I'd love to hear La Tienda's explanation on how dimpled metal conducts heat more evenly than smooth. That would be an interesting bit of thermodynamics.
In truth, the dimples add a little rigidity and make the pans a little less susceptible to warping. Probably more than anything else, they're an artifact of tradition going back to a time, not long ago, when paellera were hand hammed. Carbon paellera pans are almost always dimpled, stainless pans less so -- yet carbon steel is a better conductor than stainless.
Tradition: A (very) long time ago, I worked (pretty much a summer job during college) with a couple of guys who designed "heart-lung" machines and other esoteric medical equipment and processes. We finished kludging a prototype together that worked pretty well, and sent it off to the machinist. The design was picked up by a medical manufacturer and hundreds -- maybe thousands -- of copies were made. We'd used a no. 8 can in the original prototype to hold a roll of membrane for the oxygenation process -- which is why every copy ever made from then on (10 years, maybe more) had concentric rings (just like the bottom of every can) on the bottom of the chamber.
File under FWIW and/or Believe It or Nutz.
BDL
Last edited by boar_d_laze; 06-10-2009 at 11:30 AM.
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