Description
Sometimes the best pizzas don't come from a wood-burning oven. Mark Bello teaches students at Pizza a Casa on the Lower East Side how to cook excellent pizzas with simple ingredients: AP flour, Fleischmann's yeast, and no-frills tomatoes sauce, cheese, and assorted toppings. The avant-garde catering company doubles as a pizza school and supply store to get all the pizza-making essentials. The crusts are crisp but chewy, and charred like any good restaurant-style pizza, but the four-hour classes show any old non-chef how to make them at home. Bello keeps the oven at an easily replicable 500 degrees, and the dough recipe is available to the public. Taking a class or tasting one of his creations is excellent inspiration for the timid at-home pizza chef. --Jessica Goodman
