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| American Pie: My Search for the Perfect Pizza | 
 enlarge | Author: Peter Reinhart
Publisher: Ten Speed Press
Category: Book
List Price: $27.95
Buy New: $17.53
You Save: $10.42 (37%)
New (34) Used (12) Collectible (1) from $17.04
Avg. Customer Rating:  46 reviews
Sales Rank: 7230
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 256
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.9
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 7.1 x 1.2
ISBN: 1580084222
Dewey Decimal Number: 641.8248
EAN: 9781580084222
ASIN: 1580084222
Publication Date: November 2003
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Brand New, Perfect Condition, Please allow 4-14 business days for delivery. 100% Money Back Guarantee, Over 1,000,000 customers served.
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| Customer Reviews:
 a good start March 25, 2008
coming from a novice cook-(a late starter for sure), i found the book an interesting read since i have been flying in and out of the areas he mentioned as well as being a good source of ideas, even for a beginning cook. it appears to have the depth to keep experienced cookers occupied, and those with proper ovens and stone inserts and the patience to "age" the dough. being single, i've had to cut all his recipes in half and convert to metric.
 American Pie: My Search for the Perfect Pizza by Peter Reinhart January 2, 2008
This is a great book if you are looking for a little history and a lot of information on different styles of pizza as well as some great recipes. You really can't go wrong when purchasing any book by Peter Reinhart. I highly recommend "The Breadbaker's Apprentice."
Good recipes, but skip the story December 12, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
The recipes and techniques in this book are, by and large, excellent. I spent over three years working in a pizzeria and have struggled since then to recreate really good pizza in my home. Reinhart's sauce recipes, and (most important) his dough recipes and techniques have closed the gap between simply being able to make pizza at home that my friends and family are excited about, and being able to make pizza at home that *I* am truly happy with. I concur with the reviewer who says that his Chicago deep-dish recipe won't get you restaurant-quality fare (it's far thicker and meatier than a Lou Malnati's crust, for instance), but I will say that it makes for a plenty good deep dish pie at home.
Unlike most of the other reviewers, however, I can't recommend the opening chapter on his "personal pizza journey." Bookended by tired you-can't-go-home-again sentimentality, it fixates on his quest for a very narrow class of pizza (excepting the forays into utterly bizarre and inaccessible raw vegan fare, etc.) It's great for New Haven pizza fans, I suppose, but just about anybody else passionate about pizza is going to find his biases difficult to swallow.
Even as a Chicago Pizza Guy, I can understand how he failed to embrace the deep dishes he tried. It's not his thing. But what is inexplicable and unforgivable is the fact that, after traipsing around into all manner of random, one-off, or impossibly elitist pizza shops all around the world, he went through Chicago without the merest mention of the Chicago thin pizza, which in my book is the city's secret pizza weapon. The man wrote about Chicago pizza apparently without eating the likes of Aurelio's, Jake's, or Rosati's. That's unforgivably sloppy, and makes me wonder what else he glossed over in other cities.
Maybe it's unfair to blame Reinhart for being what he is--a gourmet, confirmed bread freak with a deep spiritual streak who wants to be entranced and romanced by restaurant owners with a large Italian vocabulary or a willingness to babble about putting one's soul into a pizza. And he does point out the brutally obvious by way of disclaimer--pizza preference is a deeply personal thing. That said, it doesn't make for terribly compelling reading, either. So I say, stick with the recipes and leave the stories aside, lest you dismiss some good recipes on account of the flakiness of the opening chapter.
(For all his talk about cheese, there's really a very simple approach to getting great pizza cheese. 1 part romano to every 2-3 parts mozzarella, grate it yourself, done.)
 This book is a joke! December 1, 2007
1 out of 37 found this review helpful
Follow his pizza sauce recipes for a sure way to watered down sauce and wasted tomato puree and spices.
A helpful slice of information, especially on dough making September 26, 2007
7 out of 8 found this review helpful
I found this to be a fairly serviceable treatise on the topic of pizza. The author, a baking instructor, had a longstanding interest in global pizza hunting, and always made it a point to sample the local pies wherever he traveled. Eventually, he got around to putting it all into book form, wherein he takes the reader on a condensed recap of his far ranging pizza (and foccacia) travels, from Philadelphia, to Texas, to NYC, to New Haven, to Italy, to California, to Chicago, etc., in his quest for perfect pizza.
The author then provides the reader with a basic dough recipe covering each of the (as he classifies them) major types of pizza: Napoletana, Roman, Neo-Neapolitan, New York-Style, Pizza Americana, San Francisco Sourdough Style, Grilled Pizza dough, Chicago Deep-Dish, Sardinian, etc. He then goes on to provide some basic tips for sauce, cheese, toppings, and some philosophical guidelines to help achieve balance in a given recipe.
I already knew most of what little information he provided about sauce and cheese and toppings - the primary focus in this book is primarily on dough making & handling, followed by baking methods, and there's some very helpful information here for amateur home cooks who've always wanted to learn the basics of home pizza making, either in a pan, atop a pizza stone or with a full fledged hearth insert.
I've been making pizza at home for years, and even I learned a few helpful tweaks to my technique ... and I've added a few famous pizza establishments to visit to my life itinerary.
My Nits ? I have a few.
1) IMNSHO, dusting a pizza 'peel' with cornmeal before using it to slide a pie into a home oven is just not practical technique for most home cooks. In a home oven, the cornmeal (or flour, or semolina, or whatever you use) scorches, and causes one's kitchen (unless you're fortunate enough to have a powerful exhaust system) to reek or burnt flour. That's a technique intended exclusively for commercial high-volume pizza ovens that are easily and frequently swept out, and where keeping costs low is the golden rule. Try sweeping out a home oven, and you'll not only make a mess of your floor, but probably set your broom ablaze on the electric heating elements or gas burner. PERSONALLY SPEAKING, I've found that a much easier and cleaner technique for home cooks like me to use is to transfer a partial rolled out dough onto parchment paper for it's final rollout & toppings, then bake it directly on a well heated pizza stone (7 mins at 550F is just right). Ignore the author's direction to remove the parchment midway through baking - doing so is completely unnecessary, causes you oven to lose 100F+ of precious heat, right when it needs it the most. The crust doesn't come out quite as crispy after the initial baking, but if you want a crispier crust, and more caramelized toppings, it's a simple matter to keep toss the pie back into the oven after a 10 min rest for another 2 mins. Using a first baking that's 2 minutes longer is a mistake, as the cheese invariably separates and exudes too much oil ... do it like the pizza shop and toss it back in the oven to reheat - 2 bakings are better than one long one.
2) I'd have liked to have seen a lot more photos. This book only has a precious few of them, all of them black and white, and all of them of decidedly poor quality and exposure. In fact, the photography is downright inept.
3) I think the author aimed a little low in this book, with regards to heft. He could have, and IMO should have, squeezed more material into this book. To me, it read too quickly, and when I'd finished it later the same day, I felt it was a bit thinnish ... I wanted more regions covered, more recipes, and a lot more photos (esp competent ones).
4) I think the author could have included a 'putting it all together' chapter, where he could layout the nuances of how a home cook (i.e., most of the readership) could do a pracitcal in-home pizza party for, say 20+ people ... with nesting rising pans, pre-cut parchment, a cooling rack with screens, mis en place, and how to pre-bake and re-heat in a party settings, and how to store the equipment when not in use. Instead, the author just concludes with his list of dough recipes, and then assortment of topping combos to try.
Other than thhose 4 nits, this book is recommended. Add a point/star if you've always wanted to try making your own pizza from scratch, and this book succeeds in helping you take the plunge, or if the book inspires you to take your existing pizza dough technique to a new level (as it did for me).
Basic homemade pizza is fairly easy, and you can always strive incrementally for new levels of perfection.
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