Pizza Quest with Peter Reinhart

Happy Independence Day week!!!  I hope some of you are making grilled pizzas this year — let us know if you do. This week, on Thursday, we’ll be posting the next in our webisode series filmed in Cayucos, California.  Chef Jensen Lorenzen and his wife Grace, owners of the Cass House Inn, took me to the nearby Ruddell’s Smokehouse, where we had a great visit with Jim Ruddell and learned…Read More…

My love for Pizza Napoletana started the first time I ever tasted a pizza straight from a wood burning oven in Napoli. I had only been in Italy a couple of days and was not prepared for what I was about to eat. These were the early 90’s, before food blogs or the internet. While I knew that Italy was the birthplace of pizza, I was uneducated when it came…Read More…

Joe D’Astice, of S’mores Pizza fame (see the Instructionals archives), is back with another demo as he shows us how he uses fresh mozzarella curd, not the stretched cheese balls, to save time and money and still come up with a gorgeous, delicious pizza.  It really raises the question of why more pizzerias don’t simply use this method instead of making or buying the more expensive version, so we’re going…Read More…

A little voice, in fact, a very persistent little voice is constantly calling out “Daddy, can you make me a quesadilla?”  Moments later the chorus continues and continues until I relent or take the dog on a walk.  This happens in the morning, after school, for dinner, or later in the night as a snack!  The result of these requests has meant that I spend a fair amount of time…Read More…

Last week I reported on our recent quest and pizza/beer challenge at The Bruery in Orange County (Placentia, to be more precise–their tap room is open to the public on weekends if you happen to be in the neighborhood!). I just want to add a few words this week on one aspect of our experience there, something I addressed on film during the taping but, since it won’t run for…Read More…

Welcome back! This week we’re featuring a tasty new photo recipe from Brad English on Quesadillas (the great Tex-Mex “pizza”). We’ll post that on Wednesday.  Also, a new instructional video featuring Joe D’Astice on Thursday using mozzarella curd to make a killer pizza. And I’ll be back with another Peter’s Blog, commenting further on the notion of “liquid bread.”  Next week we’ll resume our Cass House Inn webisode series. Still…Read More…

Yes, I’m late with this posting. I promised it by Thursday but, as so often happens, time got away from me and I couldn’t get online from where I was. But here I am, to tell you only a bit about our latest quest. It may take a while before we get it all edited and posted, so this is just a little advanced notice to let you know what’s…Read More…

Following our welcome and introduction to the Cass House, and a little local shopping and foraging, Chef Jensen and I finally got to that new oven of his and decided to create an improvisational pizza based on some of the ingredients we had gathered and that Jensen already had on hand. The result is this beautiful mulberry pizza with two different kinds of cheese (we made one side with each…Read More…

Lots of new stuff this week, beginning with a delayed Peter’s Blog, direct from our next webisode filming session, taking place in a “secret” location this week. I’ll post my report on Thursday, instead of on my usual Tuesday, so that I can bring you an up to the minute report. We’re pretty jazzed about it, though. On Tuesday, instead, we’ll post another great home recipe photo spread from Brad,…Read More…

I was making a bunch of pizzas recently and taking lots of photos, so I went to the meat department where I shop to see if they happened to have any lamb sausage.  Yes, Jay Buonchristiani’s Lamb Sausage with Fennel Pizza was that good and I wanted to make it again (see the Instructional Section for the original posting on this).  And, I had another bottle of his Syrah hanging…Read More…