Peter’s Blog, October 18th

I’ve been getting a lot of e-mails recently asking when I’ll be back on the road doing what is called “travel teaching.” It is something I love to do, teaching short classes at small cooking schools, and look forward to the next chance to do more classes on pizza and bread. I get requests to come to Mexico, Brazil, Panama, and even India, Korea, and China, though it’s tricky for me to go too far from home for these classes, partly because of the costs, partly because it means extended time away from home, and partly because, well, as I get older it’s not as easy to bounce back from crossing too many time zones. But I love traveling and experiencing new places so I would never rule out any possibility.

That said, I’ve cut way back in the past year for two reasons. One is that Pizza Quest has been an exciting new adventure and it has consumed a lot of time. Just managing the new postings each week has taken enormous time and energy for both me and Brad English, as well Jeff Michael, our more behind-the-scenes partner and co-producer. And, as you saw in our Big Reveal series, we’re still filming and have many months of segments to share with you. The second reason is that I have been working on a new book on gluten-free, sugar-free baking, scheduled for release next summer. I’ll write more about this later, especially the process of writing a book because I know that many of you may be also thinking of writing one. So, in a future Peter’s Blog I’ll dedicate some space to what it takes and how to start the process, and even on how to make a pitch to a publisher.

I mention this because I’ll be in San Francisco all next week, with my co-author Denene Wallace, shooting the photos for the new book. For anyone in the area who would like to hear about it, we’ll be at Omnivore Books in Noe Valley, San Francisco on Wednesday evening at 7 PM. The address is 3885a Cesar Chavez St. For details, call the store at (415) 282-4712. We plan to bring samples from the photo shoot so you can get a sneak peek. (Of course, I’ll also be slipping away to go on a few pizza quests but I can’t divulge where yet; since I was last in SF there seems to be at least half a dozen new, exciting places to check out).

The new book, after it comes out next year, will be the catalyst for my next round of travel teaching, so keep checking here for details. Anytime I do schedule an appearance somewhere, such as at The Asheville Bread Festival on March 24th, I’ll post it here in the Peter’s Blog section. But next year I’ll be making the rounds and look forward to meeting many of you.

Final note: I want to welcome our newest sponsor, The Fire Within. We’ve been writing about Joseph Pergolizzi and showing instructional videos featuring his mobile wood fired oven rigs ever since we launched, so we’re especially pleased to have him aboard as an official sponsor. There is a banner ad, rotating in with other sponsors, at the top of this page that provides you a click through to The Fire Within website. Even if you have no plans of buying a rig (and Joseph tells me he’s working on some new designs and even rigs featuring other products besides wood fired ovens) do check out his website and enjoy the ride. We’ll have more new sponsor news soon….

Coming up later this week: on Wednesday we’ll be featuring a new sourdough pizza recipe from Teresa Greenway, our sourdough expert; an instructional video on Thursday (next week we get back to the Tony Gemignani webisode series); and Brad tells me he’s working on a pizza contest for you and will soon have details.