The Pizza Bible: The World's Favorite Pizza Styles, from Neapolitan, Deep-Dish, Wood-Fired, Sicilian, Calzones and Focaccia to New York, New Haven, Detroit, and More Hardcover – October 28, 2014

The Pizza Bible is truly a masterpiece. I've been making pizzas going on 10 years now and have learned mainly by trial and error and being methodical. If this book had existed 10 years ago, it would have shaved at least a few years off my learning curve. I own hundreds of cookbooks, and generally speaking, the signal-to-noise ratio is really high. Not the case in this book. The Pizza Bible is written in a very approachable, likable style, but is just brimming with useful information.The typical pizza recipe, whether it's found in a cookbook or on the Internet, involves a packet of yeast and punching down a ball of dough after it's doubled in size. Sure you'll get a pizza if you follow a recipe like that, but it's nowhere even close to what high quality artisanal pizza is about. The Pizza Bible, on the other hand, offers step-by-step instructions on several regional styles of pizza in painstaking detail.If you make a pizza using one of the recipes in a cookbook, it'll be more involved than your average pizza recipe. But, that's why you'll end up with a better pizza.There are several things I love about this book. I won't cover them all, but I'll talk about a few of them:1. The Pizza Bible covers the *why* part very well. When you're asked to do something, it's always followed by a very clear explanation of why something should be done a certain way.2. The Pizza Bible uses gram-based, weight measurements. Baking is a very precise craft. Volume-based measurements are a bad idea with baking. Most cookbooks don't use weight measurements. When you see a recipe that asks you to use a cup of flour, you should be skeptical.3. The Pizza Bible is all about the details. While I'm an amateur, I've made pizza thousands of times (for serious). The biggest takeaway is that every single step matters. This book really captures the essence of this point. Most dough contains 4-6 ingredients, but there's an infinite number of ways to prepare it. The steps matter and The Pizza Bible doesn't overlook that fact.4. The Pizza Bible covers many regional styles. There's dozens of styles of pizza that exist. While not everyone is included in the book, most of the notable styles are. Having grown up on the East coast and been fortunate enough to travel to many parts of the country, I've tried many styles of pizza in the US. The Pizza Bible does nails it when it comes to covering each style. My favorites are the Detroit, Jersey, and New Haven style.Ok... so far I've been very bullish about the Pizza Bible and have only covered the pros. No review would be complete without a counterpoint. If I were to play devil's advocate, here's what I'd say:1. Some of the ingredients aren't going to be readily available on the shelf at your Supermarket. That said, the book is very thorough about offering sources and accessible alternatives.2. I've read through all of the Amazon reviews (as of the time of writing this) and have noticed some gripes about this not being suitable for a home cook / quick pizza night. To me, this is a matter of setting expectations properly. Good pizza takes time. There's no way around it.Disclaimer: While I've purchased this book with my very own money (It should show as a verified Amazon purchase), I am affiliated with The Pizza Bible companion site. That said, I have no financial stake in this book and truly believe 100% of everything I've written.

I've been making pizza for about 20 years, with pretty good success (at least, that's what my family and guests have told me). Recently, I bought Ken Forkish's "The Elements of Pizza" in the hopes of taking my pizza skills to a new level. Shortly after, I bumped into "The Pizza Bible," and bought that too. I learned a lot from both this and the Forkish book, but this one is my hands-down favorite of the two. Gemignani tells you in the clearest fashion, WHY he does things the way he does them. That gives you a deeper understanding of what you are doing, helps you figure out precisely what he's telling you to do, and gives you the confidence to experiment with shortcuts or other modifications. This stands in sharp contrast to Forkish, who often tells you what to do but not why, and when the instructions are less than transparent (e.g., Forkish's description of how to ball the dough), it's impossible to figure out what he means. Another major contrast between Gemignani's book and Forkish's book is that Gemignani is very efficient - he doesn't repeat himself much. He gives you lots of details in the "Master Class" section of the book, and subsequently he gives briefer instructions, on the assumption that you learned something from executing the class. In contrast, Forkish is highly redundant, repeating many of the instructions in every recipe. You could probably distill Forkish's book into one that is half as long. Gemignani provides a comprehensive tour of many different pizza styles, with a couple of recipes for each style. So, why do I say, don't make this your first book? The problem here is that Gemignani is a craftsman, and he wants every reader to be a craftsman. (His motto is, "Respect the Craft.") That means pizza doughs that take 3-5 days to concoct, and having not one pizza stone, but two, and having both a large and small-volume digital scale. And it's true, all this craftsmanship does make for a better pizza. But even without a single digital scale, and with only one stone, and using a recipe with a dough rise-time of only a couple of hours, you can still make a pizza that will be competitive with most national chain high-quality pizzerias, and will simply whip the pants off a low-quality chain like Pizza Hut. Yes, your pizzas may sometimes be shaped a like Australia (or worse, Africa), and in a side-by-side taste test your 2-hour dough won't be as good as a 3-day dough, but they will still be great. Also, there are a lot of great pizza topping possibilities that involve only a few ingredients, yet you might not think of yourself. A beginner will benefit from a book that provides a lot of suggestions (like red onion, potato, pancetta, and fontina!). The recipes here - while terrific - are extremely esoteric, complex, and often reference obscure artisan brands, which will be either tough to obtain, or it will be impossible to know what would be an appropriate substitute. Start with a book like Evan Kleiman's "Angeli Caffe Pizza Pasta Panini" (out of print, but still available, last time I checked), which gives you a simple dough and a lot of recipes. Fall in love with making your own pizza, then graduate to this book.