The Great Chicago-Style Pizza Cookbook - Books

Location: Home > Books > General > The Great Chicago-Style Pizza Cookbook

Similar Items:

•	Chicago Metallic Professional Deep Dish Pizza Pan
•	The Art of Pizza Making: Trade Secrets and Recipes
•	Sassafras Deep Dish Pizza and Pie Baker
•	Pan Gripper Deep Dish Model
•	American Pie: My Search for the Perfect Pizza

Editorial Reviews:

Product Description

"A fun cookbook for any audience." --Booklist

Classic recipes for deep-dish, stuffed, thin-crust, and vegetarian variations.

Customer Reviews: Read 10 more reviews...

5 out of 5 stars

Ordered this a long time ago. July 10, 2008
Thought I would make more Classic Italian Pizza than I do. This will give you all of the basics and more.

5 out of 5 stars

This is how you write a pizza book April 11, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful

At 25 years old and still going strong, this is the definitive book on making Chicago-style pizza. If you don't believe me, get on a plane and take the El to Pizzeria Uno on Wabash Ave (go to Due a block down the street if Uno's too busy), order a medium sausage, then come home and make "Deep Dish Pizza #1". I think you'll be pretty impressed by the accuracy.

But it's more than that, which is actually a bit of a shame given how it focuses exclusively on Chicago pizza. Where many books on subjects such as pizza are padded out with minor variations on a basic recipe, Bruno's book gives not only recipes but many pictures and technique discussions. Actual recipes in fact take up only about 40 pages of the book, with the real meat of the book being the two chapters that show detailed, illustrated step-by-step instructions for mixing the dough and making deep-dish, stuffed, and thin-crust pizzas, something that in a technique-heavy food like pizza should be quite essential. Pictures and profiles of the great Chicago pizza places of the day round out the book (interestingly, I'm pretty sure that Uno's pizzaiola Aldean Stoudamire, pictured in the colour insert, is the same woman that Jeff Smith referred to as "Mama" in The Frugal Gourmet Cooks American).

Not being from Chicago, I don't know if Pat Bruno is still working the food beat for the Sun-Times a quarter century after writing this book. What I do know is that although the book focuses heavily on Chicago style pizza with no discussion of Italian-style, New York-style, or New England Greek pizza, it still represents the gold standard for what a pizza book should be. The recipes are a tad outdated (I prefer instant to active dry yeast, which makes a bit of process streamlining possible) but perfectly usable, and the technique photos will never go out of style. If all you've ever had is deep-dish from the franchised Uno's Chicago Grill, well, that pizza's not bad at all, but it's not as good as the pizza you'll make out of this book.

5 out of 5 stars

The BEST Deep-dish Pizza Book Ever Written February 8, 2008
4 out of 5 found this review helpful

If you want to make incredible (and authentic) deep-dish pizza, this book shows you in thorough detail exactly how to do it.

The first half of the book is full of pictures describing the processes of making deep-dish pizza in enough detail that someone who has never cooked a pizza can produce an outstanding pizza on the first try. The second half of the book is recipes from the Chicago pizza restaurants. It's hard to imagine the first half being any more clear, and the second half doesn't bore you to death with stuff you will know cold once you've read the first half and used it to make a couple of pizzas.

It is the perfect balance of educational detail and long-term utility.

I've had this book since 1983, the year it was first published. When I bought it, I loved deep-dish pizza, but hadn't a clue how to make it. I've used it to make more than a hundred different deep-dish pizzas, with never a flop yet. I've just purchased my THIRD copy, because I've used the first two copies until they disintegrated. My most popular is the Spinach-stuffed pizza, although the Greek pizza (with Kalamata olives, anchovies, feta and spinach) is my personal favorite.

One thing you won't find is innovations since 1983, but if you hear about something new, it's a snap to include it. It is the difference between learning a recipe and learning the theory. Get this book, and you'll be able to make the kind of pizza you want.

5 out of 5 stars

My Chicago-Away-From-Chicago November 10, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful

I only lived in Chicago for 5 years, but I did pick up a taste for stuffed pizza. Heaven! This book, which I have had since about 1987, allows me to make "something like" out here in the pizza philistinia of Seattle. I'll never claim to make anything like The Nancy or my personal fave Edwardo's, but it isn't half bad.

Not sure about the tomato paste, though. Are we reading the same recipe? Canned tomatoes, chopped by hand (I use a pastry knife), all the way.

I echo the review that said you have to bake the crust a bit first to keep it from getting soggy. I've also done a bit of experimenting along the way, and think the sauce I have come up with improves on the one in the book, but any good cook should be willing to do that, I'd think. Tastes differ and all that.

Anyway this book has helped me keep my pizza sanity 1700 miles west of Mecca. Highly recommended.

2 out of 5 stars

Not authentic May 17, 2005
2 out of 11 found this review helpful

Of course you should expect authentic recipes from a book like this--why else would you want to buy it? If you follow Bruno's directions, you make a lousy deep dish that tastes like a hunk of bread with tomato sauce on it, not real Chicago deep dish pizza. I have duplicated Uno's, Giordano's, etc. at home and Bruno is way, way off the mark.

Good Grape Wine Company