The pizza bible The world's favorite pizza styles, from Neapolitan, deep-dish, wood-fired, Sicilian, calzones and focaccia to New York, New Haven, Detroit, and more

Serious pizza is featured here, but home chefs don't have to measure up to award-winning restaurateur Gemignani's exacting standards to bake, grill, fry, or just plain enjoy the dozens of pizza varieties offered. This bible represents an incredibly thorough class on the subject; the authors believe in everything from scratch, all the way to fennel-sausage and tomato toppings. Expect lots of photographic step-by-steps; in the first master-class sections and subsequent sections, the authors demonstrate, in pictures, how to knead dough or make pizza Romana. Recipes follow, primarily separated by geography, including New York, Chicago, Sicilian, California-style, Napoletana, regional Italian, and global. Among the more unusual offerings are Italian Stallion, a horseradish and Italian beef white pie; Cali-Italia, featuring a combination of ingredients possible mainly on the West Coast; and the Dubliner, topped by the eponymous Irish cheese and brined beef brisket. Sidebars and tips abound; one sure to delight any foodie is the Ten Commandments of Pizza, including Thou shalt not rush the rise and Though shalt not overtop thy pizza. A thorough education on this beloved dish.--Jacobs, Barbara Copyright 2014 Booklist

With resume credentials such as Guinness Book of World Records holder for creating the largest pizza, and president of something called the World Pizza Champions, it would be easy to not take Gemignani seriously. But given the content of this collection of more than 100 recipes, this would be a mistake. He approaches the craft of making pizza dough with the same intelligence and expertise as that of a pro brew master concocting an artisanal ale. In the opening section, he teaches a master class of crust, exploring everything from the proper flour and yeast and kneading and fermenting to the correct technique for moving a pie from countertop to oven. He makes no apologies for the precision found in weighing ingredients using metric measurements, though he is perhaps owed one from the designer who decided to list recipe ingredients in narrow, left-hand margins that sometimes, confusingly, run on for more than one page. Pizza styles from across the country and around the world are touched upon, so there is plenty to love and to hate. Beyond the classic opposites, New York thin crust and Chicago deep dish, there are sweet California options like a multigrain white pie drizzled with honey, and a Monterey Jack pizza topped with figs and roasted almonds. The sauce for a Barcelona pie contains Spanish saffron threads, and his Sardinian recipe calls for a regional pecorino cheese. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

RESPECT THE CRAFT Pizza is simple. It's 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. I'm 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 doesn't come down to just recipes or formulas. It's a craft. That one word--that's 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 here's where I ended up: when I teach home cooks and certify chefs and pizzaiolos , it's less about recipes and more about inspiring people to master the craft of pizza--the 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 that's 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 love--whether it's Chicago deep-dish or cracker-thin, a big, fluffy Sicilian pan pizza or a classic Neapolitan margherita with that authentic char blistering the edges--right in your own kitchen with whatever oven you've got. Is that really possible? Can you actually do all that without a real pizza oven? That's the question I get asked most often. Believe it or not, you can. It's not your oven. It's the ingredients and the techniques you use, and I'm going to give you every piece of ingredient and technique advice you'll need to succeed. But if you truly want to get all the way to rocking restaurant-style pizza at home, there's one thing I'm going to ask you to commit to. It's 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 you're up for it, the payoff is golden. So I'm going to start by asking you to try something a little unusual for a cookbook. I want you to read all the way through page 19 before you try a single recipe. And then I'm inviting you to take a Master Class where we make your first pizza together--and 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. That's 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, it'll be fun. And you get to eat the final exam. Want more information and inspiration? Check out my blog at ThePizzaBible.com. Excerpted from The Pizza Bible by Tony Gemignani All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.