Peter Reinhart - Pizza Quest: My Never-Ending Search for the Perfect Pizza

Also by Peter Reinhart

Perfect Pan Pizza

Peter Reinharts Whole Grain Breads

Bread Revolution

Peter Reinharts Artisan Breads Every Day

American Pie: My Search for the Perfect Pizza

The Joy of Gluten-Free, Sugar-Free Baking
(with Denene Wallace)

Crust and Crumb

The Bread Bakers Apprentice

Brother Junipers Bread Book

Sacramental Magic in a Small-town Caf

Bread Upon the Waters

Contents

Introduction

Pizza Quest the book was born out of Pizza Quest the web series, which was born out of my first book, American Pie: My Search for the Perfect Pizza, written way back in 2003. In other words, this quest, and my life as a self-described pizza freak, has been going on publicly for a while but, really, for my whole lifewith no end of questing in sight.

A few years after the publication of American Pie, I was approached by two kindred spirits, fellow pizza freaks from Los Angeles, Brad English and Jeff Michael, who happened to also be commercial television producers. They proposed the idea of continuing my story where American Pie left off, but this time as a television series. We were able to put together enough financial backing, with a lot of pro bono help from their friends in the business, and filmed a road trip up the California coast from Los Angeles to San Francisco with visits to some amazing pizzerias and artisan food producers, which eventually became the first season of what Brad and Jeff titled Pizza Quest.

We launched the series with sponsorship from Forno Bravo Wood-Fired Ovens, with additional support from BelGioioso Cheese, Central Milling, Bianco DiNapoli, and Fire Within. All the money we raised went into production costs and editing our raw footage into short webisodes. It became our pilot season and, eventually, got us a season on a new network launched by Craftsy called Bluprint (owned at the time by NBC). Meanwhile, I kept writing books on bread while our pizza questing led me to all sorts of relationships and opportunities in the pizza world. I judged at a few competitions and witnessed the dynamic growth of the pan pizza category, which included Romanstyle, Detroitstyle, and a number of wonderful square types of pizza, inspiring me to write a book called Perfect Pan Pizza, published in 2019, to explore that phenomenon. I also began speaking at the annual International Pizza Expo in Las Vegas and at other pizza conferences, and when we could, Brad, Jeff, and I kept filming new episodes of Pizza Quest to post on our site.

And then the COVID-19 pandemic hit.

The restaurant community, like everyone else, was devastated, and an early casualty was the 2020 International Pizza Expo, leaving its 10,000 attendees bereft and jonesing for that soul-satisfying, yearly tribal connection to which we had all become accustomed. Noel Brohner ( ) gathered a few of his tech-savvy friends and figured out how to create a virtual Zoom pizza party, and many of the scheduled speakers and attendees from the Expo signed on. For four days we all gathered on-screenduring the exact days when the Expo was supposed to be happeningto commiserate and lament, but also to celebrate our fellowship. It was my first inkling of how the world as I knew it had changed and merged with the digital world, and it gave me an idea.

I met with Brad and Jeff, and we designed a Zoom interview show where I could dive deeper, on a one-on-one basis, with many of the pizza luminaries Id come to know via the Expo and our various Pizza Quest travels. We started recording these interviews and posting them on our website, as well as across various social media platforms. By the end of the summer, we had recorded over 100 hours, and Pizza Talk was off and running.

After we had been on the air for a few months, we met with the folks at Heritage Radio Network (HRN), a podcast network dedicated to food-themed content, and they agreed to repurpose the video interviews into audio podcasts. Before long we were able to reach even more listeners. Hey, the pizza-freak nation is vast, and its extremely passionate.

The most exciting outcome of Pizza Talk, for me, is that the guests who appearedsome of the greatest pizza makers in the worldwho represented an unlimited storehouse of creativity and pizza recipes that many people would never experience unless they happened to be in the same city as their pizzerias. I proposed an idea, first to my wonderful publisher, Kirsty Melville of Andrews McMeel, and, once she was enthused, then to the many guests who had appeared on Pizza Talk. Heres what my proposal was:

How about a book that features recipes based on the spectacular, award-winning pizzas of my guests, but without giving away any secrets or requiring the reader to follow the exact dough formulas and specialty ingredient sourcing that these pizza geniuses have spent years developing? Ill call their original versions the hero pizzas, and the pizzaiolos will provide just enough ingredient and assembly information for me to cover their recipes in this book. In other words, these will be like very good covers of the greatest hits of the pizza geniuses. If they are the Beatles, then Ill be the Beatles tribute band.

That was my pitch, and lo and behold, the pizzaiolos all joined in, and as you will see in the pages that follow, the hits are great indeed!

Of course, these amazing pizzas represent only a small fraction of the greatness that lies out there in the pizza world, and the artists featured in this book are by no means the only ones worthy of being represented here. They just happen to be the ones I know and love and who were willing to contribute to this book. Ive merely scratched the surface of the talent that exists in the pizza community. Even as I write these words, we continue recording new interviews with those who didnt appear during our first season, so who knows? If you like this book, theres no end of talent and perfect pizzas still to cover as my never-ending quest continues.

My goal here is to show you, using my own experience as a serious dough guy and lifelong pizza freak, how to make pizzas like these Beatles-level originalsor at least get you into the same concert hall with them so you can create your own cover versions. For those of you already in the pizza business, there could be some useful tips and tricks and menu ideas here, but more importantly, even home cooks want to know what the experts know, or, to keep playing with these metaphors, we all want to play in Fenway Park (or Wrigley Field, or Yankee Stadiumyou get my point), so this is my playbook for how you can get into the game.

My method is simple: I have provided you with four master dough formulas, with a number of variations to use when appropriate, that will enable you to make tribute versions of all the pizzas in this book. You will also find an all-purpose crushed tomato sauce thats my go-tonot the same ones as the hero recipe originators use, but my ownas well as my so-called secret hoagie sauce, which you can use on just about anything and, for sure, on many of these pizzas (being originally from Philly, I am required to be a huge fan of hoagies and hoagie sauces). Finally, based on what each of these featured pizza geniuses told me, Ill provide you with the recipe and steps to make your own tribute pizza, based on my tribute pizza, based on their hero, gold-standard versions.