Cookbooks

[kimbob]

Ok, I have a cookbook sickness. I LOVE reading and browsing cookbooks. I counted my cookbooks the other day and this total doesn't include pamphlets. 383!!! I need to start weeding them and donate them to the library book sale this summer. And I can't go to the book sale because I end up bringing home 15-20 at a clip. Today I picked up The Pizza Bible from the library and have KAF's new pizza book on order. Between my yarn stash and cookbooks, I need therapy! Lol

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[chocomouse]

I love reading cookbooks too!! I especially love those put together by small organizations such as women's group, social clubs, etc as fund raisers. Also, they often include brief anecdotes about the recipe or the cook/baker.

[Mike Nolan]

I have the KAF pizza book, it seems to think garlic is a necessary ingredient in pizza sauce, because I think every sauce recipe includes garlic.

I've tried the Chicago tavern style pizza. It's good (I thought the crust was better the 2nd day) but I think there are better thin-crust dough recipes out there. I haven't tried the Pizza Tonda (Romano) dough yet.

The KAF book has Chicago Tavern Style thin crust pizza but not Chicago Style Deep Dish. But KAF is located in Vermont, so Chicago is somewhere in the wilderness as far as they're concerned.

The Great Chicago Style Pizza Cookbook is probably a better source for Chicago-style pizza recipes, and I think it's back in print.

Nancy Palese, wife of Rocco Palese, the inventor of Chicago Stuffed Pizza, for which Nancy's Pizza was well-renowned, was said to be working on a memoir that would include recipes, but I think she died before she could finish it.

I think all of the legendary pizziola's in Chicago are gone now, Burt's Place and Pequods may be the last of the restaurants doing authentic Chicago Deep Dish Pan Pizza, as most of the others have modified their recipes over the years, mostly to save money IMHO, and it just isn't as good. Burt Katz trained the chefs when he sold Pequods, and my sources in Chicago tell me they've stuck with Burt's recipe, which Gulliver's did not (and it closed).

[kimbob]

Chocomouse, I have a bunch that were put together by organizations, too. I love those and they have a lot of good recipes that I've tried.
Mike, alot of the reviews I read about the KAF pizza book complained there was no Chicago deep dish recipe. You sure know mucho about Chicago pizza. The Pizza Bible has a bunch of Chicago style pizzas and one is called Frank Nitti. Lol. I haven't really read much of it yet but it has pages of info before you even get to the recipes.

[Mike Nolan]

I lived in Chicago for 10 years, and ate a lot of pizza, hot dogs and Italian beef sandwiches. When I was a sophomore a bunch of us drove down to the south side of Chicago on a Sunday afternoon to the original location for Giordano's, back before it turned into a chain, there was a 2+ hour wait.

Burt Katz's first foray with pizza was as a chef at a place called The Inferno, fairly near the Northwestern campus, you had to walk by it to get to the football stadium. It was very popular with students because the campus dining facilities were closed on Sundays. After that he started Gulliver's and at least 3 other pizza places before he died. (I've still never come up with a reasonable copycat recipe for Gulliver's pizza bread, people would order it while standing in line for a table.)

Back around 1975 there was an article in Chicago Magazine on the multiple styles of Chicago pizza, I made some editorial suggestions to a draft copy of that article. A friend and fellow chess player was their business manager. Before we decided to move to Nebraska I was talking to them about starting a second food reviewer column for casual and fast food dining. (They did run such a column for a few years, too.)

I haven't looked at the Pizza Bible (Amazon shows two books with that title, I assume you're referring to the one published recently). I have occasionally given some thought to buying a copy of Modernist Pizza, but it's like $350.

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