Pizza Practice: Doughs, Techniques, and Toppings

From acclaimed baker Tara Jensen: The definitive primer on baking pizza dough, with brilliant color photos, illustrations, and easy-to-follow recipe layouts.

"The crusts in Pizza Practice are excellent.” ―The Wall Street Journal

"Complete with detailed explanations of techniques, thorough instructions, and helpful tips, this comprehensive volume is perfect for bakers of all levels who are serious about pizza making.”―Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

Pizza dough is a gateway for many home bread bakers, allowing them to experiment with different tools, toppings, ingredients, timings, and shapes. This companion guides you step by step from the simplest doughs to artisanal bakes. Here are 89 recipes any baker can perfect, with simple cook-along layouts and ways to explore different ingredients, techniques, flours, and heat sources for perfecting pizza, pita, and focaccia.

Bright and visually rich, with more than 60 color photographs, this baking book provides expert guidance on how to:

• Set up your baking space with the right ingredients and tools
• Cook over fire or with an outdoor oven, or trick out the oven that came with your apartment to bake an impressive pie
• Learn the perfect ratios of toppings to crust
• Build classics such as Margherita, Clam, and Pepperoni pizzas, as well as a collection of fancifully delicious takes, including Breakfast pizza; Delicata Squash, Shallot, and Gruyere; and a particularly luscious Pancetta and Brown Butter Pineapple pie
• Craft a foolproof focaccia
• Discover all you need to know to make pita with kids
• And much more!

No book on pizza is complete without simple sauces, dips, and drizzles, such as Lemony Roasted Garlic Cream, Hot Honey, and a simple, fresh Uncooked Tomato Sauce. For after your pizza, Jensen offers dessert: homemade ice cream, cobblers, brownies, simple chocolate chip cookies, and a classic yellow birthday cake with chocolate frosting.

The first pizza bible written by a woman and one of the preeminent bread bakers in the US, Pizza Practice offers a new approach and everything you need to bake your best pizzas.

ACCESSIBLE RECIPES FOR ALL SKILL LEVELS: These are baking recipes that meet you where you are, with the equipment in your kitchen. Step-by-step instructions, timelines, and photography for all the phases of the dough-making process, as well as folding, shaping, stretching, and baking, make this pizza cookbook indispensable for all home cooks.

TO YEAST OR NOT TO YEAST: Many baking books are emphatic in their approach to sourdough, resisting the addition of commercial yeast. Jensen’s dough uses both commercial and instant yeast―each alone or in combination―so bakers can experiment and know what makes the dough of their dreams.

EXPERT AUTHOR: Tara Jensen is one of the country's most acclaimed bread bakers, instructors, and trusted bread baking cookbook authors. Flour Power was named one of the Washington Post’s top 10 cookbooks of 2022. Her breads, pizzas, pies, and pastry have been featured in Bon Appétit and Food & Wine, and she was named one of Southern Living’s chefs of the year in 2021. She runs her first pizzeria, Dough Baby, in Loudon County, Virginia, and posts daily musings on life and baking to her eager followers on Instagram @bakerhands.

Perfect for: 

• Pizza and bread lovers
• Home cooks of all levels eager to make their own pizza, pita, or focaccia
• New and experienced bread bakers looking to hone their craft
• Gift-giving for birthday, holiday, or housewarming
• Fans and followers of Tara Jensen

Tara Jensen is one of the preeminent bread bakers, baking instructors, and bread-baking cookbook authors in the United States. Her previous books are Flour Power and A Baker's Year, a memoir and cookbook based on her bakery, Smoke Signals, in the mountains of North Carolina. She lives in Virginia with her family and many pizza ovens.