California-style pizza facts for kids
| Alternative names | California pizza |
|---|---|
| Type | Pizza |
| Place of origin | United States |
| Region or state | California |
| Created by | Ed LaDou and Alice Waters |
| Main ingredients | Pizza dough, Cheese |
California-style pizza is a special kind of pizza. It is also known as California pizza. This pizza is usually made for one person. It mixes a thin crust, like pizzas from New York and Italy, with unique toppings. These toppings come from the California cuisine cooking style.
Chef Ed LaDou and the restaurant Chez Panisse in Berkeley, California are often given credit for inventing this pizza. Later, Wolfgang Puck met LaDou. Puck then helped make this pizza style very popular across the country. You can find California-style pizza in many restaurants that serve California Cuisine. Some big pizza chains that serve it include California Pizza Kitchen, Round Table Pizza, Extreme Pizza, and Sammy's Woodfired Pizza.
Contents
The Story of California Pizza
How California Pizza Started
California-style pizza was created around the same time in 1980. Two main groups were involved. One was Ed LaDou, who was called the "Prince of Pizza." He worked as a pizza chef at Prego Restaurant in San Francisco. The other group was pizza chefs working for Alice Waters at the Chez Panisse Cafe in Berkeley, California.
LaDou learned how to make pizzas in the 1970s. He was a teenager at a traditional New York-style pizzeria. It was called Frankie, Johnnie & Luigi Too. He later worked at Prego. Prego made classic, thin-crust Italian pizzas. But the chefs let LaDou try new things. He used ingredients like prosciutto, goat cheese, and truffles. He cooked them in a wood-burning oven.
One day, he made a special pizza for a guest. It had mustard, ricotta, pâté, and red pepper. This guest turned out to be the famous chef Wolfgang Puck.
Alice Waters and Chez Panisse
By 1980, Alice Waters and her head chef, Jeremiah Tower, had already created California cuisine. This cooking style mixed French and Italian techniques. It focused on fresh, local ingredients. Waters loved Tommasso's Italian restaurant in San Francisco. It had the West Coast's first wood-fired pizza oven.
After visiting Italy, Waters decided to open a new cafe. It would have an open kitchen with a Tomasso's-style pizza oven. Her chefs made classic pizzas but added special ingredients. These included goat cheese and duck sausage. Her cafe and its pizzas became very popular right away. Food critics loved them.
Wolfgang Puck and Spago
In 1980 and 1981, Wolfgang Puck was getting ready to open his famous restaurant, Spago. It was in West Hollywood, California. Spago was first planned as a pizzeria. It was inspired by the cafe at Chez Panisse. Puck was so impressed with LaDou's pizza at Prego. He hired LaDou to be his head pizza chef.
With Puck's help, LaDou created over 250 different pizza ideas. They used ingredients like scallops, roe, and baby zucchini flowers. One of their most famous creations was "Jewish pizza." This pizza had smoked salmon, crème fraîche, capers, and dill on top. They also used special olive oil, small vegetables, and flavored dough.
California Pizza Kitchen (CPK)
In 1985, LaDou helped two lawyers, Richard L. Rosenfeld and Larry S. Flax, start a new restaurant. It was called California Pizza Kitchen, or "CPK." LaDou brought many of Spago's recipes with him.
CPK also had open kitchens with wood-burning pizza ovens, like Spago. But instead of fancy gourmet ingredients, CPK used simpler, comforting toppings. Just before CPK opened, their chef quit. LaDou quickly created the whole menu. He even invented the famous barbecue chicken pizza on the spot. LaDou also helped create pizza menus for Sammy's Woodfired Pizza and the Hard Rock Cafe.
How California Pizza Became Popular
Wolfgang Puck and California Pizza Kitchen were very important. They helped turn California-style pizza from a special gourmet food into something everyone could enjoy. Puck opened many restaurants. Some were fancy, like Spago. Others were quick-service places in airports and mall food courts. California Pizza Kitchen grew to have 200 locations.
Both Puck and CPK also started selling frozen pizzas. Puck's frozen pizzas did well at first. But CPK's frozen pizzas, supported by Kraft Foods, became more popular.
See also
In Spanish: Pizza estilo California para niños
