Works fine for me. Maybe you’re doing it wrong.
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Scissors for pizza strikes me as awkward. I would have to lift the pizza from the board and hold it as I cut. My kitchen scissors are then too short to cut all the way to centre, so I would have to do multiple cuts, thus getting cheese/sauce all over the handles. Whilst I can envisage the typical info-mercial dolt making an hilarious mess of this as I type, I fear that the dolt would actually be me.
We just use a wheel on our wooden workspace, and then slide the pizza back onto the pizza stone to keep it warm. Perfect. What’s not to like? OK, it’s a single-use gadget, but we use it quite a bit, it cleans in the dishwasher without disassembly and doesn’t take up much room in the drawer.
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i’ve always found the pizza wheel to be anemic when cutting pizza. my preference is a large chef knife, followed by kitchen shears. specialty pizza shears? bah!
No single purpose devices for me. After I’m done slicing my pizza, I can dispatch my enemies. And… uh. Do some cosplay. And… mmmm… dispatch my enemies?
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Because you’re thinking too small. Lasagna, brownies, fudge, caramels, any casserole in a 13x9. Fondant. Pita for chips. Pasta. Fresh dough for lattice pie tops. Chiffonade for basil or other similar leafy herbs or lettuce.
It’s not a unitasker. It’s a rotary tool for your kitchen to cut any flat things evenly.
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If you’re on the other side of the river, you’re not “near Harvard.”
Newbury St. is straight posh-Boston… which explains a $75 pizza.
As a person who has worked in a Pizzeria I can tell you that standard round pizza cutter, or mezaluna style pizza knife, is more sanitary, more efficient, and works on a much wider variety of crust styles and thicknesses. And if your cutting a pizza you really do want the sort of pushing straight down sort of cut to avoid smearing the cheese or pulling it off. Scissors can do that but they do it less consistently than a wheel can. I think the problem people have with the pizza wheels is that the vast majority of available to the public wheels are terrible. Dull, unstable, cheap handles. Oxo makes a very good one, and good ones can be had cheap at restaurant supply stores. Bigger wheels work better. With a bit of practice you can cut perfectly even pizza slices no problem. You have to push straight down, and only down when you start a cut, “chopping” through the crust. Then you push the wheel forward. Then you turn the pie and repeat that motion. You’ve got the make sure the cutter has already fully penetrated the crust before you let it roll. That said there are pizzerias in the world that slice their pies with scissors just not these. Which have always struck me as flimsy and difficult to clean. They tend to use over sized all stainless sheers that look a bit like this. But much longer, and often offset.
Pizza wheels are great for cutting fresh pasta, flatbreads (or just flatish breads like focaccia), doughs of all sorts, and certain crafting and art applications. Among other things. So its single use in that it only cuts things. You’re scissors can probably do all that too. As can your chef’s knife. But there’s a reason we use rotary cutters to cut certain things, like say fabric and pasta dough. When you’re attempting to neatly cut a long straight line in something thin a spinning wheel does a much better job.
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btw, there is a long tradition in many, many parts of italy to cut and eat pizza with a fork and knife.
“Of course, de Blasio is absolutely right,” says NPR’s longtime Rome correspondent, Sylvia Poggioli.
“The story made headlines here, too, with everyone scratching their heads, wondering if Americans don’t have more serious issues to deal with,” Sylvia tells us. She adds:
"Italians cut their pizzas with fork and knife and then eat the slices with their hands. One reason is that pizza is served piping hot, too hot to rip apart with your hands.
At a sit-down pizzeria, this is how it’s done. You will never see a pizza come pre-cut into “slices,” as that would cause the very soupy toppings to seep underneath and turn the whole thing soggy. You could try to manually cut it into slices, but they’ll be so floppy that you’ll need several extra fingers just to hold them out.
oh, and if you want to slice large pizzas, just spend $18 on the real thing instead of scissors. this you can sharpen yourself even if you’ve never sharpened a knife. scissors are a pain to sharpen if you are an amateur.
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Definitely easier to sharpen than a 4" circular blade. You could even sharpen it with a carbide V-sharpener if you felt so inclined. They’re terrible sharpeners, but you don’t need a particularly honed blade when you have that much leverage.
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yeah, i haaate rolly cutters for straight, long lines. 20" knife > scissors > circular cutter.
wait, isn’t @doctorow largely gluten free? do you have a good crust recipe? perhaps i should start a gluten free, or even just restricted diet Craft thread.
Rolly cutters are great when they’re about as sharp as an obsidian razor. But if there’s even a single microscopic burr on the blade it goes to shit and using on a pizza is like using a potato to slice warm rice pudding. It quickly goes from an efficient straight line cut to bludgeoning the damn food apart.
If memory serves this is mostly with rigidly traditional Neapolitan pizza. Which has a fairly floppy crust and very wet toppings (fresh moz releases water when heated). Which makes eating slices with your hands quite difficult and messy. Rome and Sicily’s traditional pizzas are breadier, and often bakery items from what I understand. And get sold by the individual piece (or by the inch) to be eaten with the hands. Chicago deep dish is also commonly eaten with a fork and knife as is the stuffed pizza one commonly finds in NY. And for the same reason. Shit is messy and eating with the hands is impractical. De Blasio’s mistake, and one many politicians seem to make, was using a fork and knife to eat the wrong kind of pizza. There are very limited situations where eating a regular New York, or even just North East style pizza with a fork and knife are appropriate. 1: when its hot as shit, too hot to physically hold and too hot to sensibly put in your mouth. But your better off waiting for it to cool. 2. when it is too heavily topped to practically eat otherwise, as with the stuffed pizza I mentioned. 3. people too old or two young to easily feel themselves otherwise. Cutting the pizza up smaller is usually a good idea with very small kids, and I know some older folks with arthritis, tremors etc. who have trouble handing the slice securely.
Other than that eating a NY slice with a fork and knife is seen as a huge breach of manners. Common decorum, accepted manners, and local culture are less important than how squeamish you are about getting food on your hands. Which makes you look foolish. Or, and this is why people get pissed about it, people view it as a person trying to actively show how much better they are than everyone else. By showing a level of manners and supposed refinement that’s unnecessary, impractical, and completely at odds with the level of food their eating.
I eat french fries with a fork, even when dressed as a slob. And even if I eat a slice with my hands I still use a ton of napkins, and I may even put a slice inverted on another so toppings don’t fall.
Eating a slice in a particular way is at best a way to rib your friends good naturedly, and at worst the silliest kind of purity test.
Is this gent disqualified from running for office in say Chicago?
I don’t want to be too hyperbolic, but it ranks up there with using the teaspoon for the consommé. Have a snicker and move on.
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I actually find the chopstick work impressive. If anything it would increase the likelihood of me voting for him.
But of course I have such bad dexterity that learning the trombone was a ceaseless battle against the odds.
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I certainly couldn’t do it either! Look at the size of that slice, it must weigh a quarter pound.
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My mistake! Someone told me they were in Harvard Square. Newbury St makes much more sense for them.
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@shaddack, get on this ASAP. KTHX
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I sharpened mine intensively, and it is both excellent for cutting pizza and incredibly dangerous. Win-win.
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