Peter Reinhart continues his ‘Pizza Quest’ with a new cookbook
Peter Reinhart teaches bread baking at the prestigious Johnson & Wales University in Charlotte, North Carolina, but in his spare time, he’s a self-proclaimed “pizza freak.”
The Philadelphia native got his start as a serious baker when he and his wife, Susan, opened Brother Juniper’s Cafe in Forestville in the early 1980s, which eventually spawned a full-scale bakery in Santa Rosa and a line of six breads sold to supermarkets throughout the Bay Area.
His fascination with bread eventually led him into the world of artisan pizzas distinguished by their crisp crusts, oozing cheese and deep-flavored toppings. Since the publication of his “American Pie” cookbook in 2003, Reinhart has fallen even more in love with those savory slabs of dough, whether round and baked in a wood-fired oven, square and baked in a deep pan or rolled into a hoagie-shaped stromboli.
Over time, the culinary explorer became the Don Quixote of cutting-edge pizza, and his obsession inspired him to write another pizza cookbook, “Pan Pizza,” which came out in 2020 and chronicled the explosion of the Detroit-style and other square pizzas. Along the way, he launched a website (fornobravo.com/pizzaquest) where other pizza freaks can follow his search for the perfect pie.
“’American Pie’ was supposed to be a one-off book about pizza,” Reinhart said in an interview in early March. “But it got a following and turned into a website and a video podcast called Pizza Quest. We’ve been posting stuff on there for years, showcasing some of the best pizzerias.”
Then the pandemic hit and put an end to Reinhart’s road trips across the country to taste and report back on the tastiest pie trends. Undeterred, he started doing Zoom interviews with some of the nation’s most outstanding pizza luminaries in a web series called “Pizza Talk.”
“All of a sudden we had 70 or 80 of these great interviews,” he said. “And that’s when I got the idea to cherry pick the most interesting.”
After writing 12 cookbooks, including three James Beard Award winners, Reinhart set to work profiling the most exciting pizzaiolos working today, from sourdough crust champions Dan Richer of Razza in Jersey City and Anthony Mangieri of Una Pizza Napoletana in New York City to Will Grant of That’s A’ Some Pizza in Bainbridge Island, Washington, and World Pizza Champion/restaurateur Tony Gemignani of San Francisco.
His new cookbook, “Pizza Quest: My Never-Ending Search for the Perfect Pizza” (Andrews McMeel Publishing, $22), will be released on March 29 but can be preordered on Amazon or at local bookstores. It takes fellow pizza lovers on a delicious journey to meet 30 pizza luminaries who share 35 of their signature recipes. If you’re not already making your own pizza, this book will help you kick start your own pizza quest at home.
Reinhart crowdsourced the photos in the book from each pizza maker, but he had to work overtime to tweak the recipes so as to not reveal each artisan’s secrets.
“My challenge was to create a homemakers’ version of these really spectacular pizzas that the top pizza makers in the country were making,” he said. “I had to do it without asking them to share proprietary tricks of their trade.”
His first task was to create master dough recipes that could be used for the various kinds of pizza in the book, including the classic New York and Neapolitan pizzas, the pan and Sicilian pizzas and the up-and-coming sourdough pizzas.
“I was able to do that by tweaking the hydration,” he said. “There’s not much difference (between them), except for the amount of water, the type of flour and the oil content.”
All contributors had to do was send him a “beauty shot” of their finished pizzas and a brief description. Even without a list of ingredients, Reinhart was able to recreate the recipes so they would be user-friendly for home cooks.
“My job was to create a tribute version of a masterpiece,” he said. “I told the contributors, ‘You guys are like the Beatles of pizza, and I’m the Beatles cover band at the Marriott playing your greatest hits.”
These recipes can at least get home cooks into the ballpark, but whether they can play the game or not is up to them. Like bread baking, Reinhart said, the real craft lies in the touch and feel of working the dough.
“There’s even a movement in the artisan community called These Hands,” he said. “It was started by Rob Denapoli of Denapoli Tomatoes in Los Gatos. … The hands are the most important tool to an artisan.”
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