Last week we posted about our dinner at Motorino–around the corner, maker of a wonderful Naples-style pizza–and ever since then, its name seems to be jumping out at me from the virtual pages of Serious Eats and Slice. There’s a great edition of The Food Lab on Slice, in which J. Kenji Lopez-Alt tries to test the theory that the mineral content of water effects pizza crust. After all, haven’t you heard that the secret to New York’s top-rate pizza is the tap water?
The actual results of his experiment are a bit lack-luster, but the way he goes about testing the theory–very methodically, with the help of Motorino’s pizza-maker–is such a fun read (particularly if you’re a bit of a food nerd and love rigging double-blind tastings). And from the looks of it, there are a few of us out there: the comments are hillarious! (Did you consider this factor or that factor? Is crisp the equivalent of sturdy? And so on.) I think I might need to make some more pizza… or find my way onto his taste-test team…
P.S. The Food Lab is such a fun feature. Aron and I are jonesing to try to recreate the Shake Shack burger a la Mr. Lopez-Alt ‘s Burger Lab research on A Hamburger Today.
(Top Photos by J. Kenji Lopez-Alt; bottom found here)
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My former major professor, RoseMarie Pangborn published papers in the 70s that document the effect of the mineral content of water on the flavor of coffee. It is likely that the water can affect dough characteristics. cmb