Looks very solid. I will forever be a NY pizza diehard but I can respect a well made pizza with a good undercarriage even if it’s not my style. Besides that, any pizza with no flop looks good to me

Diastatic malt powder can also be added to potato purée to make it much, much, much easier to process

Joel Robuchon’s probably one of the most decorated chefs in the world and everyone should make his pomme purée at least once. It is absolutely incredible and everyone should try it at least once. It is easy, yet difficult, because it is labor intensive. The abridged version is essentially:

boil mashing potatoes (like Yukon gold, depends on where you’re from though, that’s a USA variety)for a half hour mash with something like a food mill or ricer if available. Not strictly necessary but makes the next step easier Heat on pot to evaporate excess moisture Pass purée through very fine sieve - absolute pain but essential step, the finer the sieve the better. I have a 250um lab sieve that I use for this and it’s amazing Back in pot, whisk in cold butter, up to 50% of the weight of the potatoes (robuchon uses 50%), whisk constantly once emulsified Add hot milk to reach desired texture Season with salt to taste and optionally with white pepper

This is obviously labor intensive but it’s an absolute dream texturally. The potatoes are so smooth. An incredible experience that makes me go through this nightmare of a process 2-3x a year because it’s worthwhile, an amazing textural experience and flavor

Anyone who has ever tried to over process potato mash knows that they turn into glue almost immediately. Robuchons method is necessary to avoid this but also requires addition of dairy. Heston blumenthal and Jeffrey steingarten made a similar approach with sous vide potatoes that also require gelatinization of the starches (the 30min heating) and addition of dairy to control texture. While a butter and milk substitute could theoretically be used there is an alternative: diastatic milk powder

With diastatic malt powder you can make extremely smooth potatoes with much less labor and with no dairy at all (so entirely vegan). The diastase enzyme in dmp breaks starches in the potatoes into sugar and allow you to process it much easier:

yukon gold potatoes, peeled, 1in cubes Put in water with salt and sugar (200% water to potatoes, 3% salt, 2% sugar), bring to boil, simmer for 30 minutes Drain Add 1% weight of the potatoes diastatic malt powder (eg if you started with 500g potatoes add 5g powder) to the drained potatoes Blend (it will be very smooth but sticky) Put in a ziplock bag and try to get all the air out Cook in a pot of water at 126F for 30 minutes (if you have sous vide use that, if not it’s not essential, just try to not let it get too hot) Put it in a pan and cook to 167F Season and serve

When you cook to 126F you’re activating the diastase and letting it do its thing for 30 minutes. After the starch conversion you cook to 167F to deactivate the enzyme

This sounds like it’s more work than it is but it’s basically the same amount of work as making regular mash, possibly less since you don’t actually mash them by hand. If you reuse the same pot like i do it doesn’t make that many dishes.

This also has that extremely smooth texture but significantly less labor, it’s vegan, and because you’re not eating 800kcal of butter and milk it’s a more interesting flavor. Especially if you get high quality potatoes it’s a potato purée that allows you to simply taste, well, potato