The Weeks We Left the Pizzas in the Freezer

A Review of Pizza Night by Alexandra Stafford

When I received a free copy of Pizza Night by Alexandra Stafford in the mail to review a few weeks ago, my first thought was that I am the wrong person to write this review.

The issue is, I think I am too much of a fangirl to give an honest review. By current accounts, I subscribe to three of her newsletters. One of these is about farm shares, something I have not had since 2011. I also cooked regularly from her first book, Bread Toast Crumbs—seriously, I probably made every bread recipe in there. And once, years ago, when I participated in Facebook cooking clubs, she quickly and kindly answered a question I had about a recipe.

Needless to say, Pizza Night has been on my wishlist since it was announced, and an unbiased reviewer I am not.

If you’re not familiar with Stafford, she runs the blog Alexandra’s Kitchen, an old stalwart of a website that has been around since the halcyon days of food blogging (2006). I gather she gained quite a following on Food52 at one point, a spot that used to be the spot for home cooks to establish an online community (RIP old Food52, now please stop emailing, I can’t afford you).

Her peasant bread—essentially a high-hydration, no-knead situation—gained a following and she produced a lot of spins on it for Bread Toast Crumbs, including a pizza dough recipe. In their most recent cookbooks, Deb Perelman (of Smitten Kitchen fame) and Molly Yeh (of the current Yeh empire) both name checked Stafford’s pizza dough, so perhaps a whole book on the topic was inevitable.

Full Pizza and Salad List

Though billed as a pizza book, this is really a pizza and salad book. It combines Stafford’s bread history with her farm share produce presence to produce a book of seasonal pie and salad pairings. (Thanks to Clarkson Potter for the free book in exchange for this review.)

The book has five dough recipes: Neopolitanish, Sourdough Neopolitanish, Thin-Crust, Pan, and Gluten-Free. It also has about twenty sauce/spread/dressing recipes and five dessert recipes. At the heart of the book, however, are the 52 pizzas and complementary salads that are divided seasonally. Hidden among these recipes are more sub-recipes that Stafford draws from her huge archives of nearly two decades of being in the blogosphere.

Sicilian Pizza and Veggies with Romesco

Another reason I may not be a great person to review this book is that I am worlds away from being a farm share person. To put my situation mildly, my produce options are limited. This is mostly because of my grocery store (rural Walmart), but also because half of my household has strong vegetable opinions, and none of those opinions include radicchio.

In Bread Toast Crumbs, Stafford writes, “When I make [pizza] for my children, I use store-bought tomato sauce and pregrated mozzarella—the horror!—and they gobble it up.” Well, I buy pregrated mozzarella in 5 pound bags, so my pizza looked as above.

That is the Sicilian pizza, a last minute change of pizzas due to a missing pan (since located). Instead of a squash blossom or clams, it is covered in the holy trinity: tomato sauce, mozzarella, pepperoni, with the addition of green chile (amen).

The dough process was a touch more precious than version 1.0 in Bread Toast Crumbs, but not exceedingly so. While the former was made to be mixed quickly and simply sat on the counter till needed, this one (and all the others in the book) was ideally made days in advance and shaped a bit (a very little bit) more. Still, it isn’t exceedingly taxing, as long as you decide ahead of time that you want to eat it in a few days.

I paired it with one of the least adventurous “salads”: the Veggie Platter with Romesco and Hummus.

My Walmart does carry baby carrots

And let me tell you about this romesco. I do not consider myself a romesco person, if I’m honest. I see romesco and I skip on by. Blame this on me being a vegan in the early 2010s or maybe the fact recipes always called for blanched almonds (leave ‘em in the 50s I say) but I gave up on it long ago. But this romesco changed my mind. It was so good. Every cookbook that includes a sauce says something like “this sauce makes extra, but you will be so happy because you can put it on everything!” Reader, I put that sauce on nothing and it goes bad. This extra sauce, however, I put on everything! The adage was true! In sum: I liked the sauce.

Detroit Pizza, Greek Salad, and Chocolate Chip Cookies

Next, I made the Detroit Pizza. (What can I say, we are a thick crust family, and pan pizza requires so little effort.)

Now, I might age myself, but wayyyyy back in 2017ish, Detroit pizza became a big thing. Do you remember this? We all learned so much about Detroit pizza. We learned about bolt pans and brick cheese. It came out of nowhere—some Detroit tourism board working in the shadows—and I was in hook, line, and sinker. I even visited Detroit and ate some.

Since then, I used the Zingerman’s Bake House recipe from their book and saw no need to change. It is an easy, good, and I think authentic recipe.

The recipe in Pizza Night is different and a bit fussier. The crust is par-baked, cooled, and put back in the pan to be topped. The pepperoni is on top of the cheese (as we all learned in 2017, this is not done in Detroit), and the sauce is not sweet at all.

Look at that frico

And this pizza was delicious. It got a perfect frico cheese crust around the edges, the dough itself was tasty, and I did not for a second begrudge the extra effort when eating it. This is the exact recipe from the book, pepperoni, store-bought sauce, and all.

I paired it with My Mother’s Horiatiki Salad, a vinegary, briny, dilly Greek salad recipe. My toddler ate that salad with gusto! (That’s an inside joke for all those familiar with young children.) The salad was good, too.

We capped it off with the One-Bowl Chocolate Chip Cookies. These were very tasty, easy cookies, and we are a chocolate chip cookie family (surprise, surprise). I am always down with one-bowl baking, so I will definitely come back to this.

Final Thoughts

I am very happy to have this book, and I do hope to one day make more adventurous pizzas. Next on my list are the several grilled pizza recipes. Because we do, in fact, do pizza night every week, though an estimated 75% of those are freezer pizzas.

This book is for anyone looking to take pizza (and salad) to the next level. If you want to make a good red-sauce pizza with pregrated mozzarella, I would just start here with Stafford’s original pizza dough recipe. It’s easy and works well.

If you’re looking for fancier pizza, more dough recipes, a ton of topping options, and a lot more produce, Pizza Night is perfect for you.