Most of the hundreds of cookbooks on my shelves are there primarily for reference – I don’t actually cook from them. My Pizza is an exception – it’s in my top 10 most-used cookbooks, probably because of my quest to make amazing home-made pizza.
And what better way to learn than from a fellow obsessive? Jim Lahey writes, “Pizza deserves respect and admiration – for everything about it, but especially the bread, the crust. As a former art student who turned to baking, I see a pizza crust as a canvas, an invitation to paint and sculpt with food. I hope that doesn’t sound too pretentious; pizza is after all a peasant food, but a glorious peasant food when someone approaches it with care and affection, taking bread and building it into a beautiful whole meal ... I was drawn to the best of the thinner, crisper, disk-shaped pies of Naples, the ones that are so seductive hot and fresh from the oven. There is a touch of the spiritual in that disk – it’s an unforced, natural shape that reminds me of a pool of rainwater, of Da Vinci’s man of perfect proportions, or of the mandala, a symbol of harmony and spirituality. And these round pies are elegant besides – the toppings carefully placed, with a charred, blistered rim forming a dramatic, stark frame for the ingredients.
