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Welcome back to Pizza Quest! This episode features a conversation with Chef John Ash, who for the past 40 years has been known in Sonoma and Napa as the Godfather of Wine Country Cuisine. His restaurant, John Ash & Company, helped to define that regional aspect of what later became known as California Cuisine back in the 1980’s and 1990’s. He, along with chefs like Alice Waters, Jeremiah Tower, Joyce…Read More…

Welcome back to Pizza Quest with Peter Reinhart. In this episode, we catch up with the biggest rock star in the pizza universe, multi-time world pizza champion Tony Gemignani, owner of Tony’s Pizza Napoletana in SF, Pizza Rock in Las Vegas, and many other restaurants, bakeries, pizza schools, and even a new bagel shop, Dago’s Bagels.  In today’s episode, he also tells us about his biggest project ever, the launch…Read More…

Welcome Back to Pizza Quest. In this episode of Pizza Quest we take a tangential detour away from pizza (as we often do in our ever-expanding celebration of artisanship wherever we find it) with one of our longtime, favorite guests, Meathead Goldwyn.  Meathead (yes, that’s his name, the origins of which he explains in this conversation), is the creator and host of the hugely popular website, AmazingRibs.com, where for many…Read More…

Welcome back to Pizza Quest! Over twenty years ago, after Jonathan Goldsmith fell in love with traditional Napoletana wood-fired pizza while living in Italy and became a mid-life apprentice to the local masters, he decided to bring it back to his hometown of Chicago, where it was still a new thing. Spacca Napoli was thus born on the North Side, and has become a pizza pilgrimage destination site ever since,…Read More…

Hi Everybody, Here’s a link to the sign-up page for my Summer Pizza Party class, hosted by the Milk Street Cooking School. The tickets are inexpensive ($29.95) PLUS, there’s a 15% discount for readers of this blog if you type in PIZZAPARTY in the code box when you check out. https://www.eventbrite.com/e/summer-pizza-party-with-peter-reinhart-tickets-596913162337  The date is Tuesday, May 23 at 6 PM Eastern. The class runs for an hour and 15 minutes,…Read More…

Michael Kalanty was my faculty colleague when I taught at the California Culinary Academy back in the 1990’s. Since then, he and I have been on parallel tracks, both as educators, bread authors, and as product developers. In this episode, Michael shares his long and winding road from pastry chef, bread expert and educator, product developer for major food companies, and even how he became a “Certified Master Taster.” All…Read More…

I just wanted to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving from all of us here at Pizza Quest. I just had another round of left-overs for lunch.  We did our Thanksgiving up north with our in-laws on Wednesday because we had to be back in town this weekend for our daughter’s Softball Tournament.  It turns out that the rains came and today’s games were cancelled.  So, instead of being out in…Read More…

There is a new app in development that will help any traveler track down the best artisan pizzerias wherever they go, at least in the USA (for now — maybe they’ll cover the whole world if it succeeds). The developers have just launched an Indiegogo campaign to raise the funds they need to complete the project. They have figured out a method to limit the recommendations to only highly rated…Read More…

Hi All, Just a quick announcement.  I just heard from Craftsy that they are running a Memorial Weekend Sale and will be donating a portion from each sale to various veterans groups.  Some of the courses are as much as 60% off.  To check out their courses go to: http://www.craftsy.com/ext/PeterReinhart_holiday This sale ends at midnight Monday.  BTW, the free Mini-Pizza Course now has over 37,000 people enrolled — I’m blown…Read More…

Hi Everybody, A quick announcement: I mentioned in my previous posting that Craftsy.com will be creating a free pizza mini-course with me soon (as a follow-up to my longer artisan breads course, which has just passed the 2,500 mark in sign-ups), but I just learned that they are also running a special holiday sale through Monday night (midnight), Nov. 26th. Not only is my course on sale but every course…Read More…