The Joy of Pizza: Everything You Need to Know

When New Yorkers are willing to trek to Jersey City for pizza, that pizza has something special going on.

Dan Richer's pizza at Razza has earned him acclaim from his peers as well as the public, and it's clear from this book that he earned those accolades through obsessive attention to the details of everything from dough to sauce to which cheese to use and when to add it to a pie.

Richer's obsession also extends to using a caliper to check the thickness of sliced ingredients to know whether they will melt or fully cook in the oven. And to evaluation rubrics to help you select the ingredients that will grace your pie. There are photo sequences of pizza bottoms to help you learn to judge an ideally cooked crust and instructions on rotating pizzas in wood-fired oven in relation to the fire. You can take it for granted that Richer is obsessed.

There are, of course, pizza recipes, most of them within the framework of Italian ingredients. But those recipes only appear starting at page 173 and end on page 251. So what he's offering you is the spirit of his passion and obsession, trusting that you will treat them seriously in your own kitchen.

Hardcover. Color photographs throughout.