Parker. Blaine - Free The Pizza: A Simple System For Making Great Pizza Whenever You Want With The Oven You Already Have

If so, welcome. Free The Pizza represents a very narrow slice of the broad and complex world of pizza culture.

There are plenty of long, exhaustive books on this subject. This is not one of them.

The main focus here is the tools and techniques required for you to make an excellent, crowd-pleasing, American-style pizza on a regular basis. It will make everyone you know happy.

Free the pizza!

1. This is not a throwdown. Pizza is love and joy for all.

2. You get out what you put in. Effort and ingredients matter.

3. Don't rush. Great pizza is patience.

I am not a professional chef. I dont know what Im talking about.

There are some professionals and self-declared experts out there who will tell you that what I am about to put forth in this modest volume is heresy.

They may be right.

I am not a chef, nor have I made pizza professionally. But as of this writing in 2022, Ive been making pizza successfully since 2003.

Ive made more pizzas than most people have eaten in their lives.

Sometimes, I am making pizza every night of the week. I have made pizza in ovens across the country for unsuspecting victims who declare it the best pizza theyve ever had.

But they probably dont know what theyre talking about, either.

What an adventure in pizza. How did we get here?

My wife, Paige and I were in the middle stages of opening a new butcher shop concept in Park City, Utah. I was busy wearing the hats of managing partner, chef and butcher, along with many other toques as one does these days in food and beverage. While this was all going on, we were asked to sit down with Blaine Parker and his wife, Honey. Theyd be interviewing us for their podcast about married couples running businesses together.

It was a wonderful afternoon. I mean, who doesnt love eating good food and talking about themselves?

The conversation revolved around me and Paige, husband and wife, opening a small business during a pandemic. If you lived through the joys of COVID-19, you might remember it was a time when none of us were having many guests. So I was eager to make lunch, sit outside and enjoy some company.

As promised, Honey and Blaine showed up with microphones and wine. In this case, they were kind enough to bring an underappreciated Italian red thats not well known in the state of Utah. (If were lucky, itll stay that way. More for us!)

Besides a platter of craft charcuterie, I was showcasing a 60-day dry-aged beef from the program we were developing for our shop. The conversation was engaging, and went longer than any of us expected. It felt like old friends had come by the house for lunch. Repeatedly, the conversation turned from business to food. And the one topic that seemed more vigorous than any other was: Pizza!

My program for the butcher shop includes hot sandwiches and other lunch dishes from a wood-fired oven, along with some pizza-related menu items. So we decided to have a kind of pizza exchange night at the house. Id make some of the Alsatian flatbread and Detroit-style pizza I was planning for the shop. Blaine had his own plan to share a couple of creative sets.

In my life as a professional chef, Ive worked in kitchens around the world and had wood-fired ovens to cook with. High heat and hardwood smoke are powerful companions. But this night, we were using just a home oven and we were baking on steel.

Blaine showed up and revealed his, um, toppings. Wow. I admit Im not a purist. There have been times when Ive had, yes, the unspeakable Hawaiian pizza. (There, I spoke it.) But Blaine had other ideas. And when he said he was bringing a garlic and shrimp pizza with cilantro to the table, well... lets just say Ive seen such things go so wrong the cat wouldnt even eat them. I was not hopeful.

When the bubbly garlicky shrimp pizza came out of our oven, he topped it with fresh plucked leaves of cilantro. I know that we had other great pies that night. But after one bite of this shrimp-sanity, the rest of the pizza that night was blocked out. It was a brilliant orgy of loving sensations on my tongue. The chew on the crust, the garlicky crustaceans, a pop of coriander. My wife even yelled out, You dont want to open a pizza spot? WHY!

As Blaine has said of Free The Pizza, it is not a cookbook. What it is, is a wonderful approach to and about pizza. As youll see in these pages, the pizza geek author comes at you with knowledge, candor, cunning and wit. Even if its not a cookbook, the few recipes it does contain will take you to another place as it did for me and my family. Its a fun adventure as much for the home cook as it is for this professional.

Free the pizza! Even if that means topping it with cilantro and shrimp

John Courtney

Chef, Owner/Partner

Chop Shop Park City

www.ChopShopParkCity.com

Will you be doing the three smart things that should happen next, including

1. Reading this entire book before attempting pizza?

The book is short. Pizza is forever.

2. Using your hands instead of an electric mixer?

It matters. Really.

3. Printing the Cheat Sheets linked at the end of each of the relevant chapters?

They save time, money and remorse.

Will you ignore these things at your peril?

Truthful tale. Michael, an aspiring pizza mystic, once said, I dont need all that. He forsook the book. He ignored all of the above and pursued instant gratification. His pizza fail was so epic, his dog ran away and his wife left.

Michael returned to The Way. He found the path to astonishing pizza. He now has wildly popular pizza parties every night. They dance on the table and try to not spill their wine.

His wife did not return. His dog prefers to live with the neighbor. But Michael doesnt care. His now ex-wife was a shrewish halfwit, and the dog stank of swamp gas and deviled eggs. Michaels home now smells of toasted semolina and happiness.

Free The Pizza!

My wife and I do a show where we interview married couples in business together. Not long ago, we were talking to one couple where the husband is an award-winning professional chef. John and his wife, Paige (who is a sommelier of some distinction as well as a fine front-of-house manager) run a high-end butcher shop together. We were talking about the state of restaurant dining where we both live and agreed that it suffers from resort-town challenges. Among the great first-world disappointments is that theres no good pizza here.

Out of the blue, my wife says to this professional chef, You know, the best pizza in town is in my kitchen. The chef looked at me and said, You're the guy? I've heard about you.