I bought this book from Amazon. Yes, it is only 44 pages long, but it goes into exhaustive detail all of the minutiae of making a GOOD 18" NY style pizza. Where most "cookbooks" will put a pizza recipe on 1-2 pages, this expands it into 44 pages. Every little tiny subtle detail of every aspect of pizza prep is covered, and there are pictures for everything. Think of it as a comic book with photographs.
The author tells about weighing the dough ingredients, but he does things differently than I have learned here. He HEATS the mixer bowl, then whisks in the DRY ingredients, then adds warm water. (which is the reverse of what I do; I add flour to cold water, mix, autolyze for 20 minutes, add yeast and oil, then knead for 8 minutes). He skips the autolysis and instead kneads for a full 20 minutes, then rises for two hours. He then recommends 8-24 hours retardation in the fridge. He recommends high gluten flour PLUS semolina, SAF instant yeast, and adds sugar to the mix as well.
He preps the pizza on a screen suspended over the kitchen sink to allow the excess semolina flour (used this time not as an ingredient, but to aid handling the dough) to fall off. He docks the dough, dresses with olive oil, and a sauce using Red Pack puree, water, bouillion cubes, and herbs.
He bakes at 475 on a screen for 7-8 minutes. Again, no detail is omitted; he illustrates placement of the screen in the oven, how to place the rack, etc.
I have not tried the technique yet (It's July and I am making pizzas in my Forno), but in my opinion, this book has been needed for years. It is short on theory, but it gives enough details, subtle nuances, tips and tricks to avoid all the pitfalls of all the hundreds of useless "make pizza at home" DIY recipes. It is not just another book on how to make "any" pizza. It targets how to specifically make a certain kind of NY-style that closely approximates, if not duplicates, the "pizza by the slice" you get in NYC.
Most of us here know how to make great pizza already, but I highly recommend this informative and fascinating picture book. It's short enough to read in a few minutes.
(Of course, I would not dare recommend that it replace This Hallowed Website, which is the Oracle of all Pizza Wisdom.)
