California-style pizza
| Alternative names | California pizza |
|---|---|
| Type | Pizza |
| Place of origin | United States |
| Region or state | California |
| Created by | Ed LaDou and Chez Panisse |
| Main ingredients | Pizza dough, Cheese |
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California-style pizza (also known as California pizza or Gourmet pizza) is a style of single-serving pizza that combines New York and Italian thin crust with toppings from the California cuisine cooking style. Its invention is generally attributed to chef Ed LaDou, and Chez Panisse, in Berkeley, California. Wolfgang Puck, after meeting LaDou, popularized the style of pizza in the rest of the country. It is served in a number of California Cuisine restaurants. Such restaurant chains as California Pizza Kitchen, Extreme Pizza, and Sammy's Woodfired Pizza are three major pizza franchises associated with California-style pizza. Nancy Silverton's Pizzeria Mozza is also a popular California-style pizza restaurant in Los Angeles.
California-style pizza was invented more or less simultaneously in 1980 by Ed LaDou (the "Prince of Pizza"), then working as pizza chef for Spectrum Foods' Prego Restaurant in San Francisco's Cow Hollow neighborhood, and by pizza chefs working for Alice Waters at the Chez Panisse cafe in Berkeley, California.
LaDou had learned pizza-making in the 1970s as a teenager at Frankie, Johnnie & Luigi Too, a traditional New York-style pizzeria in Mountain View, California. He made pizzas briefly at Ecco, an upscale restaurant at the Hyatt Hotel in Palo Alto, California, before starting at Prego. Although Prego specialized in classic, Italian-style thin crust pizzas, its chefs encouraged LaDou to experiment with prosciutto, goat cheese, and truffles in their wood-burning oven, and send his results to guests. At one table, to whom he served an off-menu invention involving mustard, ricotta, pâté and red pepper turned out to be chef Wolfgang Puck.
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