Peter’s Blog, June 26th

Written By Peter Reinhart

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 coming. It all began a few months ago when Kelly Whitaker, of Pizzeria Basta, told us about a great micro-brewery whose beers they feature at Basta called The Bruery, in Orange County, Southern California. Turns out that our Pizza Quest producer and columnist, Brad English, lives not too far from there and, so, he checked it out and became friends with the creative beverage team there. One thing led to another and, before we knew it, we all found ourselves back at Pizzeria Basta, this time with The Bruery owner, Patrick Rue, who was there for a special beer and food pairing. I’ll go into more detail on this part of the adventure when we post the webisodes, but the bottom line is that we filmed the food and, also, some great table talk in which, after Kelly, his beverage director Al, and Patrick explained to us their creative process of matching food with beer, we decided to challenge Patrick to match beer with pizza. That is, Kelly and I proposed that, instead of the usual approach of having a chef match the food to the beer, that instead, we create a unique, signature pizza, present it to the Bruery’s brewers, and have them create a beer inspired by the pizza. Patrick accepted the challenge.

This was all back in early May.  So, to make a long story short, I just returned from The Bruery where, yes, we did in fact throw down the gauntlet and got some great footage of a pizza collaboration in which I created the dough, Kelly and Al came up with the toppings, and we baked the pizzas in Tim Gonzalez’s mobile wood-fired pizza oven — Tim has one of Joseph Pergolizzi’s beautiful “Fire Within” oven rigs and operates TJ’s Wood-Fire Pizza out of it in the Orange County area–and then presented the pizzas to Patrick and his Bruery team. They are now hard at work creating a brand new, totally original beer inspired by the pizza (we actually presented them with two choices, both a red and a white pizza, and let them choose which one would be the “Signature Challenge Pizza” — you’ll find out which one they chose when we run the webisodes).

There’s a whole lot more to this story, all of which will be revealed over the next few months but, and here’s the most exciting part, our plan is for The Bruery to unveil this new beer at The Great American Beer Festival in Denver at the end of September, and have Kelly and I make the pizzas in one of Joseph Pergolizzi’s ovens so that those in attendance can taste the beer and the pizza together. We’re still working on that part — lot’s of logistics to work out, so there’s no guarantee we can pull it all off — but we’ll be giving you updates over the next few months. I will say this though: the pizzas were awesome, we tasted fourteen of The Bruery’s amazing beers, we filmed some fun and exciting new cooking Instructionals using Tim’s oven, including an amazing 4-Minute Pan-Seared Rib Eye Steak, as well as a 4-Minute “Dirty Steak” cooked right in the coals, and even filmed two dough making Instructionals, including the new “Signature Challenge Pizza” dough. All of this will be coming your way sometime before the GABF (Great American Beer Festival).

Of course, we have a lot of other webisodes to show you first, between now and then, including footage we shot in San Francisco at world champion pizzaiolo Tony Gemignani’s new pizzeria in North Beach, and our trip with him to tomato country during harvest season, and lots more. And, of course, we still have more to share from The Cass House Inn over the next few weeks. So, as you know, we aren’t kidding when we say, as we often do in the Coming Attractions section, that there’s always something new here at Pizza Quest. We are so excited about the next few months that we hope you will help spread the word and tell your friends to join us here. We will soon be proudly announcing some wonderful new sponsors and sharing news of their artisanal ingredients, and plenty of new guest columns, recipes, pictorials, and, of course, videos.

We just passed an important milestone, our six month anniversary, and have reached many thousands of viewers. There may even be some television news in our future — you’ll know as soon as we know, but some things are brewing, er, baking — so stay tuned. Yes, there’s always something new here at Pizza Quest….