Pizza Quest with Peter Reinhart

  Scott Thorsen was my wing man at the Fire Within Conference in Boulder last October. Together, we mixed and shaped enough dough to crank out over 200 pizzas during the weekend, and we managed to save a few Country Doughs for this video demo. Scott, who has his own wood-fired rig in Sacramento, California, and a pizza and catering business that he runs out of the rig called Bella…Read More…

Lamb Fennel-Sausage and Mushroom Pizza paired with a wonderful BUONCHRISTIANI 2006 Artistico Syrah! Not long after we started the website for Pizza Quest, we received an email from a pizza enthusiast named Jay Buonchristiani who happens to be one of 4 brothers who own a Napa Winery of the same name (http://www.buonwine.com/).  He grew up in Napa and has fond memories of cooking large meals and making wine in the…Read More…

I’m off on a trip this week to America’s heartland, so will continue my Asheville Bread Festival blog report next week when I return. However, we do have some fun features to bring you this week, including an instructional video with Scott Thorson, of Bella Familia Wood-Fired Mobile Oven of Sacramento, California. In the video he’s going to demonstrate how to make a delicious, bubbling five-cheese pizza on our own…Read More…

Lately I’ve been thinking about “counterfeiters.”  More specifically, I’ve been thinking about a Latin saying that dates back to the early 1500’s, Caveat Emptor, or, “Let the buyer beware.” In this era, more than any other, it has become crucial that we understand what is truly behind the labels on the products that we buy. Unfortunately this is especially true of Italian products.  With global awareness creating unprecedented demand for…Read More…

Craig Stoll (he’s the one with the beard) doesn’t look like an obsessed mad man, while his head pizzaiolo, Anthony Strong, well, yeah, he does. But they both are obsessed and mad, each in his own way, which is kind of cool because we get to see two sides of the “fire in your belly” drive that can and should take over one’s life, giving it a sense of daily…Read More…

On Saturday, April 2nd, I attended the seventh annual Asheville Bread Festival. I’ve been attending since the very beginning, haven’t missed a one, and each year it gets better and better and more people show up from all over the country. The format has been that the first few hours are held at Green Life Grocery (now owned by Whole Foods), where local bakers display and sell their breads to…Read More…

Hi Everyone, We have some fun, new and important stuff to share this week.  I’ll be posting on Tuesday my first report on the Asheville Bread Festival, which was a blast, including some comments on the most amazing flour I’ve ever worked with! On Thursday, we’ll post the second in our new webisode series filmed at Pizzeria Defina and the Gastro District in San Francisco. We call this segment, A…Read More…

In some of the recipes that we’ve posted I refer to stretching and folding the dough, so I want to more fully explain it here, as I will continue to provide recipes that utilize this technique. The stretch and fold method (S&F from here on), is a remarkable way to maximize gluten development in a dough with minimum mixing time. It is sometimes referred to as “intermittent kneading” and also…Read More…

So here we are, at Pizzeria Delfina, with Executive Chef and owner, Craig Stoll, and his head pizzaiolo, Anthony Strong. In future segments we’ll explore the Gastro District with Anthony and we’ll sit down with both Craig and Anthony to discuss their culinary vision and pizza philosophy, which I found to be extremely thoughtful. You’ll get a first taste of it in this opening segment as we hear all about…Read More…

This week, after spending the past three months showing you the segments we filmed at Pizzeria Mozza in Los Angeles (alternating them with the many Instructional videos shot in Boulder, Colorado), we are back on the road again. This week we launch a series of episodes — of course we call them webisodes — filmed in San Francisco’s Gastro District, which is a one block neighborhood on 18th St. between…Read More…