Bruno Jr. - The Great Chicago-Style Pizza Cookbook

Copyright 1983 by Pasquale Bruno, Jr. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the United States Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

ISBN: 978-0-07-182000-4
MHID: 0-07-182000-0

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To my wife Gale, for her support and thoughtfulness.

I would like to thank the many people who helped make this book possible: Ike Sewell, Nick Perrino, Ed Jacobson, Joe Boglio, Sam Levine, Nick DAmato, Bill Mailhot, the cooks in all the places I visited, and Donald Link, who did the photography. They are all nice people who do things the way they should be doneprofessionally.

Chicago, without a doubt, has become the fertile crescent of the pizza business, and Chicago, not Naples, is the pizza capital of the world. I can make this bold (and somewhat heretical) statement based on the number of pizza restaurants in Chicago. Then there are Chicagos innovative pizza recipes and pizza supply houses; and, most assuredly, Chicago has more serious pizza eaters than any other city in the world. (The drive between pizza restaurants in Chicago is about as long as your car.)

Chicago deep-dish pizza (also known as pizza-in-the-pan) has made its way into all areas of the United States and countries abroad; it has had a resounding effect on the pizza business, as sales continue to increase.

Millions of people visiting this city each year consume hundreds of thousands of pizzasa Mecca for pizza lovers. Chicago pizza has been flown out on private planes and carried onto commercial flights bound for everywhere. The rubbish cans behind Unos have been raided by would-be pizza restaurant owners looking for secretslabels from cans, flour bags, and so on. And Chicagoans do more than their share for the pizza business, making regular visits to the originalsUnos, Dues, Home Run Inn, and Ginos Eastand to successful newcomers such as Nancys, Giordanos, and Edwardos until their stomachs are awash in tomatoes, cheese, and all those savory toppings.

The unmistakable, mouth-watering aroma of pizza also fills the elevators of apartment buildings all over Chicago, every night of the week, and pizza delivery men are often challenged by offers of a higher price from people coming home from workscalped pizza? While Chicago pizza is often thought of exclusively as the deep-dish type, and visitors to Chicago feel cheated if they get any other kind, every Chicagoan is fiercely loyal to his or her own favorite style of pizza, and favorite pizza restaurant, and will defend them to the last piece.

There are now well over 2,000 pizza restaurants in the Chicago area, serving all types of pizza: thin crust, medium crust, thick crust, stuffed, rolled, square, and stacked. Theyre yours for the choosing; one has to search hard to find a bad pizza in Chicago.

A Chicagoan, and a serious pizza eater who loves all types, I have included in this book recipes for many different styles of pizza for all pizza eaters, serious or not!

The history of pizza stretches back to the ancient Pompeiians, who formed a coarse bread dough into a rectangular or round shape, topped it with olive oil, and baked it in crude but efficient ovens that were fired by wood.

There is little doubt that pizza is from Naples itself in origin. In the beginning it was a crude, primitive, inexpensive food that was eaten by the poor, but the poor were eating well. Naples is still the hard-core pizza center of Italy, and the stalls that sell pizza there have multiplied many times over. The Lazzari, or street urchins, who knew a good thing, are now being pushed aside by tourists from around the world who want to experience pizza at its birthplace. There is always a market for originals.

While Naples may boast of the original, all the regions of Italy now boast of some form of pizza. Each one takes on the identity of the area in which it is made, using ingredients that are abundant and fresh: sardines, anchovies, regional cheeses, salami, sausage, seafood, and so on.

Not even national borders can contain the ubiquitous pizza. Cross over the Italian border at Bordighera, and from there to Marseilles you will find direct descendants of the Neapolitan pizza. In Nice, tasty little black olives are an important part of the pizza topping; in Cannes, they add egg to the crust. Even in Paris, on the Boulevard des Italiens, there are many pizza restaurants, and they are as busy as the hundreds of other types of restaurants surrounding them.