grocery • Aquafina: less than 10 ppm • Dasani: approximately 40 ppm • Tap water: approximately 60 ppm • Rochetta: 177 ppm • San Benedetto: 252 ppm • Evian: 370 ppm I transferred all the waters to clean bottles marked simply with numbers, making sure to note which water was in each bottle That way, when I dropped the bottles off at Motorino —which I did without actually seeing Mathieu, lest I unknowingly reveal any information, like Hans and his trainer—Mathieu would have no idea what he was working with Normally I systematically ignore the advice of my better half, a PhD student in cryptography (that’s the study of encryption, not the study of tombs), but this time, I shut up and listened to her for a change She suggested that in order to further decrease bias and, more importantly, to allow me to participate in the tasting as well, she—an unbiased third party—should rearrange the numbered caps on all the bottles, taking note of which caps were moved to which bottles The result: three levels of encryption involving three different keys, none of which were useful on their own Neither myself, my wife, my tasters, nor our talented chef would know which pizza was made with which water until after the tasting, when my wife would reveal how the bottle caps were switched, Mathieu would reveal which bottle of water was used to make each dough, and I would reveal which number corresponded to which brand Key to a Good Tasting #2: Introduce a Control The concept of a control is a simple one, but one that is often overlooked The idea is that you need to include at least one sample in your tasting for which the answer is already known That way, you can be sure that the experiment went according to plan and that your other results are reliable In the case of a double-blind experiment like this one, it means doubling up on at least one of your samples If the results for both are the same, then you have a pretty strong case that the experiment went according to plan In this case, I doubled up on both tap water and Evian, making a total of eight water samples If the testing procedures were sound, and our palates were as fine-tuned as I believed them to be, the crusts made with the same water should be ranked very close to each other in the tasting Key to a Good Tasting #3: Know What You Are Asking (Isolate Variables) In Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, a team of scientists builds a supercomputer that is finally able to answer the Big Question: the Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything The ultimate irony is that when they’re finally given the answer—forty-two—they realize that they never really knew exactly what they were asking in ... samples If the testing procedures were sound, and our palates were as fine-tuned as I believed them to be, the crusts made with the same water should be ranked very close to each other in the tasting... Life, the Universe, and Everything The ultimate irony is that when they’re finally given the answer—forty-two—they realize that they never really knew exactly what they were asking in ... Key to a Good Tasting #3: Know What You Are Asking (Isolate Variables) In Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, a team of scientists builds a supercomputer that is finally able to answer the Big Question: the Answer to Life, the