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Let's talk about PIZZA! [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2023-08-06  

Eighteen months ago I built a brick pizza oven. I love pizza but my crummy Westinghouse oven, which only reaches 195C maximum, makes lousy pizza. 200 and some bricks later, I was ready.

If you want to build a pizza oven, it’s easier than you might think. I used photos of existing ovens, that’s all. Making brick arches was easy, it’s not some arcane craft. Once you have an oven, here are some tips:

* It’s in the crust. The most essential thing is to have a floor of dense firebrick that retains heat. Otherwise, you get floppy crust and burnt toppings.

* It takes a couple of hours to get to pizza temperature (I cook at 440C), don’t be impatient.

* The correct flour is critically important.

Pepperoni with 2 chiles, bell pepper and sun-dried tomatoes.

Is your pizza SAFE to eat?

This might be especially relevant if you live in New York, which (I’m told) has a rep for good pizza. But is it safe pizza? Not in my book, and the reason is simple: it seems that NYC pizza parlours are allowed to cook pizza not with hardwood, as I do; but with COAL!

Why might this be a bad thing? Just look at the pollutants released by burning coal: - it produces air-borne pollutants of particulate matter, sulfur dioxide, oxides of nitrogen, carbon dioxide, mercury, arsenic, chromium, nickel, other heavy metals, acid gases (HCL, HF), hydrocarbons (PAHs) and varying levels of uranium and thorium in fly ash.

Oh great, So besides the mercury, arsenic, and chromium, it also produces radioactive waste. Maybe someone should start measuring New York’s pizza parlours with a Geiger counter?

I’d like to ask why the New York health department permits this practice to continue? And why the EPA has taken no steps to regulate the burning of an inimical fuel in a densely populated city? And why New Yorkers continue to risk their health buying a product made in such a polluting manner?

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[1] Url: https://dailykos.com/stories/2023/8/6/2185635/-Let-s-talk-about-PIZZA

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