Pizza Quest with Peter Reinhart

Lately I’ve been thinking about “counterfeiters.”  More specifically, I’ve been thinking about a Latin saying that dates back to the early 1500’s, Caveat Emptor, or, “Let the buyer beware.” In this era, more than any other, it has become crucial that we understand what is truly behind the labels on the products that we buy. Unfortunately this is especially true of Italian products.  With global awareness creating unprecedented demand for…Read More…

Craig Stoll (he’s the one with the beard) doesn’t look like an obsessed mad man, while his head pizzaiolo, Anthony Strong, well, yeah, he does. But they both are obsessed and mad, each in his own way, which is kind of cool because we get to see two sides of the “fire in your belly” drive that can and should take over one’s life, giving it a sense of daily…Read More…

On Saturday, April 2nd, I attended the seventh annual Asheville Bread Festival. I’ve been attending since the very beginning, haven’t missed a one, and each year it gets better and better and more people show up from all over the country. The format has been that the first few hours are held at Green Life Grocery (now owned by Whole Foods), where local bakers display and sell their breads to…Read More…

Hi Everyone, We have some fun, new and important stuff to share this week.  I’ll be posting on Tuesday my first report on the Asheville Bread Festival, which was a blast, including some comments on the most amazing flour I’ve ever worked with! On Thursday, we’ll post the second in our new webisode series filmed at Pizzeria Defina and the Gastro District in San Francisco. We call this segment, A…Read More…

In some of the recipes that we’ve posted I refer to stretching and folding the dough, so I want to more fully explain it here, as I will continue to provide recipes that utilize this technique. The stretch and fold method (S&F from here on), is a remarkable way to maximize gluten development in a dough with minimum mixing time. It is sometimes referred to as “intermittent kneading” and also…Read More…

So here we are, at Pizzeria Delfina, with Executive Chef and owner, Craig Stoll, and his head pizzaiolo, Anthony Strong. In future segments we’ll explore the Gastro District with Anthony and we’ll sit down with both Craig and Anthony to discuss their culinary vision and pizza philosophy, which I found to be extremely thoughtful. You’ll get a first taste of it in this opening segment as we hear all about…Read More…

This week, after spending the past three months showing you the segments we filmed at Pizzeria Mozza in Los Angeles (alternating them with the many Instructional videos shot in Boulder, Colorado), we are back on the road again. This week we launch a series of episodes — of course we call them webisodes — filmed in San Francisco’s Gastro District, which is a one block neighborhood on 18th St. between…Read More…

Hi Everyone, This week we travel to San Francisco to meet James Beard award winning chef Craig Stoll, owner of Pizzeria Delfina (right next door to his wonderful, award winning osteria, Delfina). We’ll also meet Pizzeria Delfina’s head pizzaiolo Anthony Strong, as passionate a pizza freak as I’ve ever met. In this week’s webisode segment Anthony will show us how he makes Delfina’s distinctive Margherita pizza. Over the next few…Read More…

We are beginning our tour of a little neighborhood, actually a little block in the Castro District of San Francisco that has become known to locals as “The Gastro” because of the great food options there.  The reason for our visit was to visit with Craig Stoll and his Pizzaiolo Anthony Strong of Pizzeria Delfina.  On our way, actually the day before we were to meet with them at Delfina…Read More…

A couple days ago, I was doing some work on my laptop at a little cafe in Boulder.  Taking a sip from my Cafe Americano, I looked up to realize I was surrounded by people who seemed completely hypnotized by the light of their computers.  Then a group of high school students came through the line, texting and talking away.  With a quick swipe of a credit card the baristas…Read More…