizza, which may require something different and can be extremely varied, but the thing about pizza is - they’re all simple. It’s the simplest, most fool-proof bread with some stuff baked/added on top. That’s the fundamental nature of it… if you took it and made it more complicated, complicated enough to warrant a class, it’d quickly stop being pizza.
(Speaking as someone who has professionally made pizza - the American kind - and who now for fun makes authentic Italian pizzas at home, the irony is that what really holds people back from making pizzas like those from restaurants is the lack of a high-temperature oven, which a video series isn’t going to fix.)
Shit, maybe I need to start selling a $100 video class on how to boil water. (My instructions are exceptional. By which I mean exceptionally insane.)
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Here… I’ll give you the info you need for less than $200.
Buy this book:
Buy this cambro container:
This pizza steel:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00RWSYBDA/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1 (or one like it)
This peel:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B009LPDNPO (or one like it)
And any food scale that can do 1 - 500 grams without too much problem.
You may also want commercial cling wrap.
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I worked at an independent pizza joint for about 3 years. We made stellar pizza. It ain’t hard if you’ve got the right equipment [mixer]. A trick is to roll out your crusts ahead of time so they can rest and rise. Personally, I find NY pizza to be merely OK but too thin. And Chicago pizza to be FAR too thick (it’s OK but one tires of it quickly). I like mine in between, with a fluffy light crust. Making your own means you can go nuts with it. Pineapple and ham (pineapple goes exceptionally well with marinara)? Bring it on! Brown sugar and cinnamon? Yum. OK, making your own marinara is its own skill set, but you can also learn to do a bechamel sauce (again, it’s own skill set) which can lead you to more sauces like mornay all of which are lovely for fish pizza. Point is, you don’t need no damned course you have to pay for. You pay for it by working in a real kitchen
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I hate regular cling wrap. Restaurant cling wrap is great tho.
… looks around nervously
… seriously dude are you trying to get our assess kicked?
But I kid. All pizza is good pizza, I love NY and Chicago, have been looking hard at Detroit.
Pizza, pizza will keep us together. 
t
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I’ve only recently discovered that Detroit pizza is a thing. It kinda hits my middle ground. I hope they are still open.
Detroit pizza is ACES.
I reached into the kitchen drawer for regular cling wrap the other day. Rushing, I accidentally ran the edge of my index finger along the serrated edge of the box. Blood everywhere. I’m still nursing it several days later. I hate that stuff AND the box it comes in.
Maybe for their price they will send you some actual flour and yeast. I haven’t seen yeast in weeks and bread flour is hard to come by.
Typically I use White Lilly flour, which makes great cakes and cookies, but is crap for breads. I tried a recipe a friend gave me (who is serious about his pizza) and it tasted great, but was thin due to the wrong flour.
I mean making a good pizza dough is more complicated than making cookies and that eludes a lot of people.
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But this is about making sourdough pizza!
Totally worth it!
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To be fair, I don’t work weekends either.
Does it involve chipping a hole in the side of your mud hut for a fireplace to heat rocks to put in a pot you fired yourself?
(Primitive Technolgy Youtube channel, as seen on BB)
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Oh, the irony. People have a lot of trouble making (Southern-style) biscuits because they can’t (easily) get soft winter wheat flour like White Lily. For yeast bread, you really need a flour with a decent amount of gluten in it, especially for focaccia breads (like pizza). So really any other sort of flour (except maybe pastry flour, though even that would be better than White Lily) is good. All purpose, bread, whole wheat, White Lily with added gluten… Though I suspect even straight White Lily might work with extra mixing to develop the gluten and/or a sufficiently hot oven (i.e. one that gets at least 200 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than the standard kitchen oven).
Honestly, it shouldn’t be. (For the kinds of cookies I usually make, it certainly isn’t.) Just having the right kind of flour and a hot oven is most of it. Technique doesn’t really come into it much.
It’s funny, I finally gave in and ordered a massive amount of flour online (at an absurd price), and a couple days after it arrived, I went to the store and flour was back in stock… (hollow laughing sound)
I was thinking more: using psychic powers or calling down alien beings/ancient deities to do it for you. The point is to have exceptional instructions, not useful ones. (Getting the water to actually boil is irrelevant.)
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I often make a pizza in my grill with a pizza stone.
Nice and hot, works pretty dang well.
As an extra cheating tip for speed and ease, buy your dough from a actual pizza place. They sell 'em for $3-4 and saves you all the lengthiest part.
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Grilled pizza has a nice smoky flavor. 4 layers of aluminum foil works ok if you can position the grate high enough over the coals.
Get paid to make funny cooking videos for The Onion instead.
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