Mastering Pizza: The Art and Practice of Handmade Pizza, Focaccia, and Calzone [A Cookbook]

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.

Very helpful. Great photos and easy to follow instructions

I really like this book. I have been making pizza for the last couple of years. Started with Lahey no knead pizza, and then just loved Elements of Pizza dough recipes by Ken Forkish. It has been my go to book for the last year! Just got this book, and i have learned a good bit about the hydration and oven relationship, and especially about the salt addition. Have to admit, i agree with another reviewer, i made the taglio pizza, with 80% hydration, adding the water at the second fold. It was so wet, the water would not incorporate totally. I stretched and again, white water in the bottom of the bowl I did the third fold, and it was less wet , but still very wet, not like any dough i have made before, btw i have the Bonci book and never found this to be a problem. Let it sit in frig, and shaped etc the next night. It had a great taste. I know water is a friend of dough, but not sure i made it correctly. One thing, i added the 350 grams of water , and it was a bit dry, so i added a bit more water to completely incorporate the flour. Might this be the problem? Too much water in the initial mix? but then again, dry flour is not a good thing! again, i love this book, and will try this recipe again, but any information, insight, would be appreciated. Oh..and for those who argue for OO flour..i have used it..and then used it in combination with bread flour with starter..and i went back to all bread..Just a better consistency for dough.. And finally, i am updating my review, as the 36 hour ferment on my wet dough is the best! The water was all absorbed and the taste was great! I made it with all evoo and salt and fennel pollen...just great!! To be clear, i made one recipe and divided it into two quarter sheet pans..the second used in 36 hours,,and it was excellent consistency..not too wet vs the 24! again, if anyone has any thoughts , would love to hear them One last thing..i ordered the mock mill, for my kitchen aid, and wheat berries from Maine Grain. Cannot wait to try them! thank you Chef for a great book.....

Highly recommend this book. You do need to read it from page 1 all the way through. You can't just jump in to a recipe. The explanations of the dough and how to adapt from wood oven to gas oven are excellent. Enjoyed reading even for the history. Author did a great job.

I’ve been working my way thru each recipe as I can. You can see a picture of the 86% focaccia recipe that turned out really well. Was delicious. Each pizza I’ve made has turned out great too. Love the sauces and the Italian inspired toppings. I plan on trying every single thing in here. There is some great knowledge and inspiration for pizza. It would definitely be worth buying this book if you want to learn about Italian pizza / bread. Only a few things I’ve noticed that are “strange” to me. I’m not an expert baker like the author, but I’ve been baking pizza and bread consistently for 2 years now. Some recipes call for very strange measurements like 1/32 tsp (0.4 grams) of yeast, or 1/8tsp (0.8 grams). In these cases, I think it would be okay to use 1 gram to make it simpler… you would be fine. Or just use a tiny pinch, there’s no need to be THAT specific, IMO. I also ran into an issue with the Al taglio pizza recipe. It wanted me to mix the flour, water, yeast, and olive oil together, and then add the salt with 50g of water half an hour later. Well, when I added the water the dough just became a soupy mess. I think it would be fine just to mix all the ingredients together at once and not deal with that fuss. But that’s just me. So adapt the recipes as you see fit with your experience.

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.

The first thing you notice when receiving this publication is that it's a substantial book, a good manageable size. Why is that important? well in the past i have ordered books that are extremely disappointing size wise, small and difficult to read. Mastering Pizza just feels like a book you want to keep and read. i love Marc Vetri and David Joachims down to earth writing style. Straight forward explanations, simple recipes and easy to source ingredients. As a self confessed pizza addict i cannot get enough good pizza and living where i do the nearest quality pizza/Italian restaurant is more than 140 miles away . My very first test was to make the Kamado Grilled Neapolitan Pizza on my brand new Kamado grill and it turned out amazing. With a temperature of 700F i was able to cook a 16" pizza in just 2 minutes compared to the 8-10 minutes it takes in a normal kitchen oven. The taste was out of this world and instantly took me back to my time in Taormina Sicilia where they make some of the worlds best pizza, IMHO. If you love an authentic pizza taste and not the nasty local chain derivatives, then i highly recommend getting a copy of this new book

Now that I have a pizza oven, this was an absolute must. Recipes are clear and work very well.

Regalato ad un amico che si sta avvicinando al mondo della pizza, ha amato questo libro... Chiaro e completo

i like it. çok beğendim pizza çok severim henüz tarif denemedim ama yakın zamanda denerim. güzel görünüyor. thanks Marc Vetri. makarna kitabını da aldım. amazonu da teslimat konusunda seviyorum fiyatlar da fena değil

Ótimo livro que fala desde como funciona cada ingrediente até a massa apropriada para diferentes fornos. E por último uma coletânea de receitas.

Dieses Buch wird nicht umsonst von Grill-/Koch- und Pizza-Enthusiasten neben "The Elements of Pizza" als absolute Referenz angesehen was Pizzabücher anbelangt! Es wird fundamentales Wissen vermittel, wie man perfekte Pizza backt. Es wird darauf eingegangen, wie man mit welchen zur Verfügung stehenden Mittel das beste Ergebnis herauskriegt. Egal ob mit Holzofen, Backofen, Kamado Grill oder Gasgrill alles wird genau erklärt und auf alles wird eingegangen. Wenn man das als Anfänger liest, wird einem erst bewusst was für eine Wissentschaft das alles ist und was alles Einfluss auf die Pizza hat etc Ich dachte immer für Grill/Backofen sei ein Pizzastein das beste Utensil während das Backvorgangs, aber so lernte ich, dass z.B. Gusseisenpfannen besser sind. Wenn ich mir irgendwann Mal einen Pizzaofen bauen werde, weiß ich jetzt auch, dass ein runder Ofen auf jeder Fall besser ist, als ein eckiger. Auch dachte ich immer, dass Pizza Mehl 00 das beste Mehl sei für neapolitanische Pizza. Nun weiß ich, dass dem gar nicht unbedingt so ist. Je nach Geschmack ist Mehl mit der Type 812 (das deutsche Pendant zum amerikanischen Bread Flour) sogar die bessere Wahl. Es ist leider sehr ärgerlich, dass die eine bisherig vorhandene deutsche Rezension so schlecht bewertet (von C.Scholz). Eigentlich kann man hier nur nen Konkurrenten vermuten, der dieses Buch abwertet. Es ist mir nicht begreiflich, wie man behaupten kann, man würde nichts neues lernen, wenn man sich "wenigstend rudimentär mit der Materie auskennt". In diesem Buch wird wirklich viel Fachwissen vermittelt.

MY GO TO BOOK FOR DOUGH PREP, I DO THIS FOR A LIVING SO IT'S AS CLOSE AS A BIBLE TO ME, ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT. LOVE IT FOR REFERENCE AND NEW IDEAS.