About this pre-recorded class

Guest chef Peter Reinhart, most recently the author of “Pizza Quest,” is the teacher of this pre-recorded Zoom cooking class that finally makes it possible to achieve restaurant-quality pizza at home. You’ll learn how to mix and easily handle a high-hydration dough, which requires different technique than sturdier doughs that have a higher ratio of flour to water. Peter shows you the stretch and fold method, which is a remarkable way to maximize gluten development and trap the carbon dioxide created by yeast. What does that mean in simple terms, you ask? Big, gorgeous air bubbles that you thought you could only get from your favorite pizzeria. When it comes to shaping, you’ll learn two approaches: a stretched, Neapolitan-style round dough and a no-fuss pan pizza. No matter which shape you choose, you can top it with Peter’s simple all-purpose pizza sauce and his secret garnishing sauce (hint: it’s a transformative mixture of peppers, garlic and vinegar)—or you can go rogue with your own favorite toppings. The best part? You don’t need a fancy oven to pull off feats of pizza magic. Peter walks you through baking tips, including his signature embedded cheese technique, to create memorable pizzas in run-of-the-mill home ovens.

What's Included: You will receive a .zip file that includes the cooking school video as well as PDFs of the recipe instructions.

How to Download: After you purchase your Milk Street Cooking School Video, you will receive an email from the Milk Street Store with the subject line "Your Cooking School Video is Ready for Download." Within this email there is a link that will direct you to a download page, click download now to download the .zip folder. To unzip the folder, double-click the zipped folder to open it. Please note: your video download file will have an approximate size of 500 MB.

Peter Reinhart is the author of 13 books, including the James Beard and IACP Book of the year, "The Bread Baker’s Apprentice". His books on bread and pizza have won two other James Beard Awards ("Crust & Crumb" and "Peter Reinhart's Whole Grain Breads"). Peter has been a baking instructor at Johnson & Wales University for the past 23 years, as well as a popular traveling teacher at cooking schools across the country, and a product developer for a number of large companies and restaurants. He is also the host of the video podcast Pizza Quest with Peter Reinhart, which also runs as an audio podcast on the HRN network. His latest book is based on interviews he conducted with dozens of pizza luminaries during the pandemic, exploring how they pivoted their restaurants to survive and thrive. The guests shared some of their signature pizzas with Peter, who then created what he calls "tribute versions" of 35 different pizzas that can be made by home cooks. Peter lives with his wife, Susan, in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Bread Baking

Milk Street Digital Class: The Never Ending Search for Perfect Pizza with Peter Reinhart