• Red Sox Win! Red Sox Win! Don’t think that I haven’t made note of the fact that in the year that she was born, the Lovely Tess simultaneously witnessed the Sox wining their second World Series in four years and the complete unraveling of the Yankees. Kids are impressionable, you know.
• We bought a dehydrator. Be afraid. Be very afraid. We all know what happened with the last “appliance that we will use once and then never use again.” That would be the ice cream maker. You know, the one the we’ve used every week for the past three years? I realize that this is going to turn into us walking around the produce section saying to ourselves “Hmmm, what else can we dehydrate?”
• For those of you who love Guitar Hero but don’t have a gaming console, there is Frets on Fire, an open source version of the game. You can even load in the songs from GH and use your keyboard as a guitar. This could be very, very dangerous. As the Lovely Suse said when I showed it to her, “Oh great. Now I’m going to find you out here playing this at 2 in the morning.”
• It absolutely kills me that our house isn’t insulated, not only from a “it’s fricking-freezing” in here perspective, but also from an energy efficiency standpoint. And no, we can’t blow in insulation into the walls of our circa 1920 house because we also have circa 1920 knob and tube wiring in the majority of the house, which can’t have insulation around it, and we’re not planning on shelling out the many thousands of dollars required to rewire the entire place. In the meantime, we’re trying to keep the place warm in other ways. Rugs on the floors and thermal drapes. Maybe we’ll light a bonfire in the middle of the dining room. Let’s hope they do some good.
• The first annual Howl-o-ween party at Go Play. George was robbed in the costume contest, but he failed miserably at the bobbing-for-hot-dogs contest. Granted, he could barely reach the bowl, so we’ll have to work on it for next year.
• Not that we really had a lot of junk food in the house, but we’ve managed to get rid of pretty much all food with high fructose corn syrup, partially hydrogenated oils, artificial ingredients, etc. The last things to be replaced were the breakfast cereals and cranberry juice, and it came as a bit of a shock to us how much better the real stuff tasted. I guess you get so used to the flavor of chemicals that you forget what they should really taste like. As we’re strolling through Whole Foods picking up bags of veggie chips and natural cereals and organic this and that, I just kept saying “Poor Tess.” Her friends are going to make fun of her weird hippie parents who grow and make their own food and don’t let her eat Fruity Pebbles or drink Coke.
• “George, leave Melissa Texture Doll alone!” I think we’ve already come to grips with the fact that George and the Lovely Tess will be sharing toys. All of her toys look and sound like his, so we can’t blame him for playing them them, and it won’t come as a shock to us to find her chewing on his chew toys.

Finally, I can get some sleep.

• Between the Sox and the Pats, it’s just an embarrassment of riches for New England sports fans. I have more late nights ahead of me, but it’s well worth it. On Friday night, I gave Tess a history lesson as we watched Faith Rewarded: The Historic Season of the 2004 Boston Red Sox. Obviously, she loved it.
• Speaking of Tess, she can now sit up on her own. Next, calculus!
• I do realize that no one really cares about hearing about other people’s kids and everyone thinks that their kid is the cutest baby around. I’m not blind to this. I”m sure talk of exersaucers and sippie cups and teething and rice cereal makes most people’s eyes glaze over in boredom, but that’s ok. I won’t hold it against you.
• You know you’re old and a parent when you make breakfast plans with friends on a Sunday morning at 8:00AM, and everyone is ok with it.
• This fascinating story of a real life Cannonball Run. This guy spent tens of thousands of dollars on every piece of technological wizardry available, had spotter planes flying overhead, did dozens of scouting runs, and mapped the entire course with google maps, spreadsheets, and GPS, planning everything down to the location of gas stations, construction projects, and speed known speed traps. He completed the coast-to-coast run in under 32 hours averaging over 90MPH for the entire run. I love the fact that he had to wait long enough to tell people about it (along with the book and documentary coming out) so that the statute of limitations on the dozens of traffic crimes that he committed ran out.
• Don’t tell anyone, but I bought frozen yogurt this week. It’s not that I didn’t want to make my own, but Sweet Scoops Pumpkin Frogurt is just so good, and my attempts to make it last year were highly unsuccessful. For the few weeks that pumpkin flavored things are in season, I’ll make things easy on myself and buy this stuff. Don’t worry, I’ll still be making other flavors in the meantime. I think I’m going to try to make a chai flavored frogurt. We’ve been in a rut making lots of chocolate malted chip and raspberry chip, so I need some new inspiration.
• Remember how I was talking about backing up my computer last week? Well it took 2 full days to upload all of our photos and another 2 days to upload all of our music. Thank god it only has to upload changes from now on, otherwise, it would be constantly be backing up.
• After a long and sordid affair, I think I’m done with Jelly Bellys. It’s sad, but I just think it’s run its course. We will leave on good terms and will hopefully be able to remain as friends. I will cherish our last days together.

• We made our annual apple picking trip to Shelburne Farm on Saturday. You’ve never seen a dog so happy as George running around an apple orchard. Tess seemed to like it too, although she won’t be eating any apples for a while. What a tease. Oh, and despite what the worker there told us, there were still plenty of Macouns left. And if you go there, I recommend stopping at Nancy’s Airfield Cafe, which is literally located on an airfield. You can see people fly in on their planes, get out, and then come in for lunch. Watch out for the helicopter taking off in the parking lot.
• Since I’ve settled on using Subsonic for my media streaming needs, I discovered that it will update your Last.fm profile based on what I’m listening to. If you feel like it, you can see what I’ve been listening to lately, and there’s a little widget on the sidebar here that gets updated too.
• After realizing that I have a stupid amount of available server space here, I’ve moved my computer backups completely online. I’ve been using Syncback with great success to sync my backups so it only backs up changes rather than having to upload 250GB every night.
• My newest show that I’m completely obsessed with is You Are What You Eat. Yes, another Brit show. What can I say? They made great TV over there. This one has a nutrition expert trying to transform the eating habits of overweight and unhealthy people in eight short weeks. The greatest part is that she has them keep a food diary for a week and then assembles a full week of the disgusting food piled up on a huge table. It’s just incredible the amount of food that these people eat. And apparently, Brits are huge fans of “fry-ups”, “chips”, burgers, white bread, and Indian “takeaways”. I guess they’re not much different than Americans, huh? Oh, and she examines their poop which she always tells them smells terrible. I didn’t realize that there was such a thing as good smelling poop.
• We’ve decided that this week is the official start to fall eating. We weren’t quite ready for it last week, but this week, it’s on. Red wine braised chicken, celery root and pomegranates, roasted russels sprouts, butternut squash soup, etc. Frankly, I’m looking forward to it.
• The lovely Suse and I celebrated our 4th anniversary last week. Somehow, we got into the tradition of roasting a whole fish for dinner along with a bottle of prosecco. Hey, I guess we’ll go with it.
• I just can’t stay awake for a Sox playoff game if it goes past 11:00pm. It’s pathetic. I just leave the tv on and fall asleep in bed and wake up every half hour or so to check on the score. Somehow, I always manage to wake up just in time for the winning or losing play. Thank God they’ve been starting games at 7:00 instead of 8 or 8:30.

• Of course there are lots of important milestones in a child’s life, but you know which one we’ve been looking forward to: the first bites of solid(-ish) food. The reaction was as expected. “What the hell did you just put into my mouth and what am I supposed to do with it?” Not a whole lot actually made it down her throat, but it’s a work in progress.
• As far as baby gear goes, we’ve been pretty good about not going overboard with things. No high-tech stroller-envy, no fancy and expensive furniture, plenty of hand-me-downs, etc. The one thing that we splurged on was the Tripp Trapp. Certainly not the most economical high-chair solution, but we love the idea and philosophy behind it. Forget the fact that I don’t even know where we’d find room for a normal high-chair, this one pulls right up to the table so a child can eat with the rest of the family. It also changes as Tess gets older, so it will be her chair for about the next 20 years if she wants. No need for booster seats, no kneeling on regular chairs struggling to reach the table, it’s a brilliant design that has been a staple in Europe since the 70’s. Oh, and it matches the rest of our furniture, which is nice.
• Congrats to Kirstin and Juan on getting hitched yesterday. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so safe from any sort of medical ailment at a wedding before, as I’m guessing there were at least 40 doctors there. If anyone decided to break a leg or have a heart attack, that was the place to do it.
• The second annual Oslerwurst occured over the weekend, and it was an excellent time as always. 40 pounds of sausage were produced my Mr. Mark, with my favorites being the mole and the thai pork sausage. Asked to bring a non-potato side dish (a quick search for German recipes reveals that Germans only eat potatoes and cabbage), I decided to make spaetzle, the classic German dumplings. They’re made with a soft batter that’s pressed through a colander directly into boiling water. They cook in a couple of minutes and then after cooled, they’re browned in butter and in my case, onions, bacon, herbs, and lemon. I forgot the fact that I would be serving these to a group of fine Pennsylvania folk who have been eating spaetzle for their entire lives, but apparently, they came out ok. It’s not often that you can walk into a kitchen and hear “Hey, is that spaetzle?” These people know their spaetzle. This was also the first party I’ve ever been to where the number of kids under the age of 6 practically outnumbered the adults.
• Gotta love a Sox sweep. Tess certainly does.
• Did I mention that our house has smelled like bacon for the past three days? Is there anything better for a house to smell like? You know how real estate agents like a house to smell like freshly baked cookies or apple pie? They should try bacon. Somehow, my car even smells like bacon.
• George’s favorite thing in the world are these duck poppers from Polka Dog Bakery. Why duck, we have no idea. He likes the chicken ones ok, but for duck ones make him go mental. So imagine his reaction when we brought home the crispy boneless tea-smoked duck from Shangri La. I thought his tiny little head might start smoking. It was like he was possessed, running around in circles and barking his head off. When we take the leftovers out of the fridge, he knows what it is before we even open the container and he runs into his crate to wait for a piece. Duck is apparently puppy crack.

As most of you know, pizza and I go back a long way. I’ll skip the thousands of words that I could write about actually eating the stuff and instead concentrate on making it. What started out as a fun and easy way to have friends over for dinner (A little known fact is that the very first meal I ever cooked for the Lovely Suse, a full two years before we started dating, was pizza. Little did she know what she was getting herself into.) turned into a full-blown obsession over the years. As some of the best in the business will tell you, pizza is an impossible thing to master. Working with live yeast, live dough, and in some cases, a live fire, perfection is a futile battle. Still, we continue to search for the magical combination that will give us that perfect puffy, charred, crispy, and soft goodness, and it’s a search I expect to continue for many years to come.

In the beginning, there was purchased dough. I used to live next door to a Bertucci’s, so when it was time to make pizza, paying $1.50 per dough was an easy and pretty tasty proposition. Even today, when I don’t have the time to make my own dough, I’ll happily buy some from my favorite local pizzeria. It’s certainly nothing to hide or be ashamed about. After all, these guys make dough every day and are pretty damn good at it. Eventually, it was time to make the plunge and try my hand at making it from scratch. I tried dozens of different recipes over the years, all which consist of various quantities of flour, water, yeast, salt, and in some cases, olive oil and sugar. None of them really came out that great, with pizzas coming out flat and hard, without much puffiness or flavor.

A new path began after reading Peter Reinhardt’s American Pie, considered by many to be the new bible of pizza making. I continally attempted to make the Neapolitan dough, which consists of just flour, water, salt, and yeast, and takes a full 24 hours to make. The dough is mixed on one day, put into the fridge to slowly ferment for a day, and then taken out a couple of hours before baking to rise. The flavor was great, but I still wasn’t getting the texture that I wanted. Some days it was good, some days not so much. And they still came out harder and flatter than I would have liked. For a couple of years I toyed with this recipe, sometimes adding a little more water, sometimes mixing and kneading by hand and sometimes using an electric mixer, letting it sit for longer before I put it in the fridge or before baking. Obviously, the variables are pretty infinite.

After spending some time on pizzamaking.com I discovered Caputo flour. It is an Italian “00″ flour milled especially for pizza, and of course, I had to try it. I ordered up 10 pounds from PennMac, and I was instantly thrilled with the results. The doughs came out softer and puffier, and I was finally getting somewhere. It also finally occurred to me that the recipes I was using all measure things in terms of “cups” or “tablespoons” which is an inherently inaccurate way to measure. For example, a cup of flour taken from the top of a bag will actually weigh less than a cup taken from the bottom, as the stuff on the bottom is compacted. It was time to start using a scale to accurately measure all of my ingredients, so I could at least start elimating a few variables from the equation. I also learned about hydration percentages. and that mine were far too low. Basically, you measure water as a percentage of flour, so using 300 g. of flour and 300 g. of water would give you a hydration of 100%. Having more water in a dough will give a softer and puffier crust. Think: water turns into steam in the oven, expands, makes the crust puff up, etc. Duh. Next, came this recipe that I played around with a bunch, but in the end, my oven just couldn’t produce the results that I wanted.

Ah, the oven. Oh how I wish I could build a $5000 wood burning oven in my backyard, but that won’t be happening anytime in the near future. Instead I’m stuck with my crappy electric oven that can barely get up to 500 degrees. One of the keys of a great pizza is a very hot oven that can bake a pizza fast enough to fully cook the toppings and the crust before drying everything out. That’s how the insides if the crust will be soft like good bread and the outside will be crispy. I’ve tried all sorts of configurations to try to bake at a higher temperature than my oven can do on its own. Of course I use a pizza stone, but I’ve tried stacking unglazed quarry tiles on top and on the sides to try to create some sort of cooking chamber, I’ve used the broiler to finish pizzas off, I’ve tried putting the stone in my gas grill, and yes, I’ve even cooked on an overturned preheated cast-iron pan placed under the broiler. While I’ve had limited success with most of them, they’re not consistent and they’re too much of a pain to deal with. I’d love to break my oven to allow me to cook with the cleaning cycle on (the temperatures apparently get up to 1000 degrees), but I’m not allowed to do that.

So where has all of this experimentation got me? Well, I’ve finally found a combination that consistently turns out really good pies, and ironically enough, it’s pretty simple.

First the dough. After realizing that I wasn’t cooking at high enough temperatures to make a good Neapolitan crust (only flour, water, salt, and yeast), I finally decided to go back to a more American-style crust that contains both olive oil and sugar. I also gave up trying to just use just the Caputo flour as I wanted something that was a little less delicate and more crispy. I’ve starting using the Lehmann Pizza Dough Calculator and the doughs have been coming out well. Here are the numbers that I use for making 3 doughs:

Flour (100%): 591.21 g | 20.85 oz | 1.3 lbs
Water (63%): 372.46 g | 13.14 oz | 0.82 lbs
IDY (.25%): 1.48 g | 0.05 oz | 0 lbs | 0.49 tsp | 0.16 tbsp
Salt (2%): 11.82 g | 0.42 oz | 0.03 lbs | 2.46 tsp | 0.82 tbsp
Oil (1%): 5.91 g | 0.21 oz | 0.01 lbs | 1.31 tsp | 0.44 tbsp
Sugar (1%): 5.91 g | 0.21 oz | 0.01 lbs | 1.48 tsp | 0.49 tbsp
Total (167.25%): 988.8 g | 34.88 oz | 2.18 lbs | TF = N/A
Single Ball: 329.6 g | 11.63 oz | 0.73 lbs

I still use some of the Caputo flour, but only for about 25% of the total flour weight. For the rest, I use King Arthur bread flour. I use filtered room temperature water, SAF instant dry yeast, Morton’s Kosher salt, olive oil and granulated sugar. I mix it in an electric mixer, first putting the water, about 75% of the flour, and the yeast in, mixing for a couple of minutes, and then covering the bowl and letting it sit for 20 minutes. This autolyse period helps the flour start to absorb the water and lets the gluten development begin. Then I slowly mix in the rest of the flour, salt, sugar, and oil and knead it for about 10 minutes. The dough will be sticky, sticking to the bottom of the bowl a bit. It will be wetter than you expect, and this is a good thing. Hello hydration! While it is very wet, it also needs to be strong. If you can’t stretch it and it just falls apart, it needs to be kneaded more or it might need a little more flour. When it feels good (like a baby’s butt), I cover it and let it sit for about 15 minutes. Then, I flour the counter and do a little kneading by hand. After a few minutes, I cut it into 3 equal sized balls and place them in oiled plastic containers. Into the fridge they go until just before i’m ready to use them. Keeping them cold allows the flavors to develop, but it keeps the yeast from going crazy and raising the dough before you need it. A couple of hours before you’re ready to cook, take them out of the fridge and let them come to room temperature. They’ll start to rise and they might pop the tops off your containers due to the gases that the yeast is producing. The initial mixing can be done the day before you plan to use it, or you can simply do it the same day, as I’ve been doing recently. The more time it spends in the fridge, the better it will taste.

Ok, now to the cooking. But not so fast. The oven and the pizza stone need to be preheated, on the highest temperature that the oven can go, for at least an hour. Since I have an electric stove, I can’t place the stone directly on the oven floor as that’s where the heating element is. Your stone would get superheated and the pizzas would completely burn on the bottom and stick to the stone within a minute. I learned this the hard way the first couple of times I used this oven. If you have a gas oven, feel free to put the stone on the oven floor. After the initial pre-heat, my next “a ha!” moment comes into play. If I turn the broiler on and leave it on for a while, the temperature of the stone rises by about 40 or 50 degrees. If I leave the broiler on while cooking, the pie will heat quicker from the top and the bottom. This cuts down the cooking time, and it also helps to achieve those nice bubbles in the crust.

For my sauce, I keep it simple. A pizza sauce should be uncooked as it will cook in the baking process. I use good canned tomatoes, salt, pepper, fresh basil and oregano, and a little red wine vinegar if necessary. It all depends on the acidity of the tomatoes. I put it all in a bowl and blend it quickly with a stick blender. I use fresh whole milk mozzarella cut or torn into small chunks, and before I slide the pie into the oven, i sprinkle it with grated pecorino.

The rest of the toppings are up to you, obviously, but the current rotation includes the stardard margarita (sauce, cheese, fresh basil), the Sonny Boy (sauce, cheese, olives, finocchiona salami), the Rosa (no sauce, olive oil, red onion, parmesan, pistachios, rosemary, and little mozzarella), mushroom (sauce, cheese, mixed wild sauteed mushrooms with garlic and fresh thyme), artichoke (sauce, cheese, lemon-braised artichokes with garlic and thyme), zucchini (sauce, cheese, shaved zucchini, zucchini flowers), white clam (no sauce, olive oil, raw shucked whole clams, garlic, oregano, mozzarella, parmesan), and white anchovy (same at the white clam but with white anchovies). While I can take credit for some of these, most are borrowed from much greater pizzaiolos. I simply try not to foul up the greatness of the original.

The stretching of the dough should be done by hand. Never use a rolling pin as this squeezes out all of the beautiful hole structure that you’ve worked so hard to put into it. The dough should stretch easily, leave it a bit thicker on the edge to get that nice outer crust, and then put it onto a pizza peel that has had some flour rubbed into it. The dough should be able to slide easily on the peel. Dress the dough, slide it onto the stone, and in about 8 minutes, you should have a beautiful looking pie. It should be slightly charred and crispy on the bottom, the crust should be a nice golden brown, and the toppings and cheese should be bubbly. Eat.

So these are my secrets. I don’t claim to be an expert, nor do I guarantee that this will work 100% of the time. Maybe the humidity will make your dough come out weird, or maybe this batch of flour is a little different than your last batch. Purists may scoff at some of the methods or ingredients that I use, but too bad. More than anything, this is just a way for me to document what is working at this moment in time. I almost always have some criticism of my pizzas, but right now, I’m actually happy with them. They’re not perfect, but I don’t really ever want them to be. What fun would that be? Where’s the challenge in that?

I have given you the tools. Now go make me proud.

• You haven’t experienced pain until you’ve sat in bumper-to-bumper traffic for over an hour with an inconsolable baby screaming at the top of her lungs. There’s no place to pull over to calm her down, I can’t reach her in the backseat to stick a pacifier in her mouth, and when I finally managed to get a chance to do so, she spit it out immediately. Oh, and NPR was having a pledge drive, which was torture enough. I tried talking to her, singing to her, making fart noises (which always makes her laugh) wailing back to her, but she was beyond the point of comforting. I’m pretty sure it was the agonizing experience of my life.
• I’ve been a loyal to Clif Bars for years, but I have to admit, I’m getting a little tired of the same flavors day in, day out. I may have found a replacement. Kashi Protein Bars have made their way into my office, and I’m loving them. The Malted Chocolate Crisp is a favorite right now, but every one that I’ve tried has been tasty. Clif Bar, time to step up your game.
• I’ve been playing around with various media servers to stream my home music and videos to anywhere. The leading contenders right now are Jinzora, Ampache, and Subsonic. They all seem to have their plusses and minuses, but the only one I can get fully working over a non-standard port is Ampache. Yes, this is what I do in my free time. If anyone wants an account to stream my tunes, let me know.
• I never thought the day would come, but I’m done playing with my pizza dough recipe and cooking technique. Of course, I might change my mind next week, but for the time being, I’m actually happy with the way my pies have been coming out. That’s not to say that they’re perfect or exactly how I want them to be, but they’re really good and most importantly, they’re consistent. I really have to document it all so that I don’t forget. As a special treat, I think I’ll have to share those secrets with you, loyal readers.
• The new season of Prison Break started a couple of weeks ago, and the Lovely Suse dropped it after the first episode. I don’t blame her either. The first season was fantastic, last season was just ok, but at this point, I don’t really care about the characters anymore. While it was interesting to see him come up with all of these tricks and clues to break out of prison in the first season, and even the government chasing him down as he tried to complete his master plan last season was still entertaining, who cares about seeing him try to break out of some completely unbelievable Panamanian prison where there are no actual guards on the inside and the inmates run it themselves? I’m trying to stay with it, but we’ll see how long that lasts. The lack of good new shows might help that, though. There are really no new series that are calling my name, and I can’t remember the last time that ever happened. I feel like the only network shows I watch now is How I Met Your Mother and The Office. It’s sort of sad.
• I took the air conditioners out yesterday, which officially marks the end of summer. This is probably the task I look forward to the least (although putting them in is up on the list as well). Every year I almost drop them out of the window and destroy my back bringing them down to the basement. We barely even used them this year as the ceiling fan we put in last year kept us cool for all but the hottest days. Still, I’m sad to see the warm days coming to an end.
• I got my hair cut over the weekend. You may remember that I got it cut only a short 6 weeks ago or so, which is unheard of for me. I think my long, shaggy hair days may be over. It’s not that I don’t like my hair long, but it’s just so much easier to deal with when it’s short. The fact that I can get a good cut for $16 a minute away from my house helps things as well. I’m pretty sure the place is run by the Armenian mafia, but I’m ok with that.