California-style pizza (also known as California pizza) is a style of single-serving

pizza Pizza (, ) is a dish of Italian origin consisting of a usually round, flat base of leavened wheat-based dough topped with tomatoes, cheese, and often various other ingredients (such as various types of sausage, anchovies, mushrooms, on ...

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 Edward M. LaDou, III (October 9, 1955 – December 27, 2007) was an American pizza chef, who is credited with popularizing gourmet California-style pizzas. Ed LaDou was the first pizza chef at Wolfgang Puck's Spago restaurant in Los Angeles. ...

, and Chez Panisse, in

Berkeley, California Berkeley ( ) is a city on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay in northern Alameda County, California, United States. It is named after the 18th-century Irish bishop and philosopher George Berkeley. It borders the cities of Oakland and E ...

Wolfgang Puck Wolfgang Johannes Puck (born July 8, 1949) is an Austrian-American chef and restaurateur. Early life and career Puck was born in Sankt Veit an der Glan, Austria. He learned cooking from his mother, who was a pastry chef. He took the surname ...

, after meeting LaDou, popularized the style of pizza in the rest of the country. It is served in many California Cuisine restaurants. Such restaurant chains as

California Pizza Kitchen California Pizza Kitchen (CPK) is an American casual dining restaurant chain that specializes in California-style pizza. The restaurant was started in 1985 by attorneys Rick Rosenfield and Larry Flax in Beverly Hills, California, United States ...

, Round Table Pizza, Extreme Pizza, and Sammy's Woodfired Pizza are four major pizza franchises associated with California-style pizza.

History

The California-style pizza was invented more or less simultaneously in 1980 by

(the "Prince of Pizza"), then working as a pizza chef for Spectrum Foods' Prego Restaurant in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17t ...

's Cow Hollow neighborhood, and by pizza chefs working for

Alice Waters Alice Louise Waters (born April 28, 1944) is an American chef, restaurateur, and author. In 1971 she opened Chez Panisse, a Berkeley, California restaurant famous for its role in creating the farm-to-table movement and for pioneering Californi ...

at the Chez Panisse Cafe in

. 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 Mountain View is a city in Santa Clara County, California, United States. Named for its views of the Santa Cruz Mountains, it has a population of 82,376. Mountain View was integral to the early history and growth of Silicon Valley, and is t ...

. He made pizzas briefly at Ecco, an upscale restaurant at the

Hyatt Hotel Hyatt Hotels Corporation, commonly known as Hyatt Hotels & Resorts, is an American multinational hospitality company headquartered in the Riverside Plaza area of Chicago that manages and franchises luxury and business hotels, resorts, and vacat ...

Palo Alto, California Palo Alto (; Spanish for "tall stick") is a charter city in the northwestern corner of Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a coastal redwood tree known as El Palo Alto. The city was es ...

, 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 Wood fuel (or fuelwood) is a fuel such as firewood, charcoal, chips, sheets, pellets, and sawdust. The particular form used depends upon factors such as source, quantity, quality and application. In many areas, wood is the most easily availabl ...

oven, and send his results to guests. At one table, the guest to whom he served an off-menu invention involving mustard,

ricotta Ricotta ( in Italian) is an Italian whey cheese made from sheep, cow, goat, or Italian water buffalo milk whey left over from the production of other cheeses. Like other whey cheeses, it is made by coagulating the proteins that remain afte ...

, pâté, and red pepper turned out to be chef

. By 1980, Alice Waters' Chez Panisse and its head chef, Jeremiah Tower, had already invented California cuisine, a combination of

French French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents ** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...

and Italian techniques and presentation with fresh local ingredient-focused flavors. Waters was a long-time fan of Tommaso's Italian restaurant in San Francisco's North Beach, which had installed the West Coast's first wood-fired pizza oven when it opened in 1935. After traveling to Italy, Waters decided to make an open kitchen featuring a Tommaso's-style pizza oven the focus of the new cafe she was opening above her main dining room. Although prepared classically, her chefs added exotic fine ingredients to their single-serving pizzas and

calzone A calzone (, , ; "stocking" or "trouser") is an Italian oven-baked folded pizza, often described as a turnover, made with leavened dough. It originated in Naples in the 18th century. A typical calzone is made from salted bread dough, baked in a ...

s, such as

goat cheese Goat cheese, or chèvre ( or ; from French ''fromage de chèvre'' 'goat cheese'), is cheese made from goat's milk. Goats were among the first animals to be domesticated for producing food. Goat cheese is made around the world with a variety of ...

and duck sausage. Her cafe, and its pizzas, in particular, were an instant success, attracting wide attention among food critics. Wolfgang Puck, in 1980 and 1981, was preparing to open the restaurant that would make him famous, Spago, in

West Hollywood, California West Hollywood is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States. Incorporated in 1984, it is home to the Sunset Strip. As of the 2020 U.S. Census, its population was 35,757. It is considered one of the most prominent gay villages in ...

. Initially conceived as a

pizzeria A pizzeria is a restaurant focusing on pizza. As well as pizza, dishes at pizzerias can include kebab, salads and pasta. Many pizzerias offer take-away, where the customer orders their food either in advance or at the restaurant and then take ...

, Spago's was modeled after the upstairs cafe at Chez Panisse. He was so impressed with the pizza LaDou had made for him at Prego, he hired LaDou as head pizza chef. Under Puck's guidance, LaDou developed more than 250 pizza concepts using ingredients such as scallops, roe, and baby

zucchini flower Squash blossoms (called courgette flowers in Great Britain) are the edible flowers of ''Cucurbita'' species, particularly ''Cucurbita pepo'', the species that produces zucchini (courgette), marrow, spaghetti squash, and many other types of squa ...

s. Among their most famous invention was "Jewish pizza", a pizza dough first cooked then topped with smoked salmon,

crème fraîche Crème fraîche (English pronunciation: , , lit. "fresh cream") is a dairy product, a soured cream containing 10–45% butterfat, with a pH of approximately 4.5., p. 181''f'' It is soured with a bacterial culture. European labeling regulati ...

capers ''Capparis spinosa'', the caper bush, also called Flinders rose, is a perennial plant that bears rounded, fleshy leaves and large white to pinkish-white flowers. The plant is best known for the edible flower buds (capers), used as a seasoning ...

, and dill. Another innovation was using infused

olive oil Olive oil is a liquid fat obtained from olives (the fruit of ''Olea europaea''; family Oleaceae), a traditional tree crop of the Mediterranean Basin, produced by pressing whole olives and extracting the oil. It is commonly used in cooking: ...

, baby vegetables, chili oil, and flavored dough. In 1985 LaDou helped two inexperienced lawyer-restaurateurs, Richard L. Rosenfeld and Larry S. Flax, start a new restaurant concept,

(also known as "CPK"). He brought them many of Spago's recipes, which he had carefully saved. The new restaurant borrowed the concept of open kitchens centered around wood-burning pizza ovens from Spago, but instead of exotic gourmet ingredients, it used innovative but simpler

comfort food Comfort food is food that provides a nostalgic or sentimental value to someone, and may be characterized by its high caloric nature, high carbohydrate level, or simple preparation. The nostalgia may be specific to an individual, or it may a ...

toppings. When the new restaurant's chef quit less than a month before opening, LaDou quickly designed and cooked an entire menu, inventing barbecue chicken pizza on the spot. LaDou also helped develop pizza menus for Sammy's Woodfired Pizza and the

Hard Rock Cafe Hard Rock Cafe, Inc. is a British-based multinational chain of theme restaurants, memorabilia shops, casinos and museums founded in 1971 by Isaac Tigrett and Peter Morton in London. In 1979, the cafe began covering its walls with rock and r ...

Prominence

Both Wolfgang Puck and California Pizza Kitchen were instrumental in turning California-style pizza from a

gourmet Gourmet (, ) is a cultural idea associated with the culinary arts of fine food and drink, or haute cuisine, which is characterized by refined, even elaborate preparations and presentations of aesthetically balanced meals of several contrasting, of ...

food trend to a mass consumer food product. Based on the success of his pizzas and his status as a

celebrity chef A celebrity chef is a kitchen chef who has become a celebrity. Today, chefs often become celebrities by presenting cookery advice and demonstrations, usually through the media of television and radio, or in printed publications. While television ...

, Puck opened a series of restaurants, ranging from high-end clones of Spago to convenience chains for airports and mall food courts. California Pizza Kitchen grew to 200 outlets. Both introduced frozen pizzas, but after an early success Puck's supermarket lines were overtaken by CPK's, which are backed by

Kraft foods The second incarnation of Kraft Foods is an American food manufacturing and processing conglomerate, split from Kraft Foods Inc. in 2012 and headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. It became part of Kraft Heinz in 2015. A merger with Heinz, arran ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:California-Style Pizza California culture Cuisine of the Western United States Food and drink in California Food and drink introduced in 1980 Pizza in the United States Pizza varieties

History

Prominence

See also

References