Pizza Quest with Peter Reinhart

It is with great sadness that I report on the passing of Shawn Randazzo, who we interviewed here on Pizza Talk just a few months ago. Shawn, as we discussed during the interview, was in treatment for glioblastoma brain cancer and had high hopes for a full recovery, but it was not to be. Our hearts are broken for him and for his family, wife Kerri,, and their four children….Read More…

Scott Wiener has often discussed pizza boxes not just in terms of functionality but also as works of art, and in this segment he brings such a box. As you will see, it is special edition box designed specifically for use during the holiday season conveys, in its own way, a sense of peace and tranquility. Since we can all use more of that, this is the ideal episode for…Read More…

Hi Everybody, Wow, I can’t believe how many amazing people I got to spend time with over Zoom these past few months, and how much I learned! Pizza Talk was a spur of the moment idea, inspired by the pandemic and it’s disruption in our sense of community. We just wanted to contribute to keeping us all connected during this crazy time in history and the conversations I had with…Read More…

This week, Scott brings us one from his own backyard, a box from Sam’s Pizza in Brooklyn that is so full of cliched images that it has become the reference point for all pizza box art cliches and, yet, strangely, it works. This box even became a template for the cover of a new book about pizza by Thom and James Elliot called, Pizza: A Book by Pizza Pilgrims (Note:…Read More…

Will  Grant burst on the culinary scene about 4 years ago when he started winning competitions with pizzas made on his 100% sourdough crust, whose starter was cultivated at his pizzeria, That’s a’ Some Pizza, on Bainbridge Island, Washington. The starter is a family legacy and Will is one of several pizza influencers, such as Anthony Mangieri, Dan Richer, Anthony Falco, and others whom we’ve featured here on Pizza Talk,…Read More…

Pizza Quest and Pizza Talk have always been about more than pizza. On our home page we write about, “Celebrating artisanship wherever we find it,” because artisans are our real community of kindred spirits, of which pizza is but one spoke (albeit, a very large spoke!). But another big spoke is, of course, the bread baking community and, in that branch of our family there is one name that towers…Read More…

This week Scott Wiener takes us, via his pizza box collection, to two north of the border pizzerias that both evoke Brooklyn, NY as their ethos and as part of their brand names. So what is it about Brooklyn pizza that gives it its iconic status as a cultural reference point? It seems, as you will see, that a pizza box truly can open the door to deep (or not…Read More…

A few years ago we featured a series of webisodes on Pizza Quest.com with Anthony Mangieri, the legendary pizzaiolo and founder of Una Pizza Napoletana (UPN for short) when it was located in San Francisco. You can revisit those videos by starting here, where I dubbed him “the Chopin of pizza.” (You’ll have to watch the video to know why I call him that.) Anthony is a no-compromise kind of…Read More…

Sandor Katz, aka Sandorkraut, is the most popular go-to guy in the world when it comes to all things fermentation, whether applied to dough, beer, wine, spirit beverages, kombucha, and, especially, pickles and sauerkraut. His book, The Art of Fermentation: An In-Depth Exploration of Essential Concepts and Processes from Around the World, is the “bible” of the fermento universe. Sandor’s work began as a study to determine the extent to…Read More…

Yes, in Westland and Livonia Michigan there is a pizzeria group called Slice of the ’80’s, and Scott Wiener takes us there via this new box, recently added to his world record collection. No only do we get to enjoy their wonderful box art, with it’s nostalgic look back to an era many of either lived through or can’t remember that we lived through, but Scott calls them on the…Read More…