Note from Peter: Cary and Lillian Steiner are friends of mine from New York who have their own wonderful pizza blog called Passion-4-Pizza (you can link to their site through our Sites We Like section). In fact, the photo of me used on all my postings was taken by Cary when he and\u00a0 Lillian brought me to Umberto’s in New Hyde Park to experience my first “Grandma’s Pizza.” It was there that I learned not only of their pizza journey but also of their spiritual journey and of their Teacher, Guru Shri Anandi Ma. The following is a memoir of Cary’s experience making pizza for their Teacher. For those who have ever tried to cook for someone important in their life you should be able to relate to how such a simple act can also affect us on so many levels. Thank you Cary:<\/strong><\/p>\nWhen Peter and his friends launched Pizza Quest, calling it \u201ca journey of self-discovery through pizza,\u201d the idea resonated very strongly with my wife Lillian and me. We had created www.passion-4-pizza.com as a sort of love story, our love of pizza paralleling our love for each other and our passion for life. The idea of pizza as metaphor was not new to us.\u00a0 Creating balance on a pizza and finding balance in our way of life are regular and rewarding challenges: the scope and scale may be very different, but both call for creativity, flexibility, and faith. And sometimes the metaphor turns out to be a literal reality!<\/p>\n
We\u2019ve been students of Shri Anandi Ma and members of Dhyanyoga Centers since 1996, and being involved in a community of seekers has presented us with many opportunities for growth and discovery. But making pizza for our spiritual teacher, our Guru, showed us the unity of our pizza life and spiritual life in some unexpected ways.<\/p>\n
We had parked our motor-home in Antioch, California after a long cross the country drive from New York. Antioch is where our teacher lives and, although it was late in the evening, we were invited to visit with Anandi Ma and her husband Dileepji.\u00a0 \u201cWe\u2019ve been talking about you,\u201d they said, and they asked us to make pizza for them.<\/p>\n
We were still making pizza novices at that time \u2013 I\u2019d taken a class with Peter and with Tony Gemignani; Paulie Gee and his son Derek had taught me to stretch dough at his wonderful pizza joint Paulie Gee\u2019s in Brooklyn, and Lil and I had made pizza at home a few times, but we did not feel ready for an audience, especially an audience whom we loved and respected as family. No, different from family \u2013 you can experiment on your family, but we didn\u2019t want to experiment on our teachers!<\/p>\n
We hadn\u2019t brought anything with us: no recipes, no tools, no ingredients. We were surprised, inexperienced, and unprepared.\u00a0 Logic and sensibility called for us to respectfully decline.\u00a0 But I remembered Dileepji saying that \u2018spirituality begins where intelligence ends.\u2019 <\/p>\n
\u201cSure,\u201d I said, \u201cwhen would you like it?\u201d?
There was no rush; we had several days to get it together.\u00a0 This was a relief, because we wanted to do a two-day cold ferment and we had a lot of shopping to do.<\/p>\n
What would occur to me later is that a true Guru is always a teacher, and everything Anandi Ma has ever done with us or asked us to do, every single thing large or small, has been an opportunity for learning and growth.<\/p>\n
I wanted to make pizza our way.\u00a0 I ran out to buy a couple of pizza stones, a couple of peels, flour,\u00a0 canned tomatoes, cheeses, and \u2026 then remembered some of the challenges.\u00a0 Our teachers are strict vegetarians \u2013 the cheeses we would use could contain no animal rennet. Easy for the mozzarella, and Bel Gioioso makes a vegetarian Parmesan, but there would be no grated Romano cheese.\u00a0 I bought some soy cheese too, for the lactose intolerant, and lots of vegetables.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
Our teachers also eat no onions or garlic. Have you ever made a fresh pizza sauce with Hing <\/em>(asafoetida)? Be careful \u2013 it\u2019s powerful.\u00a0 Oh, another thing: in the Indian tradition, there\u2019s no tasting while you\u2019re cooking! Whoo Hoo! Fortunately, one of our friends, an excellent Indian cook with lots of hing experience, helped with the sauce. Lessons one and two: be flexible and accept aid.<\/p>\nI had found a dough recipe on the internet that looked about right, but didn\u2019t realize it was for a same-day dough. Over Lillian\u2019s misgivings, I used WAY too much yeast. Good thing there was enough room in the Guru\u2019s refrigerator for the dough to take over! I would end up punching down and re-balling on the first day after making the dough, then again on pizza day.<\/p>\n
After we made our batch of dough, Anandi Ma told us how many people she had invited over for pizza. Fortunately, we had enough flour for a second batch of dough, with a little less (but still too much) yeast.<\/p>\n
Pizza day came. Lillian got sick. Literally, she could not help with the preparations or the baking. I put the stones in the oven and started heating them. That\u2019s when I discovered that their electric oven lost a lot of heat every time the oven door was opened. This was going to be interesting\u2026<\/p>\n
The dough was unwieldy \u2013 one dough ball would stretch a bit and spring back. Another would just pull and pull like bubble gum. I was determined to win, to wrestle the dough into submission. The dough had other ideas.<\/p>\n
I also like to make thin crusts, but I was making pizza for Indians and Californians and they wanted lots of toppings. Many pizzas broke under the topping-weight in the oven.\u00a0 Anandi Ma likes a crispy, almost hard, crust. My pizzas are softer, more Neapolitan. And there were a lot of guests and I just wasn\u2019t moving fast enough. My frustration grew and continued to grow until I wanted to quit, give up, to run raging from their house\u2026 which was when I surrendered.<\/p>\n
I stopped fighting the dough with my ideas and started to \u2013 how can I say this? \u2013 let the dough tell my hands how it wanted to be stretched. That part got easier immediately. With the grace of my teacher, I tried to be gracious. I smiled through. When I finally got to taste a pizza, after everyone else had eaten, I was pleased that the crust had the flavor I\u2019d hoped for.<\/p>\n
I remember that night now as The Magnificent Failure<\/em>. Oven not hot enough, exploding dough that wouldn\u2019t do what I wanted, pizza that wasn\u2019t familiar to the audience, slow production, you name it. And yet\u2026<\/p>\nEverything my teacher does, she does to teach. That night I learned about expanding my own ideas of pizza to try and embrace the tastes of the audience. I had to face what Chris Bianco had told me: that I would never master this pizzamaking thing, that I was in a relationship with it.\u00a0 I learned more than I\u2019d ever known about \u2018grace under pressure,\u2019 that some people wouldn\u2019t like what I\u2019d made, and that I could survive making less-than-perfect pizza.<\/p>\n
And while the lessons I learned that night were indeed about pizza, they were even more about service, surrender, and how to live with grace on any given day.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
We welcome your pizza stories and food memories and would love to publish them here. Please send them to us at: info@pizzaquest.com <\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Note from Peter: Cary and Lillian Steiner are friends of mine from New York who have their own wonderful pizza blog called Passion-4-Pizza (you can link to their site through our Sites We Like section). In fact, the photo of me used on all my postings was taken by Cary when he and\u00a0 Lillian brought me to Umberto’s in New Hyde Park to experience my first “Grandma’s Pizza.” It was…Read More…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":348,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-504","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-c45-guest-bloggers"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nMaking Pizza for our Guru, by Cary Steiner - Pizza Quest with Peter Reinhart<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.fornobravo.com\/pizzaquest\/making-pizza-for-our-guru-by-cary-steiner\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Making Pizza for our Guru, by Cary Steiner - Pizza Quest with Peter Reinhart\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Note from Peter: Cary and Lillian Steiner are friends of mine from New York who have their own wonderful pizza blog called Passion-4-Pizza (you can link to their site through our Sites We Like section). 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