Mastering Pizza: The Art and Practice of Handmade Pizza, Focaccia, and Calzone [A Cookbook] Hardcover – August 28, 2018

A great read. More than just recipes.

I think I've purchased almost every pizza recipe book out there looking for a crust recipe with the right amount of chew and crunch. THIS IS IT. So good.

I have pizza cookbooks, good ones. but when I saw Marc Vetri was coming out with a cookbooks I had to have it. I love Mastering Pasta and Rustic Italian food so much. Mastering Pizza is wonderful. So many crusts, the same crust with different hydration for a different bake and chew, so many options for grill, oven, fire, so many innovative topping ideas, and old favorites that stand the test of time.However, this book is more than recipes, it's explanations and lots of how to pictures that are really helpful. for example, on page 36 there is a chart of flours, with their protein percent by weight, gluten strength, and elasticity. There is an equipment section, explanation of hydration.Then the recipes. they are divided by doughs, First the pizza doughs, Naples, Roman, Al Taglio, Whole grain sourdough. The recipes are well laid out, the ingredients, then the directions. There are beautiful drool inducing pictures of the finished products, but also pictures of steps along the way so you know what it should look like at various stages.This is one of the cookbooks that send you to other recipes, for example, the wood oven pepperoni you go back to the dough at the beginning of the chapter, then the sauce on page 111. It doesn't bother me. I just put stickies where the common references are, dough pages, sauce pages, so it's easy to flip back and forth.The home oven stuffed pizza was amazing. So was the Parmesan fried dough balls.. no more store bought pizza bread for us.We really like the al taglio dough. the sheet pan full of amazing deliciousness topped with more amazing deliciousness. the potato and mozzarella was just so good.The fried mini calzones were so good. Fried pizza dough with hot melty fillings..and do make the home oven dolci rotolo.. because it's truly amazing. ricotto sugar cream rolled dough with a caramel sauce poured over top.. this will be one I make a lot, probably too much!There are so many recipes I've marked to try, but the crusts I've tried have turned out so well, and that is a big part.

If you are a Pizza (or any variation of, ie. focaccia, calzone, etc.) Aficionado (beginner to maestro) this is probably one of the coolest books (especially in spiral back hard bound) I have ever seen - honestly! I'm 75 y.o. and have been a Lover (as my wife is also) of many things Italian ( Ferrari, Ducati, pastas, and other beautiful works - you get the idea) and I can tell you this book is a must own. I would purchase it again for twice the price ($39.95 on Amazon) if I had not been fortunate enough to have purchased it last week. What a "Find" this book is - it will no doubt be on my "coffee table so to speak." I think this would also make a great gift for those friends who could appreciate it.

This is a well written and well organized book. I like the way it is laid out and the doughs for each pizza are referenced. I am going to try them all eventually.

I purchased this book when I got an Ooni Pizza Oven. I always appreciated Marc Vetri’s style from other books but was especially drawn to this volume because, unlike nearly every other pizza book available, he includes options for using high heat ovens like the Ooni. Most books assume you will be making pizza in a home kitchen oven but Vetri explains the higher temperature ovens like Ooni cook so quickly you need a lower hydration dough - a dedicated pizza oven hits 900 degrees Fahrenheit while home oven top out at 550 degrees.Vetri’s advice goes far beyond providing options for different ovens. He is a wonderful armchair traveling companion with intriguing stories. He has great recipes for dough (all of which worked first time I tried them) and intriguing saucing options. He also includes information on all the major styles of pizza - in short, this is a truly complete guide to making pizzas simply and deliciously (the same is true of Vetri’s Mastering Bread and Mastering Pasta). If I were only allowed one guide to pizza, this is definitely it. Superb and well-tested, every recipe is a gem.