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If you want to eat the most scientifically perfect pizza in the world, you have two options: first, fly to Rome and order a freshly made Margherita pizza from the brick oven; or, second, solve a long thermodynamic equation to simulate this glorious Italian pizza in your pathetic electric oven at home.
That's the basic premise of a new paper titled "The Physics of Cooking Good Pizzas", published earlier this year in the preprint ArXiv newspaper. In this appetizing study, two physicists (Andrey Varlamov of the Institute of Superconductors, Oxides and Other Innovative Materials and Devices of Rome and Andreas Glatz of Northern Illinois University) and an anthropologist of food (Sergio Grasso, author and filmmaker based in Rome). ) remember the scientifically unassailable pizzas they sampled while working in Rome.
Their favorite tart was a simple pizza Margherita – a personal tart with tomato, mozzarella and basil (representing the red, white and green flag of the Italian flag) – prepared and baked in brick in front of their eyes by a seasoned "pizzaiolo" who is Italian for "guy who makes pizzas." In 2 minutes flat, the writers watched the pizza artisans of Rome turn pasty discs into golden pies "covered with tantalizing cheese bubbles", and demanding to be sprinkled with "a jug of good beer". (The physics of what makes a beer "a good beer" is unfortunately not discussed in this article.) [Science You Can Eat: 10 Things You Didn’t Know About Food]
The secret, a proud pizzaiolo informed the authors, was the brick kiln physics. With a wood fire burning in a corner, heat radiates evenly through the curved walls and stone floor of the oven, ensuring even cooking on all sides of the pie. Under ideal conditions, the authors wrote, a single Margherita pizza could be cooked to perfection in exactly 2 minutes in a brick oven heated to 330 ° C (625 degrees Fahrenheit). When additional toppings require extra cooking time, some pizzaiolos can lift the pie with a wooden or aluminum scoop for about another 30 seconds "to expose the pizza to a simple heat irradiation" and avoid a grilled background, wrote the authors.
You do not have a brick oven at home, because you are a normal person? The authors have usefully described how to simulate this "Roma" pizza to perfection in a standard electric oven – with physics!
If you bake your electric pie, it is likely that your pizza is on a metal tray or rack. Since the thermal conductivity of the metal is significantly stronger than that of the brick, the bottom of your pizza will absorb heat much more quickly than the rest of the pie. Baking your dough at 625 degrees F for 2 minutes will turn your pizza into charcoal, the authors wrote. And there is no beer good enough to save a coal pie.
Using a long thermodynamic equation (which you can read yourself in their paper, this is "Equation 13"), the authors determined that an electric oven pizza could fulfill similar conditions as a Roman brick oven, reducing heat to a minimum. 450 degrees F (230 degrees C) for 170 seconds. The authors noted that pizzaiolos that aspire garnishes with a higher water content (in principle, any additional vegetable) may need to leave their pies longer in the oven, as the pizza will return more heat by evaporation.
The authors concluded that, even though your homemade pizza will probably never be as perfect as a firebrick pie devoured in front of 1,000 passionate pigeons near the Coliseum, physics can help you take a step in the right direction. And, if that's a problem, maybe try steaming dumplings. The authors also have an article on this subject.
Originally posted on Live Science.
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