Monthly Archives: June 2010

Food

Now I understand the obsession with cast iron frying pans

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A lot of cooks and kitchen enthusiasts swear by cast iron frying pans – and now I understand why.

From the hand-me-downs I got when moving out to the replacement pans I eventually picked up, everything I could find seemed to be that typical “non-stick” alloy that is actually pretty bad about sticking.  What’s even worse is that you have to baby them or else they’ll scratch and start leeching some stuff that is not so good.  You also can’t heat them up too high or they’ll start to break down in to toxic gasses right under your food.

So by some luck, I found some actual cast iron pans for sale at a convenient location – Wal Mart.  They’re big and black and heavy, but its just iron and it cooks like a dream!

Advantages of a cast iron frying pan:

  • Things really don’t stick – The whole marketing paradigm behind “non-stick” coatings is that they’re supposed to be better than cast iron.  In my experience, it just isn’t true.  Not only can you use metal spatulas, I haven’t seen anything even try to stick to the pan.  Eggs, cheese, even the little burnt drippings of meat that used to be such a pain comes up easily.
  • Its easy to clean up – Since nothing is sticking, clean-up usually involves wiping the surface down with a dry paper towel.  Really, that’s all there is to it.
  • Use it in the oven – Most cast iron pans don’t have a plastic handle or the plastic part is removable so you can use the pan in the oven as well as on the stove top.  You might actually have to make use of your pot holders, but this cast iron pan is very convenient for me when I want to make a pizza!
  • Fry on high – And the other reason you can use cast-iron in the oven is because it can actually tolerate high temperatures better than the non-stick brands can.  I mentioned earlier that the non-stick coatings can break down into toxic gasses at high temperature, but cast iron only breaks down in to … iron!  By the way, iron is one of the essential elements in a human diet, and its responsible for transporting oxygen through the blood stream. Too much can be a bad thing, but toxic overload is still rare at about 1% of the U.S. population.  Just don’t scrub it down and intentionally pull up flakes, right?
  • Better taste and browning – It just tastes better, really.  Not only does the sausage and steak brown just right, but everything has a much fresher taste without those bitter hints I used to encounter every once in a while on the non-stick brands.
  • Comparable price – while there are plenty of premium brands for any type of product, there are also cheap ones available.  The cast iron pan I got is great (I think its a Loge or something)

Downsides of cast iron pans:

  • They’re heavy – The first thing you’ll probably notice when you pick up a cast iron pan is how incredibly heavy they are.  Suddenly, all those comedic sketches of someone getting smacked upside the head don’t seem so funny – someone could really get hurt with this thing.  As an optimist, I just convince myself that this is really an advantage:  the pan doubles as a home defense tool.
  • Seasoning concept can be daunting – I’m still not sure I really understand this “seasoning” concept, but I think the idea is to avoid using hot water and soap when you’re cleaning the thing.  The iron surface kind of like bonds with a layer of cooking oils and food-based fats, so once you’ve used it a few times there is a very nice, slick top for you to do your cooking on.  Most pans are pre-seasoned so all you have to do is maintain it with the proper maintenance.
  • Harder to find – While they seem to be regaining some popularity, it is still much more common to see non stick pans in the kitchen section of most retailers.  I don’t personally like to buy stuff online that I can’t check out in person first, so I didn’t actually get one for myself until it happened to be at a place I was already at.

Now that I’ve been using it for a few weeks, I’m not sure why it took so long for me to get a cast iron pan.  I’ve heard the recommendations before and now I’m starting to see why so many people are singing its praises.

Food

More gluten free pizza crust advice

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In the last few months there has been some progress – and some setbacks – in my attempts to make a convincingly real gluten-free pizza.

The basic gluten-free pizza recipe is pretty delicious, but there have been some modifications over time as well, in what I hope to be a process of improvement and refinement.

My first concern was that the crust was too brittle and prone to sticking to the pan.  It tasted fine, but the pizza often came up in broken chunks and had to be re-assembled on the plate.  Then eaten with a fork and knife!

Some of this is because the pizzas I’m making are just DEEP.  Its not quite a tomato pie here, but I do like to go a bit overboard on the sauce, the cheese, and the toppings. My girlfriend had to have some special cheese-free sections to try the pizza (I know, we’re a dietary disaster) and she was interested at first but she can’t take all of those canned tomatoes.  Hopefully in a few more weeks, our backyard garden will start to produce some yield and I’ll be able to try again with fresher produce.

So then I found that corn starch is effective for holding the crust together, but my friend Steve helped me out with some constructive criticism and announced quickly that it “tastes like a microwave pizza.”  And that’s probably a good observation, because I’ve found that those 99 cent microwave pizzas will use a lot of “food starch” without specifying the kind – since corn is just as cheap as or even cheaper than wheat they probably use quite a bit of it to keep their prices down.

When extra corn was ruled out as a solution I decided to try with the Xanthum gum.  Now I don’t know why gluten-free bakers swear by this stuff, but it has the capacity to make bread taste borderline terrible.  Its just gummy.  Who wants bread that tastes gummy?  Next!

Let it sit

So far, the best solution has been to let the dough sit for a much longer period of time.  Wow, that is actually tougher than it sounds.

Ok, so I let the dough sit on the counter (loosely covered) for about six hours, then I stuck it in the fridge and fell asleep.

When I woke up, it had a borderline awful stench of alcohol, but I added some more sugar to it just before rolling it in to my new cast iron pan.  To be safe, I added some sugar to the sauce too – it was going to be a pineapple pizza so the sweetness shouldn’t be a problem and I was honestly way more worried about the bitter alcohol smell coming from way too much fermentation.

But the actual taste and texture of the crust was greatly improved.  Ok, the taste was a good bit harsh, but I’m almost convinced that there’s a happy medium between rolling the dough out immediately and letting it sit for an entire day.  While this makes planning in to a small nightmare, I am pretty confident that the ideal gluten free pizza dough should have about three to four hours rising at room temperature or maybe twice that if chilling out in the fridge.

You might even be able to use more or less yeast to control the rate of reaction, but I really don’t know.   The best piece of advice you’ll ever get in the kitchen is to go ahead and try.  Whether you succeed or fail to produce something delicious, you’ll always be able to tell what there was too much or too little of for an improved attempt in the future.