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Book Report: 'American Pie'

Posted by Adam Kuban, October 18, 2004 at 10:12 AM

Last Friday I mentioned briefly that one of the guests at the Slice One-Year Anniversary, Joe S., won a book in the raffle drawing we had. That book was a copy of American Pie (right), by Peter Reinhart.

Slice received its copy of this book from GirlyNYC, proprietor of Hottpants, a blog about panties (see: There really is a blog for everything!). Ms. Girly thought American Pie would be right up our alley, and it was. (Many thanks to her!) We liked it so much that we knew it'd be the perfect door prize. *

American Pie is an account of baking instructor and cookbook author Peter Reinhart's search for the perfect pizza. His journey takes him to the motherland, Italy, to get at the dish's roots, before it leads him around the United States looking for the best pie in the land.

Though we'd be inclined to say, "No need to search the country; New York's got the best," Reinhart paints a picture of the passionate pizzaioli all over the this land—from New York to New Haven, from Phoenix to Philly. Close to home here in Brooklyn, he dines at Di Fara with another of our favorite authors, Jeffrey Steingarten. Farther west, he raves about Phoenix's Pizzeria Bianco and, much to the chagrin of New Yorkers and New Havenites alike, declares that it just might be the best in the country.

A notable idea in the book is the difference between what Reinhart (left) refers to as contextually perfect and technically perfect pizza, a concept we at Slice had never really given much thought to. A contextually perfect pie may not be the best technically, but for some reason at that time, it's the perfect pie. We'd go into detail about this concept, but you should probably just read the book.

It's also crammed with recipes for all sorts of pizza styles, from Neapolitan to neo-Neapolitan to New York–Neapolitan to Chicago deep dish, many of which we'll be experimenting with at Slice HQ.

*Unfortunately, we think we might have accidentally given Joe our dog-earred copy of the book. If you want to exchange, Joe, send us an e-mail.

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Tags: Books, Recommended