Pizza Quest with Peter Reinhart

Hi Everyone, PizzaQuest follower John Daniels has been working on a really interesting baking platform, he actually calls it a Pizza Grate, that was designed to wick away any moisture from the underskirt of your crust via a series of strategically drilled holes in the plate.  He sent both Brad and me an early prototype and Brad is currently testing it out and will report on it in an upcoming…Read More…

A few weeks ago author Michael Pollan came to Charlotte to speak at a local university. Earlier that day I was fortunate to be able to appear with him for an hour on our local NPR radio program, Charlotte Talks, where we discussed many of his favorite themes. Most of you already know who Michael Pollan is, but in case you don’t, he is the author of a number of…Read More…

Oh my god!  I found the most amazing vegetable!  I don’t think anyone knows about it.  They are these little bulbs called Brussels Sprouts and I’m the first one to ever think of cooking them and eating them. Ok, maybe not the first. Boy are these things the hot item these days.  I bet they run out of favor soon because they seem to have exploded so big as THE…Read More…

What’s a pizza roll? If you fold a pizza it’s called a calzone.  If you roll it up, it’s a stromboli.  I’ve seen something in between simply called a sausage roll.  I found out recently when breaking in my new wood fired oven and learning to use a metal pizza peel that what starts out as a pizza may end up flipping over while going in and end up coming…Read More…

I’m in the middle of the beginning of a journey that started quite a while ago.  That’s a mouthful, but believe it or not it’s true!  I just got a Primavera 60 from Forno Bravo and I am beginning to chronicle my tales of learning how to drive this new oven.  I recently posted Part I of my wood fired oven journey (see a few posts below). But…. “Stop the…Read More…

So we come to the end of the story, at least this story that began with Kelly Whitaker and I challenging Patrick Rue to make a beer inspired by a pizza. If you’ve been following it from the start this finale segment is kind of a denouement, as we, sated and satisfied, drift off into the Denver sunset, having our own Pizza Quest version of a Rocky Mountain high. If…Read More…

What is it that makes a great pizza? I’ve been on a personal quest searching for the answers to this question for some time.  I’ve traveled and eaten more than my share of pizza.  I’ve also spent many hours slinging my own pies in and out of my home oven in all in an attempt to further understand and expand this quest.  I’d say I’ve even gotten pretty good at…Read More…

As many of you already know, I did not win the New Yorker Caption Contest this week, though I did get many e-mails from folks saying they thought I should have.  But the winning caption was very funny and I figured it might very well win when I first saw it in the finals, and it did. Was it because the author had more Twitter followers or Facebook fans than…Read More…

So, if you’ve been following our webisode series, we’ve been building up to the moment when the pizza, created by Kelly Whitaker and Alan Henkin of Basta, along with me and the Pizza Quest team — who came up with the Germainia Malted Dough — finally meet the beer created by Patrick Rue and his Bruery team. In the previous segment, we showed the Bruery guys two different pizzas and…Read More…

The perfect piece of fish!   Fresh piece of Yellowtail Sea Salt A little Pepper Chopped Garlic Olive Oil Fresh Squeezed Lemon Juice Fire Smoke Timing   Perfection is not easy and once achieved is no longer perfection because it seems there is always something better coming.  That’s interesting to think about. Have you ever seen the most beautiful girl you thought you had ever seen in your life?  How…Read More…