Joe Beddia is not your average pizza maker. I haven't met the man myself, but what I've read about him makes me think he's not the average anything. With a background in fine dining and brewing beer, he took everything he learned form his culinary jobs and his world travels and put it all into a tiny pizza shop in Philadelphia, where he makes 40 pies a day by hand and then goes home. He could sell a lot more than that, but he doesn't want to. It doesn't matter to him that people stand in line for hours trying to get one of his famous pizzas. He has no phone there, so he can't take orders. He just wants to do it the way he wants to do it, and if you want to eat his pizza, then you have to do things his way.
The same goes for his cookbook. It's not your average pizza cookbook. There are recipes, of course, and you can take this book and make an amazing pie with it. But you also have to put up with all the Beddia-isms, the articles about art or wine, the random drawings, the bad jokes. And if you have to ask, "Is it really worth all that?" then you don't know the first thing about Joe Beddia or his pizza.
Joe opened Pizzeria Beddia in March of 2013. It has no delivery or slices. It has no chairs. And Bon Appetit has named it the best pizza in America. Because that's how Joe does things. With the perfectionism of an artist, the experience of a chef, the imagination of a preschooler, and the doggedness of a . . . well, a dog with a favorite bone, Beddia shows what it takes to make the best pizza in the country.
And now he's sharing his secrets with us all. Pizza Camp is his invitation to share in the fun and discover how making pizza dough is like a meditation when it's done right. He encourages us to try putting cream onto a pizza, to make our own sausage, to explore our neighborhoods in order to find the tastiest local cheeses, the best tomatoes, the most creative toppings that are right in our backyards. You can follow his recipes to make his signature pizzas (Roasted Corn, Heirloom Cherry Tomato, Basil Pizza or Roasted Mushroom Pizza or Bintje Potato, Cream, and Rosemary Pizza or the Breakfast Pizza with Cream, Spinach, Bacon, and Eggs, for example). Or you can use his dough as your own canvas and make some pizza art of your own.
If you get tired of pizza (is that even possible?), Beddia includes recipes for other things you can do with his basic dough recipe: strombolis, hoagies, and even homemade croutons. Pizza Camp also has Beddia's picks for the best pizza equipment and tips on how to put them to good use, like how to build a pizza on a peel and still be able to slide it into the oven with the grace of an experienced pizza maker.
Part cookbook, part love letter and thank you to Philly, Joe Beddia's Pizza Camp is a must for anyone wanting to know how to make the best pizza in the country, or really anyone wanting to know what it takes to be the best at anything.
Galleys for Pizza Camp were provided by the publisher through NetGalley.com.