Pizza: Any Way You Slice It (Easy Recipes for Great Homemade Pizzas, Focaccia, and Calzones) (Paperback)

~ (Author), Charles Scicolone (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Pizza--the tender-crisp crust, savory tomato topping, and bubbling, toothsome cheese. And the trip to the pizzeria--until now. With unprecedented clarity, Charles and Michele Scicolone's Pizza: Any Way You Slice It provides the step-by-step basics and 100 recipes to make authentic pizza, focaccia, and calzones at home. The Scicolones' explicit instructions, tips, and shortcuts--plus precise illustrations--make mixing, kneading, and shaping the dough--as well as preparing toppings--remarkably easy. Even timid cooks will find themselves achieving toasty crusts that balance crispness and chewiness perfectly (hint: a little flour sprinkled on the baking stone adds smoky flavor) and toppings that far surpass the pizzeria's in freshness and taste.

The recipes are international. Traveling from Palermo to Chicago, from Naples to Brooklyn, the Scicolones have gathered recipes for such classics as Pizza Margherita (made with tomatoes, mozzarella, and basil) and Spicy Pizza Marinara; new Italian favorites including Eggplant Parmesan Pizza and Pizza with Prosciutto and Arugula; and American pies such as Garlic and Cheese Pizza Bianca and Chicago Deep-Dish Pizza with Sausage and Cheese. Among the focaccia and other flatbread recipes is a must-make focaccia studded with pancetta and rosemary. Included also are suggestions for starters, salads, and side dishes, as well as wine and beer suggestions. Color photos present the pies in all their glory (and profile the all-important crusts), and there's a glossary of necessary equipment and ingredients. In Pizza: Any Way You Slice It, the Scicolones have included everything a pizza-lover needs to start baking beautiful homemade pies. --Arthur Boehm --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"I have long admired Michele's work, because her passion for Italian cooking leaps from the pages.  Now Michele and Charles have written a gem of a little book, Pizza, which should keep pizza lovers happily in the kitchen for weeks."
--Biba Caggiano, Biba Restaurant, author of Italy al Dente


From the Hardcover edition. -- Review

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Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Broadway (September 14, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0767903730
• ISBN-13: 978-0767903738
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.4 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #491,932 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

38 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Pizza: Home-Made and Why It Should Be, May 4, 2001

By	Bill Marsano (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews

With pizza parlors strewn like confetti through even small American cities and several national chains offering home delivery, why would you make you own?

Because that's probably the only way you'll get a good one short of going to Italy. Most American pizza is awful--topped with tasteless "pepperoni," dotted with the synthetic glop the USDA calls "cheese-type food product."

So get Charles and Michele Scicolone's book and get to work. I only wish they'd written it sooner: I spent several years trying to figure out how to make a decent pizza without their help. Let me tell you it was a long, involved, expensive and frequently messy process. The results, in the end were excellent--except for the dough, which I could never get quite right. The Scicolones have solved that problem by doing real research in the field--by which I mean IN ITALY. As a result they recommend mixing regular flour witha certain amount of cake flour. Cake flour (the stuff used by pastry chefs, not the self-rising stuff) is softer than regular bread flour and the blend of the two types produces a soft, stretchy, easily worked dough that gives superb results.

Another reason for making your own pizza, by the way,is that it's a lot of fun. Get this book and try it.--Bill Marsano

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars it won't produce your ordinary pizza, March 24, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Pizza: Any Way You Slice It! (Hardcover)

The recipes in this book won't produce the type of pizza you are used to seeing and tasting from Pizza Hut. If you are looking for a healthier, more authentic version, you will enjoy and use this book. Yes, you will need a pizza stone. I bought this book and a pizza stone at the same time, excited about what my results would produce. The crust turned out perfectly on my very first try. The recipes are easy to follow and the results leave you with a beautiful creation. The book's chapters include, ingredients and equipment you will need, pizza dough, neapolitan pizza, american pizza, filled pizzas, calzoni and turnovers, regional italian pizzas and flat breads, focaccia, antipasti and accompaniments, what wines to serve with pizza, a list of the author's favorite pizzerias, and mail sources for those items you may not be able to find in your area. Try the margherita pizza, the focaccio and the deep dishes. They're fantastic. Our particular favorites are follonico's summer seafood pizza and the pancetta and rosemary focaccia. The results are wonderful because the recipes call for the freshest ingredients you can find. Our favorite part of the book, however, is the trivia interspersed about the book filled with the history of pizza and the people who love it!

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Delicious, Healthy Pizza From Your Oven, March 20, 2004

By	Peter A. Farrell (San Mateo, CA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This is a very accessible, thorough book on how to make great pizza (and other Italian breads) from scratch at home.

I echo the sentiments about American pizza in Bill Marsano's review; I grew up buying soggy, greasy pizza, and I swore off that kind of junk in order to eat more healthy. But when you make your own pizza, you can control how much cheese and meat you put on it. Using the recipes from this book, your pizza will taste better than anything you can buy and no pizza joint can deliver the feeling of accomplishment that comes when your efforts get better and better.

Every week I make pizza using the recipes for dough and sauce from this book. Friday has become homemade pizza night at our house, and even my notoriously picky 7 year old nephew devours our pizza. The "pizza maker's sauce" (p. 67) drew raves from our guests when we used it on pasta. The dough recipes are flexible: the pizzas in the pictures have thick crusts, which is the way my family likes it. If you want thinner, crispier crusts, simply roll the dough thinner.

The book contains recipes to approximate authentic Italian pizzas using American flour. Being brought up in the US I wouldn't know authentic Italian pizza any more than I'd know authentic Indian food, but the Scicolones traveled to Italy for a taste of the real thing. So if you're a purist, it's all here, including recommendations for quality pizza joints worldwide.