andrew's Reviews
4 recipe(s) reviewed. Showing 1 to 4Sort by: Title 
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American Pie: My Search for the Perfect Pizza
By Peter Reinhart
Ten Speed Press - 2003
Crushed Tomato Sauce : page 142
In the past, I've used pizza sauce from jars, pasta sauce, whatever was tomato-based and lying around, sometimes a bit of BBQ sauce. I repent now - please forgive me, everyone to whom I fed pizza in the past.
This sauce is perfect - it's not cooked (any more than the canned tomatoes are already cooked, unlike a pasta sauce), which is a very important thing (it cooks a little more in the oven), it has tasty chunks of tomato pulp in it, and it is 'bright' with the addition of red wine vinegar or lemon juice (I use good red wine vinegar) to give it some acidity. When I can get them, I use canned San Marzano tomatoes, as they are just so much richer and more flavourful than regular canned tomatoes.
A full recipe is enough for four or five thin crust pizzas, so I freeze the extra sauce in a ziploc bag.
useful (4)
Neo-Neapolitan Pizza Dough : page 112
After experimenting with several different types of crusts, from Peter Reinhart's Bread Baker's Apprentice and from this book, I've settled on this one as our default thin-crust pizza. For my taste (and pizza crust tastes do vary), it is just about perfect. It makes a thin, relatively crisp crust that develops nice little air pockets here and there, and can handle a fair amount of toppings without collapsing. I make it exactly as in the recipe, sometimes fiddling a little with the water ratio - unlike his other books, he doesn't weigh all the ingredients here, so it's a little harder to get the water exactly right. It likely also varies by humidity, etc.
See my other reviews from this book for toppings and sauce.
useful (2)
Sweet-and-Sour Onion Marmalade : page 151
I'm not sure why this isn't simply named caramelized onions, as it's a fairly straightforward recipe for them, but nevertheless it's a good one, and one of our favourite pizza bases - we use this instead of sauce sometimes.
useful (1)
White Sauce : page 155
This makes a very rich and creamy sauce, perfect to use as a base for sauteed mushrooms. It can be a bit too rich, almost - depends on your feeling about heavy cream! Over time, we've reduced the cream and used onions which have been cooked more slowly so they become naturally a bit creamy, and it's still just as good. The thyme is a necessity - it's just the right flavour note here.
useful (3)