Find the perfect gift for everyone
All-night delivery.
(Credit: Euroflues)It doesn't get much more comfortable than sitting around a warm fire on a cool evening. However bad the elements are outside, the inside is heated with the warming glow emanating from the fireplace. Usually, the fireplace is in the living room, which makes sense; the living room is the central location of the house.
But there's another room that serves as a gathering spot, one that usually features a different type of heated comfort in the form of a stove. Make that stove a wood-burning stove and add a pizza oven in the mix, and suddenly the kitchen is the new living room.
While it's quite possible that pizza is the most comforting food on the planet, coupled with a wood burning stove the combination is pure comfort overload. The Huemfire Pallas Back achieves just that. In addition to the baking compartment, the top of the unit features three cooking plates, which could be used for other great comfort foods such as soup.
Combustion is controlled via an outside hookup, with air control being handled via a lever on the front. An optional built-in drawer on the bottom of the unit is designed for storing wood. The stove heats up to 1,625 square feet, and uses a patented heat retention system capable of storing heat for up to nine hours after the last fire has been lit. It doesn't get much more comfortable than that.
Pizza night is a staple in our house--it's my go-to meal when I really don't have the energy to make something that requires more effort, when I forget to defrost meat the night before, when I don't start thinking about dinner until the kids start asking for it....you get the picture. We eat a fair amount of pizza in this house.
I'm thinking that the Pizza Boss 3000 might be a fun addition to pizza night. It's an ordinary pizza slicer dressed up as a circular saw, but without all the potential lethality of a true power tool. Which is good, because pizza doesn't need all that power.
You can remove the shield from the blade for easy cleaning, and the whole thing is in a delightfully compact package, which lets you feel kind of like a giant when wielding it in your hands. From Fred and Friends, natch.
(Credit:
MoMA Store)
As rewarding as it is to make a pie crust from scratch, it's not an easy task. The first challenge is achieving the flaky texture pie crust is best known for, and in shooting for this flaky goal, many cooks sacrifice uniformity in thickness. Sure, the texture will end up nice, but having the texture in addition to a nice even thickness adds both to the visual presentation of the pie and the consistency in the texture across every piece.
If you haven't mastered this art freehand, don't fret: this Adjustable Rolling Pin available at the MoMA store makes easy work of rolling an even disc with a perfectly round diameter. It comes with a set of removable ends that are sized to control the thickness of your cookie dough or crust to 1/16 inch, 1/4 inch, 3/8 inch, or 1/8 inch, and printed on the barrel are both metric and standard measurements for width.
The Adjustable Rolling Pin was designed by Damian Evans this year out of beechwood and polypropylene. It's available on the MoMA Store Web site for $20.
(Credit:
Frankie Flood via BoingBoing)
I recently made my first homemade pizza for a dinner with friends, and was forced to come to terms with the fact that my three-year-old dollar-store pizza cutter is on its little, last, pathetic legs. Or last axle, if we're being literal.
During an intensive course of Internet research for a replacement cutter, I stumbled upon a line designed by Frankie Flood. Flood's designs often tend toward cool aesthetics and away from functionality, but this baby looks like it would actually work well. Although I may not be purchasing one to serve practical purposes, it's definitely worthy of a CNET nod.
The model shown here is called the Gold Knuckle, and it's one of the dozen or so designs that are featured on Frankie's Web site. Flood explains on the site that his work is an exploration of the role single-use gadgets play in a society that relies so heavily on mass production. Coming from a machining background, Flood is attempting to showcase the artistry under the surface of utilitarian objects.
You can read more about Frankie Flood and see his other designs on his site.
A pizza stone can make all the difference in the world when it comes to just what your pizza will taste like, and the Mario Batali Chianti Pizza Stone can take that flavor a step further. It takes pizza out of the oven and on to the grill. The 14-inch pizza stone sits on a red enameled cast iron frame, which in turn sits on your grill. Your pizza is far enough away from the flames that it's safe, but not so far that it doesn't get the full effect of the flame. This combines for a crunch and flavor in your pizza crust that is hard to match. There's even a lip on the back of the frame, which prevents a pizza from sliding off the stone and into the fire when you're trying to slide a paddle underneath it.
If you have a fondness for flatbreads, the Mario Batali Chianti Pizza Stone offers a chance to keep the traditional flavors associated with naan and other flat bread, by letting you cook it over an open flame. The smoke can make all the difference in the richness of flat bread's flavor. The pizza stone is safe for temperatures up to 500 degrees Fahrenheit. It's priced at $100.
Having fun with pizza.
(Credit: Solutions.com)Pizza, quite possibly, is the world's perfect food. Bread, sauce, and cheese form a deceptively simple base, while toppings can provide everything from nutrition to heart palpitations. Having a veggie slice may not necessarily make pizza healthy, but compared with a pizza loaded up with sausage, pepperoni, ground beef, linguica, ham, salami, and more cheese, it certainly is. While this amusing meat combination should rarely ever make it to the table, it does highlight an essential fact about pizza. It is customizable. That goes for how you prepare it too.
The Pizza Grill Topper brings the pizza oven into your backyard. The perforated pan helps to create a crispy crust, while the removable folding wood handle makes the pizza pan easy to maneuver. With backyard grilling, you can impart your pizza with smoky goodness unavailable through other methods. While choices abound with pizza cooking appliances and methods, the good old-fashioned grill should not be overlooked.
For $14.95 the price is certainly right, and the pan comes with a bonus spatula that might be the best part. It features a pizza-cutting wheel on one end, while the spatula end has one side serrated. Additionally, the spatula has a moving part in the form of an integrated slider mechanism. While the spatula may be a bit overkill on features, it certainly would look good sliding a slice of pizza onto my plate.
Pizza isn't known for its ideal portion size. But the Pizza Sticks Pan turns out individual-size pizzas with little more work than it takes to make a pizza in the first place. Even better, you can top each pizza stick separately: you can have olives on your pizza while your children enjoy pepperoni. There's minimal chance of getting a stray topping.
The Pizza Sticks Pan comes with a dough cutter so that you can easily fit dough to the pan, which holds five pizza sticks at a time. The cutter has a certain similarity to a cookie cutter: you can just press it into the dough to cut a piece the right size and shape. The pan is steel: it heats quickly and can turn out a crisp pizza crust in a matter of minutes. It is hand-wash only because of the nonstick Goldtouch coating--but the same coating means that cleanup is usually just a matter of wiping out the pan. The Pizza Sticks Pan is 15 inches by 10.25 inches. The individual sticks are sized for a single meal, and leftovers heat up just as well as any other cold pizza.
Bake some serious pizza with the Beehive Pizza Oven.
(Credit: Williams-Sonoma)Pizza is an amazingly complex thing for a food item so seemingly simple. Bread, cheese, sauce, that's it. That's enough to get you going. Oh sure, you can drown your pizza in a sea of toppings, but the essential structure starts from basic everyday ingredients. The deceptively complex nature of pizza is both a good thing and a bad thing. Endless varieties abound, and there are certainly great pizzas to be found, but it is all too easy to order up a lousy pizza. Good thing you can bake your own.
But don't pick up that pizza peel just yet. Most home ovens have no hope of reaching the high temperatures needed to attain that special level of deliciousness that pizza can achieve. The Beehive Pizza Oven is one possible solution. The terra-cotta outdoor wood-fired oven is a domed device specifically created for capturing that elusive high heat and transferring it into quickly baked pizzas. Set the fire, and when it's good and ready, just slide back the coals and pop in the pizza. The superheated oven floor will create that special crispiness, while the pizza bakes to perfection.
With the capability to attain temperatures up to 900 degrees Fahrenheit, the pizza oven is an artisan cook's dream. An easily installed hardwood-lined door is included, which also allows for the capability to bake bread or even smoke meat. With such versatility, even the nonpizza fanatics out there (if you exist), can find use for this beautiful outdoor oven.
Cutting a pizza can be a messy job. It's hard to be sure that you've made it all the way through the crust, cheese can jam up a pizza wheel and it can all combine to make a pretty big mess. The LamsonSharp Stainless Steel Pizza Rocker Knife offers an ideal alternative: you can make one cut all the way across your pizza just by placing the Pizza Rocker Knife across your pizza and pressing down. Rock it back and forth a bit and you'll get a clean cut all the way through the crust, even if you've loaded up on all the toppings.
The LamsonSharp Stainless Steel Pizza Rocker Knife is 14 inches long, long enough for most homemade pizzas as well as most pizzas you might order in or pick up. It's 3.25 inches deep blade is a thick, beveled piece of high-carbon stainless steel, with polypropylene handles to protect your hands. The whole Pizza Rocker Knife is dishwasher-safe, eliminating the need to scrub pizza sauce off of anything. That's an added bonus--most pizza wheels I've found can only be washed by hand. And since it comes from LamsonSharp, you can have your knife sharpened whenever you need for life.
Everything one ever needs.
(Credit: Kenmore)Convenience and kitchen gadgets go hand in hand. Certainly, that is true in the case of this Stainless Steel Kenmore Countertop Microwave & Pizza Oven. With the inclusion of a pizza oven into the base of the microwave, it's quite possible any college student will never need another appliance as long as they are in school.
The microwave and pizza oven work independently of each other. The microwave has six automatic One-Touch buttons, for most common microwave usages: Reheat, Cook, Defrost, Express Defrost, Popcorn, and Potato. Additionally, an "Add 30 seconds" button allows for personalized preferences for making any meal.
The pizza oven includes four automatic presets for cooking pizzas: Frozen Rising Crust, Frozen Regular Crust, Fresh Regular Dough, and Fresh Par-baked Crust. The temperature control allows for heating at 350, 375, 400, and 425 degrees. Additionally, the pizza oven is capable of baking biscuits and breads or cookies and pastries for fueling late-night study sessions.
There are two major food groups for any college student, which can be easily summed up as: pizza and microwaveable. (Yes, I'm sure many college students consider this a food group). With this combination device, both are represented in one convenient package. Just make sure, you know, they go out at least once in a while to pick up some veggies!
Via Craziest Gadgets
