Pizza Quest with Peter Reinhart

If you know me, you know I love Tri-Tip or Santa Maria steak and, chances are, you’ve probably had it a few dozen times off of my grill.  The Tri-Tip cut is mainly a West Coast thing.  It’s certainly my thing. As I understand, it used to be a cut of meat that was mainly used to be ground up for hamburger, or used for stew meat.  One day back…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…

This week, because we’ve had so many new visitors to Pizza Quest, we’ve decided to re-post one of our earliest video webisodes, from Pizzeria Mozza, in Hollywood.  I chose this particular segment because Matt Molina, who is the Executive Chef at Pizzeria Mozza, fills us in about what it’s like to be working under the tutelage of owners Nancy Silverton and Mario Batali and we also get some great shots…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…

Hi again.  We’ve kept a lot of recent postings on the home page because we’ve been getting a number of new viewers and one thing I’ve noticed is that most people tend to stay on the home page rather than explore the archives or section categories (I know this thanks to Google Analytics!!). So, we’re going to leave things up as long as we can before they automatically default to…Read More…

When I make a few pizzas, the one I often end up liking the best was the one that wasn’t planned so much, but just sort of came together.  This pizza may have been born because I was in a store and something caught my eye.  I might have come across a new pile of chili peppers.  I might have sampled 5 or 6 salted pork products and found something…Read More…

Yesterday was my birthday and among the terrific gifts I received, including a fabulous dinner with Susan at Charlotte’s  delightfully romantic Passion8 Bistro — a real gem of a place — I got some especially great news: Pizza Quest has been nominated by the International Association of Culinary Professionals (the IACP) as one of three finalists for best food blog of the year! Here’s a link to all the nominees…Read More…

Usually, I post a new Peter’s Blog on Tuesdays but this week we received such a great Guest Column from our friend and frequent contributor, John Arena, that I wanted to post it ASAP, so I’m switching places with him (see below) and I’ll be back at the end of the week with my regular Peter’s Blog. In addition, Brad is currently in NYC on a filming project and is…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…

I’m currently exploring some of Pizzeria Basta’s great pizzas.  The word Basta means “enough” in Italian.  I think that word offers a great insight into Kelly’s cooking in general.  With Basta he created a pizzeria restaurant that showcases delicious foods in a simple and pure way.  He also wants everything to be “touched by the fire,” so literally everything eventually sees some time in his custom wood fired oven, either…Read More…