Talking About Restaurant Equipment and TechniquesTalking About Restaurant Equipment and Techniques


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Talking About Restaurant Equipment and Techniques

Hi there, I am Sal Kinders. I am going to use this site to talk about cooking techniques and tools used in restaurants. Chefs at large and small restaurants cannot use the same techniques and tools used to cook at home. Instead, the equipment allows chefs to mass produce meals to serve an entire restaurant full of people quickly and efficiently. The equipment also ensures each plate mimics the next to keep the product uniform. Restaurant customers expect their meals to taste, smell and look the same each visit. My site will explore these techniques and tools in great detail. Thanks for visiting.

Pizza: An American Tradition With Foreign Flavor Keeps Evolving

Pizza, that ooey-gooey treat topped with sauce, loads of cheese, and an endless variety of ingredients is one of America's favorite foodstuffs -- but it didn't start out that way. And if you ever find yourself in Italy, you won't get what you're expecting if you order a pizza and expect it to look, smell, or taste much like its American cousin. Want to learn more about the history and mystery of pizza in America? Read on.

Pizza was a peasant tradition brought over to the States by Italian immigrants.

Pizza was sort of the Italian version of rice pilaf -- every family had its own version of the food. It was made often because it was inexpensive, versatile (since ingredients could be swapped out if something wasn't on hand), and fed a lot of people. Plus, it was easy to cook -- which was pretty important back in the day when everything started from scratch.

While it came over with Italian immigrants forced out of Naples by dire economic conditions prior to 1900, it wasn't brought onto the commercial market until 1905 by an Italian grocer -- and the first real pizzeria didn't open up until 1912, in Trenton, New Jersey. Pizzarias didn't really take off, however, until the 1930s, which saw a sudden boom in pizza shops on both the East and West coasts -- but their customer base continued to be mostly Italians.

It's broader commercial success came much later.

Naples, which had nurtured the development of pizza since the 1700s and had about 200 years worth of practice making the tasty treat, managed to open the door to pizza for the rest of American around World War II. Soldiers coming back from the area went looking for this fabulous foodstuff in their own hometowns.

By this time, fast food, in general, was just starting to take off, so in the wake of every burger joint, a pizzeria seemed to pop up. The "classic" American-style pizza was born in response to the standardization that came from competing fast food restaurants each trying to offer consumers what they were expecting for a low price. 

Multi-culturalism and a desire for authenticity are driving pizza back to its roots.

Lately, pizza has been changing. Urban Americans have developed a taste for exotic flavors and authentic-style dishes, so they've become somewhat more experimental about their pizza as well. It's now possible to find all different versions of pizza, including cracker-thin crusts, gluten-free varieties, and hand-tossed pizza pies that are flavored with olive oil and garlic instead of the tomato-based sauce that once totally dominated the market. In going forward, a lot of pizzerias are actually moving away from the fast-food model of pizza and going back to their familial roots and developing unique recipes for their crust, sauces, and combination of toppings.

Whatever your pizza preference, it's probably out there -- and it's worth experimenting with different pizzerias until you find the one that makes you celebrate pizza's invention.

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