Contributor Profiles
Brad English
Brad English is a producer based out of Los Angeles, CA. He has been in the business for over 24 years working on a wide range of projects that have taken him all over the country and to many parts of the globe.
He loves to travel and cook for his friends and family. He discovered Peter Reinhart one day while searching the internet to find a way to make a better pizza crust and bought Peter’s book: “American Pie, My Search for the Perfect Pizza”. “As I read the op...
Jeffrey Michael
Jeff Michael has been working in film production for 15 years. From commercials (Lexus, Dove), to television promos (Planet Green Network, Discovery Network), to feature films (Free Willy, ConAir), to music videos (Metallica, Candlebox), Jeff enjoys tackling the unexpected that comes with each project.
Pizza Quest evolved from a conversation with his business partner Brad English, who showed him Peter's book American Pie: My Search for the Perfect Pizza. After reading jus...
Peter Reinhart
Peter Reinhart is a baking instructor at Johnson & Wales University. He was the co-founder of the legendary Brother Juniper’s Bakery in Sonoma, California, and is the author of ten books on bread baking and pizza, including Brother Juniper’s Bread Book and the modern classic The Bread Baker’s Apprentice, which was named cookbook of the year in 2002 by both the James Beard Foundation and the International Association of Culinary Professionals. He is al...
Albert Grande
Albert Grande is is the owner of Pizza Therapy a website promoting the joys of making pizza and eating pizza....
Andris Lagsdin
Andris is the creator of The Baking Steel, an outgrowth of his love of cooking plus many years of working in the steel manufacturing world. He put the two together and came up with a remarkable new product, as describe in more detail in his article in the Guest Columns section. Andris recently wrote to tell us the following: "Prior to our Kickstarter campaign that launched us, we partnered with The Greater Boston Foodbank. They do amazing things in the New...
Bob Radcliffe
Transplanted from Philadelphia to rural Franklin County, North Carolina over twenty-five years ago, Bob yearned for a 1950’s-style “Tomato Pie” made at DeLorenzo’s on Hudson Street in Trenton, NJ in a coal-fired oven. Nowhere in North Carolina was it to be found. Simply put, frustration led him to build a Forno Bravo Pompeii-style Wood-fired Oven on his Lynch Creek Farm in Rocky Ford so he could bake “Tomato Pies” and Artisan Breads. After a lifetime of industry engineering and compu...
Brad Otton
Brad Otton is owner and operator of Settebello Pizzeria with locations in Las Vegas, Salt Lake City and a third location in Pasadena set to open later this year (2011).
Brad attended USC where he was the starting quarterback and led the Trojans to the 1996 Rose Bowl Championship. After a brief career in the NFL and coaching at the collegiate level, Brad decided the time was right to open a pizzeria. Brad and his family went to Naples to learn the art of pizza-making with recowned pizziaol...
Bruce Vetter
Bruce Vetter is the son of a military family that moved around a lot. He has resided in the midwest for the last 46 years. He joined the US Navy in 1962 serving aboard nuclear submarines as a reactor operator. Upon his discharge in 1966 he pursued his interests in motorcycles working with his brother Craig until he eventually formed his own company making motorcycle accessories and components. His family now runs his company and Mr. Vetter is left to pursue his wide and varied interests. Most pe...
Caleb Schiff
Caleb Schiff is a self-taught pizzaiolo living in Flagstaff, AZ. After traveling on his bike through northern Italy in 2007, he set out to build a wood-fired oven in his backyard. Since the oven's construction, his pursuit to create the perfect neapolitan pizza has been insatiable. He recently returned to Italy for another 34 day bike ride, focusing this trip on traveling in the southern half of the country. His website's name and work on creating pizza, hearth breads, and other Italian cuisine ...
Doug Essinger-Hileman
Doug Essinger-Hileman is a man of many quests. His earliest was along the highways and byways commonly travelled by math and science geeks. Sometime during his freshman year at Penn State, he came upon a fork in the road, and swapped his science quest for that of a Protestant parish pastor. After a bit more than a quarter of a century walking that road, he heard a different calling and began his journey as a baker of bread.
After itinerating through a number of parishes throughout Pennsylvani...
Jenn Burns
Jenn Burns enjoys writing about food nearly as much as she likes eating it! Simply eating is nice, but even more exciting was being a pizzaiola for a day, working and living on a sustainable meat farm, harvesting and selling produce from an urban farm, being in charge of arguably the best ice cream in town, and researching coffee beans in Costa Rica. Originally from Indianapolis, Jenn is now pursuing an environmental studies major (with a focus on food) at Davidson College. She is a regular cont...
John Arena
John Arena is a third generation pizza maker. He began making pizza professionally in his family’s New York pizzeria on his 13th birthday in 1967. John graduated from Adelphi University with a degree in communications, but skipped graduation ceremonies to open his first pizzeria in Las Vegas in 1980. Along with his cousin, Sam Facchini, he is the co-owner/founder of Metro Pizza with 6 locations. John is also the instructor of the nations first University level pizza class, History and Culture ...
John Della Vecchia
John Della Vecchia started cooking pizza in his Forno Bravo Primavera 70 in May 2010, but has been passionate about southern Italian cooking his entire lifetime. Constantly working to perfect the Neapolitan pie, he spends his free time learning about dough formulation and management techniques, and enjoys cooking and entertaining for his family and friends. John works as an IT consultant and lives with his wife and two children in Natick, MA, just outside of Boston....
John O'Hanlon
John is a retired research physicist (IBM, Yorktown Hts.) and electrical engineering professor (Arizona). Baking has been a life long interest that time limited to sweet buns and coffee rings for Thanksgiving and Christmas, and perhaps hot cross buns at Easter time. A decade of retirement has provided space to explore, learn, obsess and enjoy. Bagels, English muffins, ciabatta, multigrain, and other great breads found in Peter’s books, have become our daily fare. We cannot remember the last ti...
Joseph Calcagno
Joseph Calcagno was born and raised in the beautiful Hudson Valley of New York, where his father and grandfather were pizzeria owners. Aside from being an avid pizza and bread enthusiast, he works professionally as an Ophthalmology Technician in the New York Capital Region. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Mass Communications from the College at Oneonta and an Ophthalmic Medical Technician Certification from Duke Universit...
Joseph Pergolizzi
Throughout his career, Joseph Pergolizzi has helped over 100 wood-fired oven caterers start their own businesses nationwide. He has also worked with clients such as Apple, Whole Foods and Burton. In 2009, he started a wood-fired oven cooking school, focusing on culinary creativity and business start-up training. The core principles of his business consist of making good food, encouraging entrepreneurs in their endeavors, and fostering community.
Originally from NYC, Joe was raised on a health...
Michael Hanson
Michael Hanson was born to bake. A third generation master baker he began making bread while he stood on a chair in his paternal grandfather, Cyril's bakehouse. It was later to be become his father's bakery. Ten years later he studied accountancy, but upon graduating soon realized office suits were not for him. He began baking professionally and later owned the renowned artisan bakery Carriages, where soon he had 30 employees and a lot of headaches. The pressure valve blew after 6 years and he g...
Michael Shepherd
Michael Shepherd is a four-time World Pizza Champion and president of the pizza resource website - perfectingpizza.com. Michael owned and operated three pizzerias in Northwest Ohio for 20 years, growing the small-town locations into a multi-million dollar company using nontraditional marketing methods, out-of-the-box thinking, and a systemic approach to operati...
Pizza Mike
Mike McGrath is the chef/owner of Panificio - Sonoma. He learned his craft in the United States and Italy. He holds certificates from The San Francisco Baking Institute, Accademia Pizzaioli, ICIF and ASRpizzalab. He’s also a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania where he minored in slice consumption....
Scott Wiener
Scott Wiener has built a career out of an obsession with pizza. Since launching in 2008, Scott’s Pizza Tours has lead over 37,000 pizza-loving guests to the most significant pizzerias in New York City. The tour boasts five stars on both Yelp and Trip Advisor and has been featured on the Food Network, NBC’s The Chew, Dr Oz, and CBS Sunday Morning. In 2013, Scott published Viva La Pizza! The Art of the Pizza Box, a book that chronicles the sights and stories behind his Guinness World R...
Stan Ginsberg
Stan Ginsberg, a native of Brooklyn, grew up in a close-knit neighborhood where generations lived side by side. He learned to cook and bake from his grandmother, who lived just upstairs in the same apartment building, and has continued cooking and baking ever since. His baking repertoire is eclectic, with a bias towards traditional Jewish and European-style breads and pastries – and, of course, pizza.
Stan started The New York Bakers (www.nyba...
Teresa Greenway
Teresa Greenway is the owner of Northwest Sourdough, a site dedicated to sourdough baking. Along with the site is a forum for sourdough bakers and her blog called Discovering Sourdough. The blog was named after her book, “Discovering Sourdough,” which is available from her site as a free download.
Teresa has been a passionate baker of sourdough goods since her daughter challenged her to bake a “real” loaf of sourdough seven years ago. She took up the challenge and has not looked back ...
Tom Carrig
Thomas Carrig, DTR CSW left a rewarding twenty year career in developing high performance polymer adhesives to pursue a lifelong passion for food and wine. After earning his Culinary Arts degree from Johnson & Wales University, he took it one step further, earning a B.S. in Culinary Nutrition and combining his love for science with his passion for food. Thomas uses his unique perspective to examine the path of food from the farm, through a factory—or not—to the table, and through the bod...
Tony Gemignani
Tony Gemignani has had a passion for the pizza industry since 1991. His humble beginnings began at his brother’s infamous Pyzano’s Pizzeria in Castro Valley. Fresh out of high school, Tony took on the task of a pizza thrower and soon began entertaining the restaurant crowds with his wily tricks. A few years later, he entered into his first pizza throwing competition in Las Vegas and quickly became the top pizza thrower in the world, in addition to becoming a partner at Pyzano’s.
Since h...
Wes Bailey
Wes Bailey is the owner of a Los Angeles based Production Equipment rental company, but dreams of becoming a full-time author. Travel and the experiences that come with it have been inspired and cultivated through a 17-year relationship with his Argentine wife, Tamara, and the whims of her gypsy heart. Now with a family of five, Wes and Tamara have not ceased to stretch the limits of what is possible when it comes to travel. Is it possible to run a business, raise a family and still travel inces...