Peter's Blog

Hi Everyone,     As noted in my post of January 19th, I got to spend some time with Phillip Korshak in Austin, Texas at his pizzeria Home Slice, where they make about three thousand pizzas and slices a day to an unending line of both sit-down and take-out customers. The place was hopping and I imagine it always is.  It was our first time meeting face to face and…Read More…

Hi Everybody, Our friend Daniel Young, author of the essential book Where to Eat Pizza, has a terrific newsletter that he sends out regularly with fun posts of his never ending search for pizza excellence. Here’s a link to his most recent post, about a guy from New Haven who went to Naples on his honeymoon to find out for himself whether his beloved New Haven pizza could stand up…Read More…

Hi Everyone, I’m back from a fun and exciting trip through Texas, which entailed visiting five cities in five days, teaching artisan bread classes at the Central Market Cooking Schools in San Antonio, Austin, Houston, Fort Worth, and Dallas. By exciting, I mean that on Sunday, while I was teaching my final class, in Dallas (and while the Cowboys were getting beat by the Packers in an amazing finish, just up…Read More…

Hi Everyone, By the time you read this I will be off to Texas, teaching a series of classes at the Central Market Cooking Schools in San Antonio (January 11th), Austin (12th), Houston (13th), Fort Worth (14th), and Dallas (15th). Whew!! Not a lot of time to do any pizza (or barbecue) hunting, but a great chance to meet lots of fellow bread-heads. If you are already coming to my…Read More…

Hi Everyone, I think it’s safe to say that this was the craziest year many of us have ever known, from sublime to surreal. But at least here, on PizzaQuest, it has been a wonderful year, in many ways our best ever, and for this I want to say thanks to everyone who helped make it possible, including you, our followers, readers, and fellow pizza freaks. One of the things…Read More…

Note from Peter:  I’m not going to say much here other than to implore you to read this interview with two of the most fascinating people I’ve ever met, Nadezhda Savova-Grigorov and her husband, Stefan Grigorov, who live in Sofia, Bulgaria. I guarantee that after you read about the work they are doing you will feel a newly energized hope for the world, which is  just what we need at this time…Read More…

Note from Peter: I met Lou Bank at the Fermentation Festival in Reedsburg, Wisconsin, where he put on an amazing dinner using all sorts of fermented foods (plenty of kimchee!!) and local pork and grains, but mainly it was a celebration, and “Master Class,” in mezcal. We tasted five different rare, artisan examples as Lou explained all the nuances. I’m no expert in mezcal spirit beverages, or tequila, it’s most…Read More…

Note from Peter: A few months ago I posted about this wonderful book by journalist Simran Sethi. It just recently came out in a soft cover version, which means it’s more affordable and, as you will see below in my review, well worth reading. If you like Michael Pollan and Dan Barber you will love this book.  Here’s my review, enjoy! Bread, Wine, Chocolate: The Slow Loss of Foods We…Read More…

 Note from Peter: I met Albert Grande a number of years ago when he wrote to me about his website, pizzatherapy.com, which I immediately loved, and we’ve been corresponding ever since. I think of “Pizza Therapy” as an ongoing love letter to all of us, from an east coast guy transplanted to Hawaii, about the pizza memories of his youth. But, of course, it has become much more than that over the…Read More…

Note from Peter:  I met Meathead Goldwyn a few weeks ago at the Decatur Book Festival, where he held the culinary stage immediately before I went on, so I had a chance to watch his presentation, which was on “Busting Myths About Barbecue and Cooking.”  It was a fun filled hour, full of great tips on temperature control, best brands for food thermometers, how to cook a steak to the…Read More…