It's Your Pizza. Own It.

Why do I write pizza books that have barely any recipes inside? That’s an easy one.
 
And if you can be bothered to take the four minutes required to read this addled screed, there’s a big, money-saving offer at the end—but it requires the following context if you really want it to blow your sweatpants up around your head.
 
Back in October, if you were here, I went on one of those high-minded Saturday-Afternoon screeds where I proposed that success in cooking means owning a recipe.
 
If you read that one, you might have asked me, “Are you high?”
 
Definitively and categorically, no.
 
I think.

But I can understand why you might ask that. Especially since I’m often surrounded by mushrooms. (And sausage.)
 
Success in anything means owning it. Owning a recipe means understanding it, and knowing why you’re doing the things it proposes.
 
 
But yesterday, I suddenly came up with the wild, crazy, inexplicably sober and clear-minded idea: I’m not the first person to say something so insane.
 
It also didn’t take long to find out: I’m right.
 
So much for originality. But hey: Great minds and all that.
 
That’s because what I never counted on was discovering that my proposal—the notion that you should own the recipe—is considered “The Thomas Keller Method.”
 
Or at least, that’s what Google AI thinks it’s called. I still have my doubts.
 
 
That’s in keeping with my firm belief the Google Generative AI is merely an idiot child who knows only what the internet said.
 
Example: I once asked Google AI for the area of a 12-inch pizza, and it multiplied pi times the diameter squared instead of the radius.
 
I would have been better off asking a C-student in geometry.
 
But I digress.
 
If you don’t know about Thomas Keller, he is very famous, very expensive, and very much knee-deep in restaurant awards. He practically clanks when he walks. (Or so I’ve heard.)
 
Mr. Keller is most famous for The French Laundry, making him the reigning king of tweezer food in the Napa Valley.
 
He’s won more James Beard Awards than you have fingers (I hope). One of those awards is for Best American Chef.
 
Mr. Keller is the only American chef to simultaneously have two restaurants with three Michelin stars each.
 
Best of all, perhaps, is that Mr. Keller is a Chevalier in the French Legion of Honor, which entitles him to pretend he’s riding his horse through the kitchen while wearing a full suit of armor. (It’s hard to tweeze microgreens and caviar while wearing those steel gloves. Forget making pizza.)
 
Thomas Keller certainly owns his place in the restaurant business. He also seems like an astonishingly nice guy.
 
But does he really own the idea of owning a recipe or is Google AI just regurgitating internet nonsense?
 
So I went to my own, rarely opened copy of The French Laundry Cookbook. 

ABOVE: The cover of The French Laundry Cookbook by Thomas Keller. This is an affiliate link to the book on Amazon, but I'm not suggesting you buy the book. At $43 as of this writing, the Kindle edition is even more expensive than the hardbound. But I thought you might enjoy seeing what your place setting at the restaurant might look like, and possibly read the first chapter sample for yourself. And there's even a recipe for salmon tartare with sweet red onion crème fraiche that might make an interesting pizza topping if you're into that whole Wolfgang Puck thing. 
 
 
The first chapter of The French Laundry Cookbook is called, “Pleasure and perfection.”
 
Right up front, Mr. Keller says that writing a cookbook is imbued with an inherent conflict.
 
“A recipe has no soul. You, as the cook, must bring soul to the recipe.”
 
Already, we’re getting metaphysical before we’ve even reached for the tweezers.
 
Keller also says that a recipe is just a tool rather than an exact blueprint.
 
“I can tell you the mechanics—how to make a custard, for instance. But you won’t have a perfect one if you merely follow my instructions.
 
“If you don’t feel it, it’s not a perfect custard, no matter how well you’ve executed the mechanics.
 
“On the other hand, if it’s not literally a perfect custard, but you have maintained a great feeling for it, then you have created a recipe perfectly because there was that passion behind what you did.”
 
 
Mother of Pearl! So much to unpack!
 
And I’m not going to do it right now. It’s Saturday afternoon and we don’t have that kinda time.
 
But in that above passage, you could substitute “pizza” for the word “custard.” It works perfectly.
 
The great Chef Keller goes on to say, “You’re not going to be able to duplicate the dish that I made.
 
“You may create something that in composition resembles what I made, but more important—and this is my greatest hope—you’re going to create something that you have deep respect and feelings and passions for.
 
 
“And you know what? It’s going to be more satisfying than anything I could ever make for you.”
 
Ding!
 
Mon dieu! Ma tête est en mode essorage à la blanchisserie française!
 
(For all you non-French speaking civilians without tweezers or armor, that means “OMG, my head is in the spin cycle at French Laundry!”)
 
In other words: Own it.
 
I have seen some pizzas that readers of my book have made using my instructions, and I find them unrecognizable.
 
But you know what they’re doing?

ABOVE: The cover of my own ridiculous little book. And this is also an Amazon affiliate link. And lemme tell ya, I make a HUGE commission on my own 99-cent Kindle book. Pow! Really, this is just about sharing the joy. If I were in this for the money, I'd be selling real estate. (Dirty little secret: I buy as many cheap Kindle cookbooks as I can because they help me decide if I want to own the print edition--and once I have the print edition, searching the Kindle edition makes it easier to find things in the print edition. 


They’re making those pizzas their own by starting with a simple recipe.
 
And I love it. 
 
Sometimes they’re thin-crust, NY 2.0 style like my own.
 
Other times, they’re thicker crust, heavily cheesy concoctions that almost rival the pizza of Buenos Aires. (Argentina’s capital of pizza is known for its excessive amounts of cheese. It flows like lava and, if you’re not careful, can carry away small children and pets. You’ll get them back. But you still have to get the cheese out of their hair.)
 
And occasionally, the pizzas I get to see are just good old middle-American flyover pies that would be recognized as a journeyman product anywhere in the country.
 
 
And talk about every person for themselves!
 
There’s a family in Tennessee where they have a weekly pizza night and everyone makes their own pizza. There’s a broad range of individual styles and they’re all competent even if they’re each unrecognizable as genetically linked.
 
The point is, pizza is not a recipe. Pizza is a process.
 
And once you own your process, you'll put your own spin on it.
 
My books are not recipe collections. They are guidebooks to get you from zero to pizza.
 
In the process of reading them, I hope you have fun along the way and maybe feel like you learned something.
 
Regardless of whether the recipe is mine, Thomas Keller’s, or someone else’s, I hope you get to own it. Because you’ll love it.
 
And now, to facilitate your journey, I’ve dropped the price on the Kindle edition of my book, Free The Pizza: A Simple System For Making Great Pizza Whenever You Want With The Oven You Already Have. The paperback is still 10 bucks, but at the moment the Kindle edition is only 99 cents. While supplies last. (Amazon has sometimes been known to run out of digits.)
 
And if you’re one of those people who says you prefer paper cookbooks, know this: the Kindle edition links to printable Cheat Sheets for use in your kitchen.
 
You can spill all kinds of stuff on them, throw them out, and print fresh ones to your heart’s content!
 
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