I'm constantly in search of the Holy Grail of pizza. On my last trip out west I shot some pictures of pizza at Zuni Cafe in San Francisco and another at Chez Panisse in Berkeley, although both pizzas were excellent I kept thinking about and craving the pizza I made at Fedora Cafe in the 80's, it truly was the best. In 1985 we were listed as one of the top 10 restaurants in the country by USA Today and the pizzas were mentioned in the article. It was a new frontier for pizzas at the time, to actually serve them in a white table cloth restaurant was unheard of.
I felt compelled to teach someone how to make the "Real Deal", the student would be my 16 year old son Dylan. Young Dylan is a foodie (which scares me), a photographer, a student, and an athlete. His converging interests in food and photography has been documented on his food blog, Great Food a Millennial Perspective.
Dylan actually got the technique of making the rounds pretty quickly, I can remember teaching cooks how to do this and sometimes the learning curve was extraordinary. The key to rounding is to let gravity do the work to stretch the dough.
The idea to make the BBQ pizza with crispy shortrib actually came from the student, it was a great idea but I also wanted to show him some classics like pizza margherita as well as pizzas with an ethnic twist.
Below are some photo's I pulled from a post on Dylan's site, thanks son.
P.S. - Dylan, I've noticed that my cookbooks and knives are disappearing at an alarming rate, do you have them? If so, we need to talk.
The second proofing of the dough
Blind baking the dough with herbs, extra virgin olive oil, mozzarella and provolone
BBQ Crispy Shortrib PizzaSweet Baby Ray's BBQ sauce, fontina, provolone, parmesan, red onion
Pizza Margherita
Tomato sauce, fontina, provolone, parmesan, fresh tomatoes, basil, pine nuts
Chorizo PizzaTomato sauce, fontina, provolone, parmesan, red onion, pine nuts
Fig & Gorgonzola Pizza
Fig Puree, Prosciutto, fontina, provolone, parmesan, gorgonzola
