Pizzameister Pizza Cookbook Reviews

I began making Chicago-style pizza soon after I got married. My wife and I received a Chicago-style pizza set as a wedding shower gift. The kit had a deep-dish pizza pan, pizza cutter, pan lifter, and a pizza cookbook specializing in Chicago-style pizza. One day I asked my wife if she was ever going to make pizza; she said, “You go ahead.” So, I did. I used the kit to make pizza quite frequently. I kept practicing until I could make a better pizza than most of the local pizzerias in the suburbs of Chicago where we lived at that time. After a while, I missed the New York-style thin crust pizza that I grew up with; you just could not buy that kind of pizza in Chicago when I lived there. Therefore, I decided to try my hand at making New York-style pizza. After another intense period of practice, I was able to duplicate and even improve on the New York-style pizza I remembered from my youth.

I practiced making pizza whenever I could. I made and served many hundreds of pizzas to my family and friends over the years. My pizzas became more and more consistent and I kept getting rave reviews; that is, when they were not begging me to make something other than pizza! Many of my friends said, “You should open a pizzeria!” Others said, “Can you teach me to make pizza like that?” I wrote this book to capture the techniques that I had learned and developed so that you can make great pizza, too!

I have fond memories of the three pizzerias that formed my personal vision of what pizza should be and influenced how I make it. I spent many hours watching the people make pizza at the Grande Pizzeria in Endwell, New York. It took me a couple of years of experimenting, reading pizza cookbooks, and picking my memory to duplicate their crust. Brozetti’s Pizzeria, in Binghamton, New York, made the best Sicilian-style pizza. We used to buy individual pieces of it cold, topped with just sauce and cheese. Their sauce had a sweet, rich taste that I have come pretty close to duplicating. Whenever anyone had a large party, the pizza of choice was Nirchi’s Pizza, in Endicott, New York. They made big, rectangular Sicilian-style pizzas; you could buy either a half or a full “sheet.” These pizzas had a thick crust and an uneven surface. The cheese would be dark brown, and when you bit into the pizza, you never knew whether you were going to get more dough, sauce, or cheese. I was inspired to make pizza that was as distinctive and as satisfying as the pizzas these pizzerias made.

The flavors on the pizza we ate when I was growing up also shaped my vision of pizza. We almost never got toppings on our pizza. Therefore, when I started making pizza, I began the quest to find just the right dough, sauce, cheese, and herb combination for the “perfect” cheese pizza. In my opinion, the quintessential test for a pizza chef is the ability to make great cheese pizza. I believe that a cheese pizza should stand on its own without the need for additional toppings.

I grew up to be particularly open-minded to new and different flavors on a pizza. My father was allergic to tomatoes; as a result, we were always ordering a “white” pizza for him. A white pizza is a pizza made without tomato sauce and with some kind of toppings to give it flavor. Although we did get many strange looks at many a pizzeria, we ended up having some great (and unique) pizzas.

I also moved a few times. By the time I started making my own pizza, I had lived in upstate New York, the mountains of Virginia, and the cities of Atlanta and Chicago. My mother was a wonderful cook and she always experimented with different types of recipes and ethnic foods. This gave me an early initiation to some interesting foods. She was also very progressive and health-conscious so we had many healthy (and strange) ingredients in the foods she made. I think all of these experiences opened my eyes to the wonderful variety of tastes, which we can make into pizza!

As I began broadening the pizzas I made and started writing about making pizza, I became more aware of the different types of pizzas. I started observing everything about pizza and started a kind of catalog in my mind. The pizzas I ate at many a pizzeria as well as by the pizza cookbooks I read shaped this catalog. I began to see each type of pizza as something to explore, understand, and experience. I also saw each type of pizza as something that was different and unique. I could categorize, study, and duplicate each one. It became my passion to understand these different types of pizzas as well as to describe them in a way that anyone could duplicate them.

My Passionate About Pizza: Making Great Homemade Pizza cookbook has been a long time coming. In the beginning of my journey, I wrote a four-page recipe for pizza to give to my Dad. I eventually expanded that to a pizza tutorial that had enough information to get started making basic pizza for anyone who wants to try making pizza but is not ready to buy a dedicated pizza cookbook. By then, I had been making three different types of pizza to duplicate the three types of pizza from my youth. After describing those three, I kept adding descriptions about another type of pizza then another. Soon I had quite a bit of material. It needed structure and form to make it easily accessible. I cooked up the idea of systematic pizza making and the organization of the cookbook along the lines of the system. It seemed to hang together well and it got good feedback from those who reviewed my drafts. 

Before I knew it, I had something that looked and read like a cookbook! That reenergized my passion and it has never stopped. I created four major iterations of the book before this published version. Getting a high-quality digital camera was another big step. With it, I could take pictures to help guide alongside the text. The pictures prove that you can do it. They show me making pizza in my home kitchen and are the real deal.

I hope that through this book I can help each of you make your own pizza-making journey successful! 

I am a divorced dad of 2 teenagers that has limited skill in the kitchen. This book is so well written and put together that it was simple for me to on the first attempt have success.

I made a batch of the basic sauce and dough exactly how it was described in the book. I was expecting to fill a trash can with my first few attempts but to my surprise the first was as good as the sixth. My kids and their friends eat every bite and one even said it was the best pizza he had ever had. This book is a life saver it will allow me to serve my teenagers pizza when they want it now because before it was out of my budget. I can’t wait to work my way thru and learn as I go trying the different types.

Thank You for a remarkable book!

Clay

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Apparently engineers make great chefs! The author has an engineering background that comes through clearly in this book. It is clear that the author has systematically examined what makes good pizza in every aspect and from every angle, and has assembled that knowledge in a clear and organized manner in this book.  It’s easy to read, too!

The result is that not only does the book provide fantastic recipes to follow, but it provides you with the principles and techniques that you can use to customize the recipes to produce pizzas that are ideal for your personal taste. The ideas are presented in such an orderly and logical manner that it is easy to do. 

The pizzas are so good and the process of designing them and making them is so fun that making pizzas using the book is a fun family event that occurs about once a week in our household. The pizzas we make using the recipes and principles in Passionate About Pizza are so much better than any other pizzas we have ever bought or made that it doesn’t even seem right to use the same word to refer to the bland, circular chewy things that we used to eat before we bought Passionate About Pizza.

My name is Fré and I am Belgian.

It seems that you and I have a thing or two in common.

Like yourself, I am also very passionat about pizzas. Also, like yourself I believe that the test of a good pizza maker is his (or her) cheese pizza.

Moreover, like yourself, I have had the pleasure of living in upstate N.Y.

In fact, as I am typing this letter, my mouth is watering just thinking about a delicious Brozetti’s pizza. I’m sure that you can imagine how one can crave for something even after so many years have gone by.

It’s almost spiritual!!!

Forgive my entheusiasm sir, but my problem, and the reason for writing this letter, is this…

For to many reasons to bore you with a list, I can’t imagine my ever being able to return to the Empire State. Do you think you would be able to help me? Do you think you could teach me to make such a heavenly pizza?

I don’t know how I could ever repay you for such a service except to say that if you were ever inclined to travel to Europe I could give you many good tips on what to see here in Belgium.

I anxiously await your reply as I remain…

Sincerely and respectfully yours,

Fré