List of Pizza Making Books

[FirePie]

This is just a short list of books that I own which are devoted to making pizza at home for the average home cook. Although I haven't borrowed a recipe from each of these, I will rate them based on what I found the most informative, most efficient and authentic.

1.)The Ultimate Pizza Manual: Make Pizza Like the Pros... Used To! / Francesco Brunaldo *****
2.)American Pie: My Search For the Perfect Pizza / Peter Reinhart ****1/2
3.)The Art of Making Pizza / Dominick DeAngelis ****1/2
4.)Pizza Napoletana! / Pamela Sheldon Johns ****1/2
5.)Pizza: Any Way You Slice It / Charles and Michele Scicolone ***
6.)The Great Chicago-Style Pizza Cookbook / Pasquale Bruno Jr. ***

***** (Most detailed instructions, most praise, seemingly most authentic recipe given for New York City Style Street Pizza on the market today. Great sauce recipe as well, so far the only formula I've tested.)
****1/2 (Very detailed information contained within. Currently using Peter Reinhart's Neo-Neapolitan dough formula as my standby, tweaked only slightly by using AP flour with 5% VWG. Will post results in the future.)
*** (Informative, yet recipes slightly lacking altogether in authenticity, some details not given. Plenty of interesting pizza-related stories and many historical anecdotes to be enjoyed.)

[Essen1]

FP,

I have one more to add:

Evelyne Slomon's "The Pizza Book". Excellent read.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/081291113X/ref=oe_popover_olp?ie=UTF8&condition=all

[Pete-zza]

FirePie,

Is the Brunaldo book the one that has a NY style dough recipe that contains a lot of yeast and sugar and where the pizza (18") is baked on a 19" pizza screen (in a home oven)? I saw a recipe recently at the PMQ Think Tank that was said to be for a NY style and came from the Brunaldo book. I mention all of this because a die-hard NY pizza fan would not consider the recipe as authentic and, as a result, might not want to buy the Brunaldo book. It's a purist thing, not a criticism of the recipe or the book.

Peter

[FirePie]

FirePie,

Is the Brunaldo book the one that has a NY style dough recipe that contains a lot of yeast and sugar and where the pizza (18") is baked on a 19" pizza screen (in a home oven)? I saw a recipe recently at the PMQ Think Tank that was said to be for a NY style and came from the Brunaldo book. I mention all of this because a die-hard NY pizza fan would not consider the recipe as authentic and, as a result, might not want to buy the Brunaldo book. It's a purist thing, not a criticism of the recipe or the book.

Peter

Yes, Peter, we are talking about the same book here. I actually was surprised at the amount of sugar called for in Mr. Brunaldo's Large 18" NYC Pizza Dough recipe. In this formula he calls for 5 teaspoons of it to be mixed with the water, yeast and olive oil (yeast measurement is 2 teaspoons) along with another 1 1/4 teaspoon to be added to the mixer bowl containing the dry ingredients. The sauce recipe is also quite sweet, and calls for 3 tablespoons of sugar to be added to the specified 29 ounce can of Red Pack tomato puree. To be perfectly honest with you, I differentiated here by using a 28 ounce can of Pastene ground peeled tomatoes and using only about 1 tablespoon of sugar, which is something I've never added to any sauce I ever made. It was still very tasty, even though I also noticed there is no trace of garlic in the sauce recipe at all. Further digression was made simply by pressing one clove garlic into 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil, which was used to dress the dough before applying the sauce and cheese, which was fresh mozzarella ciliegine sliced in rounds along with shredded low-moisture mozz on top. I always mean to snap a photo of each pie I make but can never seem to control my appetite (or my family's!) long enough. 

[Pete-zza]

FirePie,

I saw the NY style dough recipe at the PMQTT at http://thinktank.pmq.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=8438&hilit=l#p57171. I even went so far as to convert the recipe to baker's percent format because I wanted to see how much sugar and yeast were actually used. I have posted the baker's percent version below, as prepared using the expanded dough calculating tool at http://www.pizzamaking.com/expanded_calculator.html, so that our members can better assess whether they should get the book or not.

High-Gluten Flour/Semolina Blend* (100%): Water (58.3942%): IDY (1.55109%): Salt (1.43704%): Olive Oil (1.43704%): Sugar (6.15875%): Total (168.97812%):

388.42 g  |  13.7 oz | 0.86 lbs 226.82 g  |  8 oz | 0.5 lbs 6.02 g | 0.21 oz | 0.01 lbs | 2 tsp | 0.67 tbsp 5.58 g | 0.2 oz | 0.01 lbs | 1 tsp | 0.33 tbsp 5.58 g | 0.2 oz | 0.01 lbs | 1.24 tsp | 0.41 tbsp 23.92 g | 0.84 oz | 0.05 lbs | 6 tsp | 2 tbsp 656.35 g | 23.15 oz | 1.45 lbs | TF = N/A

* The high-gluten flour/semolina blend comprises 10 ounces high-gluten flour and 3.7 ounces semolina, with an effective protein content of about 13.7%
Note: The dough is for a single 18" pizza with a corresponding thickness factor of 0.09097.

As you can see, there is a lot of sugar and yeast.

If you decide to make another pizza using the above recipe, I think our members would like to see some photos of the pizza. You could post them in a new thread so the results don't get buried in this thread.

Peter

[thezaman]

peter, i bought brunaldo's book and started with the sauce, it included bullion cubes ,did you make the recipe using them? i didn't put the sauce on a crust because it tasted very offensive on it's own. it reminded me of pizza hut sauce, which is very distinctive,and needs to be tasted with all of the other pizza parts to be enjoyed.  i liked his little tip on putting the container under the mixing bowl to change the bowl height to get a better kneed.

[Pete-zza]

Larry,

I don't have the book so I haven't seen any of the recipes other than what was posted at the PMQTT. Curiosity prompted me to convert it to baker's percent format.

Peter