Guest Columns

The Pizza Guy, or is he the “Other Pizza Guy? Let me explain. I found myself driving through the desert thinking a lot about pizza.  Having thoughts of pizza dance around my head wasn’t out of the ordinary, but you don’t often connect pizza with the desert.  I was cruising east at about 5 miles per hour over the speed limit to avoid being taken down by one of the…Read More…

Note from Peter: Our friend Stan Ginsberg and, as of last week, now an IACP award winning author of the wonderful book, Inside the Jewish Bakery, started a small mail order specialty flour company called New York Bakers, to meet the need for those of you who have been searching for hard to find, high quality brands. You can read more about Stan in the Contributor Profiles section. We welcome…Read More…

I was having an interesting night. I haven’t always been comfortable just going out alone and sitting in a restaurant while surrounded by people who were out together enjoying a social experience.  I don’t remember when that changed exactly, but I do remember how it became that much more of a comfortable thing while I was working in New York.  I realized that I liked it in a way because,…Read More…

Note from Peter: This is Part Two of Brad’s recent personal pizza quest in New York City on Bleecker St in Greenwich Village. Following the lead of guest columnist John Arena’s dictum that this was the best pizza neighborhood in the country, Brad had quite an interesting adventure and shares it with us here. If you haven’t seen Part One, scroll down the page and begin there — this new…Read More…

John Arena recently wrote a Guest Column here on Pizza Quest about one of the best areas in the country to go on a pizza tasting tour, or to engage in a personal pizza quest in one single neighborhood.  He doesn’t claim that this is the “best” place to go, lest he start a pizza turf war.  Rather, he defines Greenwich Village, NY as a special place that will deliver…Read More…

As students of pizza we spend a lot of time trying to uncover the “secrets” of past masters. We are constantly trying to reach back into antiquity with the assumption that there was a “golden age of pizza” and that it is our duty to resurrect these honored traditions. To a certain extent there may be some truth in that belief. But let’s not ignore the possibility that some of…Read More…

Answering The Big Question We are all very lucky that the quest for pizza excellence involves some really interesting and (usually) very tasty field research. In fact, although I grew up in a pizzeria I didn’t really start to understand my craft until I began traveling, observing and, most importantly, eating pizzas around the country and around the world. Those journeys, over more than 40 years of pizza obsession, have…Read More…

Recently I was asked to talk about bread and baking to a group of Transition Town activists here in the UK. It got me thinking about the importance of bread in creating and shaping  society and community.  I had much to say, the difficulty was in what to leave out.  I came up with the title, “Bread as a Ferment for Social Change.”  I believe Jesus would have known exactly…Read More…

If you are reading this it is safe to say that you are a pizza fanatic. You have traveled to hundreds of pizzerias and possibly even picked through some trash barrels in search of the keys to the mythological “perfect pie”. You have spent hours debating the merits of different types of ovens, flour, cheese and tomatoes. Over time what becomes painfully clear is that there are no universal rules,…Read More…

New York City is a world unto itself.  It’s a relatively small island filled with a lot of everything from everywhere.  You can find almost anything you can imagine in this city.  What I find most interesting is that you can be here by yourself and not be lonely.  And, on the opposite side of the coin, you can be surrounded by literally thousands of people and be left alone.    …Read More…