Tony Gemignani - The Pizza Bible: The Worlds Favorite Pizza Styles, from Neapolitan, Deep-Dish, Wood-Fired, Sicilian, Calzones and Focaccia to New York, New Haven, Detroit, and more

Copyright 2014 by Tony Gemignani
Photographs copyright 2014 by Sara Remington

All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Ten Speed Press, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House LLC, New York, a Penguin Random House Company.
www.crownpublishing.com
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Gemignani, Tony.
The pizza bible : the worlds favorite pizza styles, from Neapolitan, deep-dish, wood-fired, Sicilian, calzones and focaccia to New York, New Haven, Detroit, and more / Tony Gemignani.
pages cm
1. Pizza. I. Title.
TX770.P58G45 2014
641.8248dc23
2014015999

Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-60774-605-8
eBook ISBN: 978-1-60774-606-5

Design by Janet Mumford

v3.1

Pizza is simple. Its dough, tomato, cheese, and toppings. But as someone who has devoted more than half of my life to it, I can tell you that, like all really great, really simple things, pizza is infinite. Im still learning, still refining, still trying to make it even better every single day. And what I can tell you for sure is that pizza doesnt come down to just recipes or formulas. Its a craft.

That one wordthats why I wanted to write this book. There are hundreds of pizza books, blogs, and websites filled with thousands of recipes out there. Do we really need another one? I thought about this a lot, and heres where I ended up: when I teach home cooks and certify chefs and pizzaiolos , its less about recipes and more about inspiring people to master the craft of pizzathe techniques, the reasons to choose one ingredient over another, the art of reading the dough as you mix, shape, top, and bake it.

Anyone can hand you a pizza recipe, and if that recipe is halfway decent, chances are you can make yourself a perfectly good pizza for dinner tonight in your own kitchen with no special equipment and not much preparation. But thats not where I want to take you. I want to get you all the way to five-star, killer-pizzeria-quality pizza. I want you to master any style you lovewhether its Chicago deep-dish or cracker-thin, a big, fluffy Sicilian pan pizza or a classic Neapolitan margherita with that authentic char blistering the edgesright in your own kitchen with whatever oven youve got.

Is that really possible? Can you actually do all that without a real pizza oven? Thats the question I get asked most often. Believe it or not, you can. Its not your oven. Its the ingredients and the techniques you use, and Im going to give you every piece of ingredient and technique advice youll need to succeed.

But if you truly want to get all the way to rocking restaurant-style pizza at home, theres one thing Im going to ask you to commit to. Its the motto that runs across the front of my menu, and the three words etched on the door of my restaurants. Hey, I even had it tattooed right onto my hands. Respect the craft.

Craft is the difference between good and great. It takes a few extra steps, the right equipment, a little more time, and a fair amount of practice. But if youre up for it, the payoff is golden.

So Im going to start by asking you to try something a little unusual for a cookbook. I want you to read all the way through before you try a single recipe. And then Im inviting you to take a Master Class where we make your first pizza togetherand maybe even take that class a few more times before you graduate to trying all the great stuff in the rest of the book and eventually coming up with your own variations and improvisations.

Thats what I mean by respecting the craft and getting a handle on the whys and hows behind it. It might sound a little back-to-schooly. But trust me, itll be fun. And you get to eat the final exam.

Want more information and inspiration? Check out my blog at ThePizzaBible.com.