The perfect pizza is not just culinary art - it's science, says Nathan Myhrvold.
The food writer and tech inventor has produced a gigantic three-volume guide to the world's most popular food, Modernist Pizza.
Photo: Modernist Cuisine
Nathan Myhrvold Photo: Supplied
After a stint as Microsoft's chief technology officer, Myhrvold now heads up Modernist Cuisine - a team of chefs, scientists, researchers and engineers who investigate food.
"I loved science my whole life but I loved food, too. And to be honest, food came first."
Cooking is one of the few science experiments we all do on a regular basis, he says. And when we cook something at very high heat - such as pizza - we're effectively cooking with light.
"The hotter something is, physics tell us, the more heat will be in the form of infrared light… it really is cooking with light, very much like broiling is cooking with light. The air temperature basically doesn't matter that much. That's why professional pizza ovens usually have an open door."
The first-ever pizza was a street food in poor parts of Naples in the 19th century, Myhrvold says.
It would have remained in just a small part of Italy - like many other regional dishes - if it wasn't for some serious unless political and social upheaval.
When the slums of Naples were torn down and a third of the population left, pizza "escaped" with Italian migrants - mostly to South America and North America.
The dough-cheese delight was almost immediately popular in the States, Myhrvold says, and by the 1940s, pizza had thoroughly won over the American palate.
Largely on basis of its success in the States, pizza then "recolonised" Italy and spread to the rest of the world.
Photo: Nathan Myhrvold / The Cooking Lab, LLC.
Unsurprising, Myhrvold says, because pizza seems to be the perfect food.
"It's hot and flavourful, it combines proteins, fats and carbohydrates. It's easy to eat and portable…"
It's also pretty easy to make at home and will always taste pretty good unless you burn it, Myhrvold says.
The most difficult style pizza to pull off in a home kitchen is Neapolitan-style, he says, because you need an oven that goes up to 500C. (A pre-heated pizza stone or cast-iron skillet can help get the temperature up).
Make sure the amount of sauce on your pizza matches the thickness of the base. If your crust is thin it doesn't take long to cook but the sauce will be too liquidy and displace the cheese.
Myhrvold describes himself as a "pizza minimalist".
"I've never really gotten the 'put everything there is and the kitchen sink' on pizza. But if that's what you like, that's what you should have."
Check out the Modernist Pizza recipes for Neapolitan Pizza Dough and Classic Pizza Sauce
To dive deeper into pizza science, you can listen to the Modernist Pizza Podcast here.
Why the body reacts 'remarkably well' to overeating pizza
We're told from a young age that eating too much food is nothing but bad for you. However, a new study by researchers out of the University of Bath has found that the human body is set up rather well… Audio
For pizzake! ten pizza recipes
Ten pizza recipes: from breakfast to brunch to lunch we've got you covered.
