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@ForzaPizza: I love the plate in the foreground of your photo.

@Norma: I

@Norma: I saw the pics on pizzamaking, thanks to JohnWozniak pointing them out to me. Looked great. How'd you cut the pepperoni?

It's a little like Groucho Marx's "club that would have me" remark -- I don't know if I'd want to marry the woman who would accept my Pizza Hut proposal.

Also, I love what Gothamist said: "You can enter here to win the chance to purchase the world's most expensive rejection."

@dmc: I'm always interested when you or Pizzablogger points me to a solid link on pizzamaking.com. That really is a good thread. I'm more a casual reader of Pizzamaking and turn to it with specific problems -- ie., not a daily reader -- so I don't know the egos that well there.

Besides Varasano, which other folks on that thread have gone on to open their own places? That's highly encouraging.

I think the LBE vs. PizzaForge issue is an example of the complexity scaring me off. I had some people swearing by LBE, others by PizzaForge. I just don't know which to do. (I'm leaning toward LBE, though.)

OK ... what I am about to say may make me very unpopular ...

I LOVE pizzamaking.com. But I think its defining strength is also its biggest weakness. It is WAY GEEKY. As I said above, that is good for someone who wants to really delve into all the elements that make great at-home pizzamaking possible and there is no better source of gathered pizza-making intel on the web (or in print).

But for someone just starting out, I would much, much sooner recommend the Kenji NYC pizza recipe or the Cook's Illustrated recipe I test-drove.

Kenji's in particular gets into some of the science behind the pizza, so a beginner is going to learn something from it regardless, but it forgoes a lot of the bickering about sugar and oil in the dough and a lot of the conjecture that often goes on in pizzamaking.com threads.

Kenji's recipe will get you fine results in a home oven and make you happy you went through the trouble to make your own pizza. That will hopefully ignite a spark and inspire a beginner on to pizzamaking.com's more intense focus. Pizzamaking.com is like trying to take Organic Chemistry without having taken Chem 101.

Try those, get comfortable with them, make a ton of pizzas with them, and then if you feel you've reached the limit of what's possible, go geek out at pizzamaking.com.

I know that as an somewhat-advanced beginner in mid 2010, I found pizzamaking.com overwhelming. And it wasn't until I felt I wanted a different crust or different flavor that I turned to pizzamaking.com for tips.

@diquieatsduck: The concept of 8 Great of X-year is the best pizzas I ate in whatever year. I don't know if I had the Cheezus Christ in 2010. The Cortes, yeah, but not the Cheezus Christ.

+1 for Garvey. I would add that Slice is not out to do what Pizzamaking.com does. I love pizzamaking.com, but it is both a beginner's guide and an ultra-specific expert's manual, depending on how you approach it and what you put into getting out of it. (That is to say, it takes time and effort to cobble together info there. But it is rewarding.)

Slice approaches pizza-making from the perspective of a beginner to a moderately advanced amateur. A distillation of what should work if you're coming to pizza-making for the first time or if past recipes have left you wanting.

My favorite recipes, for example are Kenji's NYC-style pizza and his Sicilian pizza. They're both there boiled down to the basics, with some great science background for you, but they're not going to go into the really, really geeky stuff or variations because they're more for a mass audience. For really geeking out, pizzamaking.com is your best bet.

Izzy! Long time, no see. Glad to hear you've embraced pizza-making. Your husband will be happy. Have a great lobster dinner!

I kinda pictured him looking like this guy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Senese

Just don't blame me if your girlfriends/wives break up with you over this. I think you'd have to be with a very pizza-loving lady for this to be an acceptable VDay surprise. ;)

@jimmyg: Same quality as Kesté. Which is excellent and considered by many to be as close as you can get to Naples in NYC.

Also ... it might not be ice cream YOU can sit down and eat a whole pint of, but I think *I* might be able to -- much to my wife's disdain. ;)