pizza every week

Alexandra Stafford is a little obsessed with pizza. Ever since she was a kid, and her mother tried to lessen the pain of her divorce by promising her kids pizza every Friday night while they were growing up, she has relied on pizza to make life better. As an adult, she’s traveled from one coast to the other, trying out new pizzas wherever she went. She even went to Italy and ate so much pizza she couldn’t take another bite (fortunately, her husband was there for her and he took on eating the bites she couldn’t). And now she’s sharing all her pizza expertise with us.

The pizza recipes in this cookbook are set up by season, so you can get the most out of seasonal ingredients, and they’re all paired with salads. There are 52 pizzas and 52 salads, so you could eat one of these new pizzas every week for a year. Or of course, you can find some favorites and hang with those, mix and match ingredients and doughs to your personal taste, make big batches of your favorite salad dressings and add them to a mix of greens, fruit, nuts, or cheese however you like. Stafford teaches the basics and offers up favorite recipes of hers and her family’s, but she also encourages home pizza cooks to find their own way.

Since so much about pizza is about the success of the dough, Stafford offers her best advice on ingredients (especially flours and a gluten-free pizza mix) and equipment to get the best, tastiest crust. She has 4 basic crust recipes, a thin crust, a pan pizza, Neapolitanish, and gluten-free (although her favored gluten-free blend is not wheat free, so those allergic to wheat will need to find an alternative). She also has sourdough options for these, if that’s how you roll.

Stafford does insist on weighing the flour, but that makes sense as it’s flour that is easiest to get wrong when you are just scooping and measuring it with a cup. She prefers giving her doughs a two-day rise in the refrigerator, but she also offers quicker hacks if you don’t have that kind of time. And she includes instructions on freezing the dough or parbaking the crust and freezing those, so there are other shortcuts available for those who are pinched for time on pizza night.

There are several recipes for tomato sauces, pestos, vinaigrettes, and dressings, so there are plenty of options for the pizzas and salads. And then Stafford uses her experiences of tasting pizza from across America and Italy to craft these pizza and salad combinations. So for summer, you can go with the Grilled BBQ Chicken Pizza with the Classic Creamy Coleslaw or the Summer Squash and Squash Blossom Pizza with the Elemental Summer Tomato Salad or the Blistered Shishito Pizza with Onions and Monterrey Jack with the Esquites-Inspired Street Corn Salad.

Fall brings a Detroit-Style Pepperoni Pizza with a Veggie Platter with Romesco and Hummus (her go-to for Halloween) or a Mashed Potato and Bacon Pizza with Bar’s Mixed Greens Salad with Candied Pecans, Blue Cheese, and Pear. Winter has a Clam Pizza with Garlic, Olive Oil, and Pecorino with a Watermelon Radish and Turnip Salad with Citrus, Chives, and Pistachios or the Buffalo Cauliflower Pizza with Scallion Crème Fraiche with the Winter Wedge Salad with Roasted Savoy Cabbage, Blue Cheese, and Walnuts. Spring has her diving in to the Smoked Salmon and Cream Cheese Pizza for a Crowd with the Baby Spinach Salad with Apple, Pine Nuts, and Goat Cheese and the Classic Margherita Pizza with a Spring Chopped Salad with Edamame, Snap Peas, Endive and Asparagus.

Stafford brings a lot of creativity to these pizzas and salads with her seasonal ingredients, and the multitude of photos make everything look delicious. I also love that she offers cooking ideas whether you’re cooking in a classic oven, an outdoor grille, or an outside pizza oven. However, one thing I did not like about this book is the fact that not all the type is black. Most of it is, but some of the information and side notes on these recipes are done in gold, which is harder to read.

I feel like this isn’t a cookbook for those just beginning with pizza. I think intermediate to expert home pizza cooks would do better with the attention to detail that Stafford brings and would be more inclined to invest in the higher quality flours, produce, and equipment she recommends. But if you’re wanting to take your family pizza to restaurant-level heights, then Pizza Night is something you should be taking a look at. Even if you just take her dough recipes for your personal home pizzas, you’ll find yourself eating a higher quality pizza than you’ll get with most of your basic pizza deliveries, and definitely better than anything you’ll find in the freezer section of your supermarket.

A free copy of Pizza Night was provided by Clarkson Potter, with many thanks, but the opinions are my own.