Customer Reviews

California Pizza Kitchen Family Cookbook

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I have been making pizza using the thin crust recipe and the simple sauce recipe in this book and they have been outstanding. The key with any at home pizza is using a good quality pizza stone and an oven that can get high temps. I have an oven that goes to 550 and that combined with an 1 inch thick stone, this recipe works great with this setup. It is really a simple recipe and is ready in a couple of hours. The dough you can get very thin and is very flavorful. Overall, this book has lots of good pizza recipes that use a couple of different base crusts. I highly recommend this book if you want to start to make pizza at home that tastes like what you get at the restaurant.

I have yet to find a recipe from a Restaurant that is not sabotaged in some way. So, I really can't complain because I rather expected it. I was looking for a simple pizza recipe to get me started, pretty much knowing I'd be left on my own common sense for what is missing from this recipe. All I can say is, don't trust the measurements, use your common sense. Upon initial perusal I could see that the pizza sauce recipe had no liquid content. The sauce recipe was about 5 ounces short on tomato paste and another cup or two short on liquid (water or tomato sauce).The dough recipe was about 2 cups short of flour. But it ticks me off when restaurants (this was the only book I could find, after checking several others, that had a pizza recipe in it) make cookbooks when they really don't want you to cook, they want you to go to their restaurant. Besides some interesting ideas on dessert pizzas, you are best off just surfing the web than wasting your money on this book.

Book provides very useful receipe information. The stuff after cooking turns out very tastey. I recommend it very much.
I am a big fan of CPK and now a bigger fan of their receipe book

I've made the dough recipe twice, first time it came out great without me having to add much flour. The second time for some reason I had to add at least a cup more flour. My suggestion is that if you make the dough recipe, keep in mind you may need a little more flour. Also, make it ahead of time and refridgerate AT LEAST overnight, up to 3 days if possible. When I refridgerated it, it came out very tasty. When I didn't it was bland and gross. In my opinion, the Avacado Eggroll recipe and a few salad recipes are worth checking out this book alone. But if you're skeptical, do like I did and borrow it from the library (if possible) and write down those few recipes that catch your eye.

I am a fan of the California Pizza kitchen restaurants, but do not live near one, so am pleased that I can have the recipes to make my favorites at home. I now have two CPK cookbooks and my friends and family love when I cook from them. Glad they have pictures to go with the recipes... helps to have the visual.

I haven't tried all recipes yet. Just scan through and found out most of the recipes are simple and instructions are easy to follow

There are 4 basic sections for this book.
1/ Appertizer, salads, and panini sandwiches
2/ Specialties from menu, including chicken dishes and pizza
3/ Kids pizza party
4/ Dessert pizzas
There is not many recipes for pizza section which is not what I am looking for. However these are the pizzas you see they have at restaurant.
It seems the appertizer section is more interesting than the pizza section. Kid pizza party is ok. There is just a few for desert pizza.