Mastering Pizza

Description

A revolutionary guide to making delicious pizza at home, offering a variety of base doughs so that your pizza will turn out perfect no matter what kind of oven or equipment you have.

“If you are serious about making pizza, buy every copy in the store.”—JIMMY KIMMEL

Pizza remains America’s favorite food, but one that many people hesitate to make at home. In Mastering Pizza, award-winning chef Marc Vetri tackles the topic with his trademark precision, making perfect pizza available to anyone. The recipes—gleaned from years spent researching recipes in Italy and perfecting them in America—have a variety of base doughs of different hydration levels, which allow home cooks to achieve the same results with a regular kitchen oven as they would with a professional pizza oven. The book covers popular standards like Margherita and Carbonara while also featuring unexpected toppings such as mussels and truffles—and even a dessert pizza made with Nutella. With transporting imagery from Italy and hardworking step-by-step photos to demystify the process, Mastering Pizza will help you make pizza as delicious as you find in Italy.“Marc Vetri has an artist and a scientist and a genius all rolled into his beautiful, gnocchi-shaped head. I would need all the curse words in the English and Italian languages to fully express the brilliance that lies within these pages. If you are serious about making pizza, buy every copy in the store.”
—JIMMY KIMMEL

“Thorough, diverse, transparent, and beautiful, a template for this world and this amazing portrait of pizza, Brother Vetri goes deep into the many roads of all things flat and fired, and they all lead to delicious perfection! I love this book so much.”
—CHRIS BIANCO, chef and author of Bianco
 
“This book is genius in its detail. Marc sought out the most acclaimed masters of pizza to give you expert knowledge of the art, craft, and science behind what makes great pizza. What I love about this book is its passion, outstanding research, and easy, step-by-step instructions. In no time, you will be creating what pizzaioli spend a lifetime practicing to perfect. Mastering Pizza is an essential must-have for any pizza lover.”
—JIM LAHEY, author of My Pizza
 
“If you want to learn how to make great pizza, there is no better teacher than Marc Vetri. He has gone to great lengths to understand what it takes to make unforgettable pizza, and his unwavering passion for Italian food has made him a master of his craft. Mastering Pizza is filled with beautiful recipes and fundamental knowledge that Marc has accumulated throughout his career. This is the kind of cookbook that will inspire you to learn, cook, and invite people over for a great meal.”
—NATHAN MYHRVOLD, lead author of Modernist Cuisine
 
“There are very few people on the planet who could write a book entitled Mastering Pizza that I would want to read. One of them is Marc Vetri. Through his frequent travels in Italy, and a lifetime in the pizzerias of Philly, Marc has graduated from being a student of pizza to an esteemed professor of this beloved food. Marc’s stunningly comprehensive book (there are twelve dough recipes alone) will enlighten the path of your own journey to becoming the pizza master of your dreams.”
—NANCY SILVERTON, co-owner of Mozza Restaurant Group

“ An excellent one-stop pizza guide.” 
– PUBLISHERS WEEKLYTrained in Bergamo, Italy, by some of the region’s most noted chefs, MARC VETRI is the chef/owner of Pizzeria Vetri, Vetri Ristorante, Osteria, Amis, and Alla Spina, all located in Philadelphia. He has also opened a series of restaurants in partnership with Terrain, with locations in California and Texas. Vetri was named one of Food & Wine‘s Ten Best New Chefs; he also won the James Beard Award for Best Chef Mid-Atlantic. Vetri has been profiled in Gourmet, Bon Appétit, and the New York Times, and is the author of Mastering Pasta, Il Viaggio di Vetri, and Rustic Italian Food. DAVID JOACHIM is the author of the New York Times best seller A Man A Can A Plan and a co-writer on numerous cookbooks.INTRODUCTION

EVERYBODY LOVES PIZZA 

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It’s amazing to me how the whole world fell in love with pizza. But I get it. I fell in love with it, too! It’s just so adaptable. Different doughs, different shapes, different toppings. You can make it however you like. And that’s exactly what everyone around the world does. And that’s what you should do. But this book is not an exhaustive survey of every style out there. I focus on the pizzas that started it all, like round pizza Napoletana that’s soft and foldable with a big, puffy rim; round pizza Romana that has a thin, crunchy crust and almost no rim; and rectangular or square pizza al taglio that’s baked in a pan with a superthick but light and pillowy crust. Sure, I have some fun with Naples dough and Roman dough. I show you how to make a few things like calzones and rotolo—a Pizzeria Vetri original! I also show you how to make focaccia, the Italian bread that probably kicked off the whole pizza craze in the first place. Just don’t go in expecting to find edamame pizza with a fucking cauliflower crust. That is not in this book. You won’t find gluten-free pizza either. But you will find gluten-friendly pizza that is thoroughly fermented and made with wheat flour. Yes, it is possible! 

You’ll find almost twenty different pizza and focaccia dough recipes and dozens of variations on those doughs. You’ll see plenty of pizza toppings, too—from classics like Marinara and Margherita to some of my new favorites like Zucchine and Carbonara. There are more than forty different toppings and fillings here. Certain toppings go particularly well with certain doughs, and I’ve pointed these out in the recipes. But, really, you can mix and match the toppings however you like. For me, it’s all about nailing the crust. No matter what kind of pizza you make, your dough and your oven will always have the biggest impact on how your pizza turns out. 

A lot of pizza books focus on the “one” dough recipe you’ll ever need. Or they show you the “best” method for baking pizza. The truth is, there is no “one” pizza dough to rule them all, and there is no “best” method—and acting like there is can lead you astray. It all depends on what you are trying to achieve and the tools you have at hand. Different doughs and different ovens make different pizzas! If you make pizza in a wood-fired oven at 900°F (482°C), you won’t get the same results when you bake that same dough in a home oven at 500°F (260°C). It just won’t work. My promise in this book is that I will help you make better pizza in whatever oven you have with whatever dough you want. 

Like everything else in today’s world, you can get your pizza cheap and easy, or you can seek out better quality. If you’re reading this book, I assume you want to go a step above Chuck E. Cheese’s. Let’s say you’ve never made pizza before, and you want to give it a shot. You’ll find everything you need here to make great pizza from scratch in your home oven the very first time. Or, maybe you’ve been at it for a while and you’ve gotten pretty good at slinging pies. These pages offer lots of opportunity to up your game—from perfecting your dough to getting the most out of your oven, and I bet you’ll also pick up a few new toppings to try out.CN

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