Best pizza baking books according to redditors

That's my monthly budget, too! (and as a 200 lb guy I do not have a dainty appetite so you can get plenty of food with that much)

Basically, this limits you from nice steaks and fresh seafood. Everything else is fair game.

My wife and I keep a list of what we've made so if we have trouble thinking of what to cook we can look through a bunch of options. (Note: the $200 monthly budget covers only me, not both me and my wife.)

In a given month, we'll eat:

• Pasta dishes (puttanesca, sauce+meat, sauce+eggplant, aglio e olio, butter/garlic/sage, etc)
  
• Stir fries, either following a recipe or using whatever veggies I have around
  
• Other Asian dishes - bibimbap, mabo dofu, jjajangmyeon (Korean noodles with a thick black bean sauce), kimchi stew, "sushi bowls" (sushi ingredients but usually no fish, and in a bowl of rice instead of wrapped), pad thai, etc
  
• Rice and beans with lots of cumin and garlic, plus celery and carrots and maybe heavy greens to add veggies
  
• Ham and navy bean soup
  
• Pizza (working my way through a recipes from a few different sources, slowly getting closer to actually good pizza, not just "good for homemade" pizza)
  
• Roast chicken! A 4# roast chicken is like $6 at Aldi and seriouseats.com has tasty seasonings
  
• Eggs - mixed with rice and scrambled, fried, poached, in burritos... however. Super cheap, super quick, super easy
  
• Tacos or burritos
  
• Chicken tagine (Moroccan braised chicken that is super flavorful)
  
• Doro wat (Ethiopian onion stew)
  
• "Green soup" served over ravioli (cheese-filled freezer ravioli) - throw a bunch of chopped veggies into chicken stock and boil until cooked, add a bag of spinach to turn it green, and then blend it with an immersion blender when it's done. Top with a drizzle of EVOO and parmesan
  
  A couple caveats: I buy very few prepared foods, very rarely have sandwiches so no lunch meat (it's spendy), and I don't eat breakfast. I do most of my shopping at Aldi and only go elsewhere for things they don't carry like specialty Asian ingredients. We have a couple big Asian groceries nearby that are good for that - we count a few basic sauces as staples that we find it's not too expensive to keep on hand that really open up our options for Asian recipes (soy sauce, sesame oil, rice vinegar, and fish sauce).
  
  Edit: because this has gotten a good bit of attention I'll mention that we do have a good selection of cookbooks to work from. Not a huge number, but a well curated set that is mostly based on recommendations from friends and the internet, were gifts, or ones we knew were good because former housemates had them.
  
  But if you don't have many and don't want to spend the cash don't worry! Your local library should have a bunch, and many resources (that are less hit-or-miss than e.g. allrecipes.com) are available online. Good and Cheap, budgetbytes, and seriouseats (The Food Lab) are in my top 3 (I do have a paper copy from all 3, because I want to support what they do). Other cookbooks that I like, also listed in the "Source" column of the linked google doc:
  
  
• Chinese Takeout Cookbook. Meant to reproduce good American-style Chinese takeout, but often less grease-laden.
  
• Cook's Illustrated Best International Recipes (I think it's this one but I'm not sure - it was a gift and I got rid of the hardcover's sheath). I'm a little ideologically against recipes that use 15+ ingredients of which I only have half on hand, but the moussaka, pad thai, and chicken tagine recipes alone nearly make this book worth it (especially with some judicious substitutions)
  
• Everyday Harumi - I've had great luck with several recipes in here, but I also know that I'm not taking the recipes to their full potential because when my old roommate would cook from his copy it always turned out better.
  
• Maangchi's Kitchen - plenty of tasty, authentic Korean recipes. Like budgetbytes, her cookbook started on the web so all her recipes are available for free via her youtube channel, which is great fun to watch. Korean cooking can be involved so I rarely go beyond the simpler recipes (Korea is the only Asian country I've visited so it's the only one in this list I can speak to the authenticity of)
  
• the bread bible has some very tasty flavored breads (mushroom bread made with duxelle, or a cheddar mustard bread) and decent pizza
  
• Bread Baker's Apprentice has yielded some tasty baguettes and quite good pizza
  
• And I only recently got The Pizza Bible and have only managed to try one recipe from it but it turned out great

American Pie, by Peter Reinhart. Half book, half recipes, and no one knows bread like Peter.

Yeah, definitely! When I make the sauce the day before, I also mix up 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil and 1.5 tbsp minced garlic. Letting it sit together overnight helps the garlic flavor infuse into the oil.

So when the pizza comes out of the oven, first thing I do is drizzle the garlic/oil mix overtop using a silicone basting brush like this. Then I throw some oregano and Romano/Parmesan cheese overtop.

Everything I'm doing is straight from the Pizza Bible, which was incredibly helpful to me as I'm just beginning, and I highly recommend it.

Home brewing is a progressive science. You can make great beers on your first try with starter's equipment and a basic kit. You add on from there. How much you want to learn about the science is up to you.

Also, if you're looking for great pizza dough recipes I highly recommend Peter Reinhart's, "American Pie."

I make good beer AND pizza because I spend time researching, studying, and most important of all, experimenting. I encourage you to do the same. Have fun!

Prepare for it to not be what you expect it to be. Chicago pizza takes time to master, but stick with it, since you already have pizza make experience you probably won't struggle as much as i did.

For the pan, use a deep dish pan if you have one, but you probably don't, so use cast iron if you have it. if not, I've had success with a cake pan.

Topping, make the sauce using San Marzano Tomatoes, maybe a little basil, salt and pepper. I use canned tomatoes, you want to strain off as much of the liquid as you can, then i put most of the tomatoes into a food processor and pulse until its saucy, this depends on your preference, then i add the remaining tomatoes and basil and pulse a few times to give the tomatoes and basil a quick chop.

Cheese - traditionally use low-moisture buffalo milk mozzarella, but low-moisture cows milk mozzarella works just fine too.

I'm going to assume you know how to assemble the pizza (Crust, cheese, toppings, sauce) but what you want to do is pre-bake the crust for 5 mins on the bottom rack before putting any toppings on. This helps keep the pizza from collapsing front he weight of the toppings.

When it comes to the dough, you'll hear a bunch of different methods for doing it, and of course there's only one proper way to do it and everyone else is wrong. what ever, do what works and gets you the result you like.
I like the trick of folding butter into the crust as told by America's Test Kitchen.

I also recommend this book if you're into books and shit. And i am.

Anyways, there's some tips. Since you know about pizza's i won't bother with general pizza tips like toppings and parmigiano and what not. you got this.

Good luck, and enjoy the pie.

Check out Great Grilled Cheese looks like a fluff-type book but is much better, the combinations are very good/inspiring (Taleggio with Rosemary Grapes on Focaccia; dessert grilled cheeses/paninis like Chocolate Hazelnut & Goat Cheese seem to really blow people's minds) also Nancy Silverton's Sandwich Book which just makes me miss Thursday nights and martinis all the more.

u/dopnyc what are your thoughts on Marc Vetri's book "Mastering Pizza" ?

The Mecca, in my book.

(admittedly, my "book" is Tony's Pizza Bible, soo..)

This is my first attempt at making homemade pizza. I've been trying to cook at home more often and when I found out my favorite pizzeria here in San Francisco had it's own cook book I just went for it. I spent a few days tracking down the special flower it called for and collecting pizza cooking equipment. It's a basic pizza with tomato sauce, mozzarella, and topped sliced calabrese.

It came out absolutely delicious and I'll be making it again!

I've made pizza professionally for many years, and it's still taken me a long time to begin to figure out what I'm doing. Especially at home, it's important to let the dough rest during kneading, to allow autolysis and gluten formation. Also, moisture content is key.

Two of my favorite resources for learning about pizza are Peter Reinhart's American Pie, and Jeff Varasano's web page. Oh, yeah, also, Kenji-Alt's Pizza Lab column at Slice. His New York style dough is made using a processor, and is stretchy and great for tossing. If you have a processor, I highly recommend you give this a try.

A big thumbs up for Peter Reinhart. He also wrote American Pie: My Search for the Perfect Pizza, arguably the best book ever for people who want to make great pizza at home.

EDIT: I just found out he has a website - Pizza Quest

If you are into making pizza, check out The Pizza Bible. It changed my pizza making game, especially the dough. It gives you recipes for a bunch of different world styles to try out as well.

I was having issues as you are having. As many have already mentioned here, its probably not letting the dough proof enough, and possibly not enough heat. Cold dough is a problem too, if you are going right from the refrigerator to the oven. Cold toppings too. In any case, check out that book if you are serious, follow its instructions, and you'll have awesome pizzas.

The Kindle version is great as well, if you are into that.

Here is the recipe. This is the book.

The Pizza Bible by Tony Gemignani is supposed to fantastic. I've never read it, but Tony is extremely respected in the industry.

Take a look at this book. You can make some awesome pizza on a grill.

nope. It's from this book. Worth a read!

I'm using Joe Beddia's recipe from Pizza Camp (highly recommend checking it out.) It makes two pizzas of about this size.

• 1 1/2 cups of cool water
  
• 2 tsp sugar
  
• 1/2 tsp active dry yeast
  
• 1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
  
• 500g all-purpose flour
  
• 1 tbsp fine sea salt
  
  Whisk yeast, sugar, and water in a large bowl. Once combined, mix in olive oil. Next, add the flour and knead (I used my stand mixer's dough hook) for about 5 minutes.
  
  Let it sit for 30 minutes. Then, slowly mix in the salt while folding the dough over into itself. After that, cover and pop in the fridge for 24 hours.
  
  The next day, plop the dough onto a well-floured counter and shape it into a smooth, round ball. Then cut it in half and repeat the process so that you have two smooth, round dough balls. Cover with a kitchen towel and let it sit for 3-4 hours. It should be ready for shaping after that!
  
  Bake on a pizza stone at 550 degrees for about 10 minutes. The whole process takes a lot of planning, but it's totally worth it.

I used a variety of dough recipes before, but settled on the Neo-Neopolitan recipe in this book: American Pie by Peter Reinhart. That dough recipe with the crushed tomato sauce recipe makes for a great pizza. I think one of the big tricks is finding the right yeast (I've had great luck with Bob's Red Mill Active Yeast and SAF Instant. On the east coast I used SAF, but replaced with the Bob's when I moved to the west coast.

Both yeasts will work well. The trick with both is to let your dough do a cold rise in the fridge. I will mix everything together to create the dough, then let it rise for somewhere between 15-60 min at room temp in whatever container I'm using to hold them (to keep moisture in the dough), then I let them sit and rise in the fridge for at least 24 hours, ideally 36-72 hours. Then when you're ready to make your pizza, bring the dough out two hours prior and let it rise.

This sounds complicated because you have to plan things in advance, but it's really not. It takes a combined amount of work that totals like 40 min and you have pizza dough for a week. It's also kind of fun to do, so there is that.

One your dough is ready, you need to cook it. During some point when the dough is rising, you should make some sauce. I like the crushed tomato sauce because it tastes awesome and is way easy. Get a can of crushed San Marzano tomatoes, put them in a blender and throw in oregeno, basil, maybe some garlic, salt, and that's basically it (please see recipe in book for detailed instructions). This sauce gets cooked when it's on the pizza, so I generally make the sauce about 30 min before I plan to put the sauce on the pie. That gives the flavors enough time to mix together when I have it sitting in the fridge, on-deck to go in the pizza. Keeping the sauce cool also has a nice effect on the dough when it's cooking (keeps the top of the crush soft while the bottom gets crispy.

Ok, so you're ready to combine it all. Grab a dough ball from the counter (that was rising for the past 2 hours), and flatten it out. People do different styles, but I like to flatten the doughball into a disk, and then toss that pizza dough like I work in a pizza place. This part is fun, but takes a couple times to learn, so expect that.

Once your pizza dough is all stretched out, put some toppings on it. I think it's great to do a plan cheese the first couple of times because it helps you figure out where to work on for improvement. Once you're ready, slide that pizza on to the pizza stone/steel/whatever you're using. Depending on the temp of your oven, that should be done in 6-10 min. If you have a brick oven (i want one so badly), you can finish a pizza in 90 seconds at 1000 degrees. For normal household ovens, you want to crank it as high as it will go, and if you're using a pizza stone or steel, let that heat up at the highest temp for at least 45 min so it can store the max amount of energy that will then be transformed into a perfect crust.

Ok, so those are the basics. You should buy that book because the instructions are way better than what I gave. Also, it has lots of dough, sauce, and topping recipes, in addition to the first half of the book being a story about a journey for the perfect pizzas.

Pizza is fucking awesome and once you begin to make your own and take pride in it, you will never be able to go back to shitty corporate pizza ever again.

Also, pic of most recently baked pizza. This was a good recipe, but I'd swap asparagus for romanescos next time and I think I got lazy with the oven heating and should have let it heat the steel up for more than 30 min. Tasted amazing though.

If he's serious about pizza the new The Pizza Bible is great:

http://www.amazon.com/Pizza-Bible-Neapolitan-Deep-Dish-Wood-Fired/dp/1607746050

Probably the best book of its kind right now.

UK

US

Tony Gemignani is a world champion pizza maker.

Well it will depend on the recipe and type of crust you’re going for, but the salt and yeast amounts are going to be much smaller, in the single percentiles and even into tenths of a percentage with the yeast sometimes.

As for type of yeast, everything’s gravy — meaning you’ll find people using each and any kind. I think the easiest to start out with are the ones using instant yeast.

I first scratched my pizza itch the same way many around here probably did, with Kenji’s Foolproof Pan Pizza
It’s a great place to start and is still my favorite kind of “home pizza” so far tbh. I also like to start new projects with a book if possible, and while we can debate their techniques up, down, and sideways, I think Forkish’s Elements of Pizza would still be my go-to for just starting out. Beddia’s Pizza Camp is also a strong contender, but personally I think his ideas play in better after you’ve tried a few others first.

And don’t be fooled! I’m by no means any kind of master and would still consider myself “in training,” but I am a good researcher, so I sound like I know what I’m talking about.

Edit: a word

you should check out the one book I actually bought in college: http://www.amazon.com/Grilled-Pizzas-Piadinas-Craig-Priebe/dp/0756636795

This will be the best study aid! Sort of. Friends are really the best study aid (friends who actually care and who can both help and push you harder in the class). Put together some pizza, get some friends together, watch a movie later as a reward for finishing, and you'd be surprised how fun study groups can be!

You betcha!

I have a pizza cookbook book from the late 1980s by James McNair called "Pizza":
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0877014485

It has only one deep dish recipe, but that has served us well for a long time. (I also worked at a good pizza place the midwest and learned some stuff about pizza-making there, before I worked in a terrible hole-in-the-wall pizza place in Boston called Presto's and nearly un-learned everything good about pizza.)(OK, almost: their Sicilian was all right.)

There is a lot of info about deep dish pizza floating around online, and I encourage you to try a few different recipes/methods. Letting the dough rise in the pan is key, and so is a light coating of oil on the pan to keep the dough from cooking right to the pan. Your pans may darken over time from the oil, which is natural. (One place I worked had pans that were a deep, coal black color from so many years of use!)

Good luck and have fun!

Tyara, I'm not used to the username yet

/u/nikky2069, we played CAH and a board game together. we talked and she is an amazing person. such a sweet, caring individual.
this would be awesome for her. she is trying to eat healthier and this would help!

I saw Pizza Dough in B&N and it looks interesting. Shows how to make different pizzas from a few different dough recipes. Lots of pictures of pizza. Plays directly toward his desire for pizza. Also, even mediocre homemade pizza with Prego branded sauce is better than Pizza Hut, let alone Papa John's.

I find Rachel Ray terribly boring, but her Week in a Day book has a enormous quantity of recipes that can be pushed and modified in different directions and it's filled with a ton of pictures. I think her books are best for getting ideas on other recipes. I wouldn't make too many of her recipes straight, because she tends to add a ton of calories to her meals and I just couldn't eat that much.

Isa Chandra Moskowitz has a bunch of Vegan books. She has an irreverent style I like that doesn't resort to the multitudes of F-bombs that Thug Kitchen has to throw out there. It's vegan, so you'll have to be OK with that, but otherwise, she has plenty of good looking recipes. Her latest, Isa Does It looks like a good place to start.

Forget the others. Check out The Pizza Bible.
https://www.amazon.com/Pizza-Bible-Neapolitan-Deep-Dish-Wood-Fired/dp/1607746050

Best doughs Ive made from a worldly pizza maker. I like you tried countless recipes and was frustrated. Read this book and now I have a lifetime of good pizza crust - thick, thin, pan......

Checkout the detroit red top pizza. Blows my taste buds to heaven.

So here's a challenge to all you pizza-makers who work: how do you produce top-notch pizza at home at the end of the day in a short amount of time?

My favorite dough recipe thus far is the 'Master' recipe (NY style, basically) from The Pizza Bible. It's best if you use a starter and allow it at least 2 days cold ferment in the fridge. So, if I want pizza Friday night after work, I usually make the starter Monday or Tuesday, mix up the dough the next day, and then store in the fridge until Friday when I want pizza. If I really have my shit together, I will divide and ball the dough a day or two before hand.

Here's the trouble: I get home from work, take out my dough ball ... and the thing still needs and hour or so to relax and warm up to temp before I can even stretch the dough out. And then comes topping, baking, etc ... all this time adds up. Looking at 1.5 hours at least, and that assumes I start right away. Usually I like to greet my kids and wife when I get home, and rarely do I just head to the kitchen to get started on dinner.

So back to the original question: what can I do to streamline this process even further so that I can get dinner on the table in a reasonable amount of time, and still produce great pizza? My first thought was somehow stretching out and topping the pizza before-hand (ie, the night before) so I literally just take it out of the fridge and its ready to go. Not sure how well my dough recipe would stand up to this (worth a shot, I guess). Either that, or stick to a different dough recipe. I have made up the no-knead fool proof pan dough the night before and just let that sit all day, and its ready to go when I get home ... but I don't always want pan pizza, you know?

This book is all you need for perfect pizza made at home. Worth every dollar.

If he likes pizza and you guys like to cook you could get him all the tools and a cookbook to make pizza. It would be relatively inexpensive since pizza stones are cheap, pizza cutters are cheap, and all you really need beyond that is this incredible cookbook by Peter Reinhart. That's also another concrete and sentimental gift since there is a tangible aspect but it's also a precommitment to make pizza together.

I used the Pizza Bible which is full of different dough recipes.

Here are all the local Amazon links I could find:


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amazon.co.jp

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Mozzarella, parmesan, asparagus, pickled red onions, chives, and a spritz of lemon juice. The sauce is light cream with lemon zest and juice, with wild leeks (aka ramps) and some salt and pepper. I basically made the cream sauce out of Pizza Camp but I omitted the garlic and fennel and just used the ramps because they already have a slight garlic flavor to them.

http://www.frugalmom.net/forums/showthread.php?1710-GREAT-pizza-dough-recipe!

James McNair published his Pizza book in 1987 and you can still find it on Amazon - https://www.amazon.com/James-McNairs-Pizza-McNair/dp/0877014485.

There's also a new and updated edition that came out in 2000.

I have made Neapolitan dough at 70% hydration, according to Mastering Pizza. The recipe lets the dough work in three separate days. However, when time came to shape the dough, it felt so insanely sticky and snotty. I did go for 70% hydration, because I have a simple home oven. I'm unsure whether it was too wet (even though I followed the dough recipe perfectly) or I'm just unable to handle it.

For instance, this is how it flattened out after I tried to make a ball from it on day 2: https://i.imgur.com/sGQpwuQ.png
Did I not make a good enough ball? Is this normal with 70% hydration? Due to this fact it was very hard to properly shape a round pizza, because it came out as a shapeless blob.

What am I doing wrong here?

I've been doing 2 pies a weekend from the Beddia book for the past month - going to do 10 for a party next week, if anyone has any other cookbooks they recommend I'm all ears!

idea for the pie came from Pizza Camp. Dough was improved from Roberta's recipe out of lack enough 00 flour, so it ended up being about 25% 00, 25% bread, and 50% AP flour.

here is a link to buy the book if interested, it's good

I've probably made close to 100 pizzas this way. Indirect heat, charcoal briquettes. They are so good. The wife and I love them. I have a pizza stone but for my money directly on the grill is better. I found this book very helpful:

http://www.amazon.com/Pizza-Grill-Feisty-Fire-Roasted-Recipes/dp/1600858287/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1420388370&sr=8-1&keywords=Pizza+on+the+grill

Oh yes, that's one of my favorites! I've used the recipe in this book for years, and it always comes out great. I do mine with ground sausage, spinach, mushrooms, mozzarella, fontina, and a little white cheddar inside. The fresh sauce on top is incredibly flavorful too. Here's a photo of one in a 16" Dutch oven from a campout.

I used the Neapolitan Margherita pizza recipe from The Pizza Bible, by Tony Gemignani.

I baked the pie on a baking steel first to cook the crust, and then finished it on a pizza stone in the broiler compartment (it's a separate compartment at the bottom of the oven) to get the cheese cooked nicely.
The only thing I didn't like that much about it was the cheese I used, which wasn't the best quality. I felt too lazy to make some from scratch, but the crust was so amazing, next time I'm going to put in the extra effort to make my own cheese before the pizza. :D

here ya go, may the meatballs be with you my friend

he has a book: https://www.amazon.com/Pizza-Camp-Recipes-Pizzeria-Beddia/dp/1419724096/ref=asc_df_1419724096/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=312126476072&hvpos=1o1&hvnetw=g&hvrand=826784432068898727&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9018942&hvtargid=pla-305511426692&psc=1

Dough looks a little rough, but not bad for a first time. A book I would suggest finding is https://www.amazon.com/Ultimate-Pizza-Favorite-Recipes-Dessert/dp/0809233495/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1504453853&sr=8-5&keywords=pasquale+bruno Its a great beginners book with good recipes to learn the basics of dough making and sauce combinations.

This cookbook has the Pizza Hut crust recipes, and it's free if you have Kindle Unlimited

This was the first ‘Master Class’ recipe from the book . Cooked for about 6-7 minutes in a home oven at 550 degrees F on a cordierite stone. What other recipes in the book do you all like in a home oven?

I highly recommend this book:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1600850065

After cooking pizza on the grill, I'll never go back to doing it in the oven again.