HEAVY METAL

Posted by the man of twists and turns

The Science of Cast Iron Cooking. The Truth About Cast Iron. How To Season A Cast Iron Skillet:

The skillet you want is at least fifty years old, and right now it is probably sitting on a thrift store shelf or a yard sale table. Your first task is to locate it. Until the 1960's, the final stage in manufacturing cast iron was to machine-polish each pan until the cooking surface was as smooth as glass. New cast iron is sold unpolished, that is, fresh out of the mold, with a texture like pitted Formica. The cast iron companies claim that the new, unpolished skillets are as easy to season and as non-stick as the old, polished ones—but then they would say that. You can polish new cast iron yourself with an orbital sander and some 80 grit, followed by hand sanding with 220 grit wet-dry, then 320, then 400, then 600 for good measure, but let’s face it, you’d rather have those five hours of your life and the ridges on your fingernails intact. The skillet you want is polished already.

How To Season A Cast Iron Pan. 5 Myths Of Cast Iron Cookware.

Cast Iron: A Love Story leads to
The Cast Iron Chronicles {1} - "As you can guess from pretty much every post on this blog, I am deeply devoted to cast iron. "
The Cast Iron Chronicles {2} - " My plan is to continue with the steel wool and then transition to the coarse sand paper as needed."
The Cast Iron Chronicles {3} - "I trust that it’s an important step but the science is a mystery to me!"
The Cast Iron Chronicles {4} - " I promise that when we did this portion of the restoration we had a fire extinguisher on hand and that the pan was not close to anything that could catch on fire."
The Cast Iron Chronicles {5} - "It took me a few minutes to accept it, seeing as how I’ve been cracking at this beast for weeks I didn’t think I’d ever get to the point where I’d be ready to fry an egg in it."
The Cast Iron Chronicles {6} - "I’ve always been taught that to season a pan you coat it in animal or vegetable fat (or a combination), and put it in a warm oven for an hour. Then you let it cool, rinse, and repeat."

The Best Cast Iron Recipies
Iron-clad goodness
What We Can Learn From A Cast Iron Pan.
How to season, use and love cast iron skillets (with recipes)
The Cast-Iron Secret to Serious Pizza: Recipe: Vaughn's Perfect Skillet Pizza

The Pizza Lab: Foolproof Pan Pizza

The way I see it, there are three basic difficulties most folks have with pizza:

Problem 1: Kneading. How long is enough? What motion do I use? And is it really worth the doggone effort?
Problem 2: Stretching. Once I've got that disk of dough, how do I get it into the shape of an actual pizza, ready to be topped?
Problem 3: Transferring. Ok, let's say I've got my dough made and perfectly stretched onto my pizza peel. How do I get it onto that stone in the oven without disturbing the toppings or having it turn into a misshapen blob?
This recipe avoids all three of those common pitfalls, making it pretty much foolproof. To be perfectly honest, every single one of these steps has been done before, and none of it is rocket science. All I'm doing is combining them all into a single recipe.

You can jump straight into a full step-by-step slideshow of the process or find the exact measurements and instructions in the recipe here, or read on for a few more details on what to expect and how we got there.