Allow the mixture to stand for 10-15 minutes in a warm place (we find a windowsill on a sunny day works best) until froth develops on the surface. It’s all great information but sometimes the flow of the book can be hard to follow as it has so many interruptions. The famous recipe is essentially a no-knead dough, where the ingredients are mixed in a bowl and left to naturally bond and ferment overnight.

With more than 440 restaurants worldwide and over 360 in the UK and Ireland - and 57 million pizzas sold through UK restaurants and supermarkets - it is one of the mainstays of our culinary life. It’s primarily a US-based pizza book so covers regional American pizzas first like New York, New Jersey, Detroit, and St Louis. He then has detailed instructions on how to stretch and cook many different styles, like wood-fired Naples, home oven Naples, cast iron pizza, grilled pizza, wood-fired and home oven Romana, personal pizzas… the list goes on – it’s very thorough. There are the usual sections on flour, tomatoes, cheese, and equipment that you find in other pizza books. It has some amazing detail of the dough and how different ratios of ingredients and time can change the outcome.A beginner can follow the simple steps for fool-proof pizzas, or more experienced bakers can really dive into the theory. Alongside 68 pizza recipes, many of which are ready in minutes, there are sumptuous salads, decadent desserts, and delicious dressings and sauces that create a meal for every occasion. This is my favorite pizza book as it makes a number of amazing pizza doughs, all with clear instructions and no unnecessary steps. It also has detailed instructions on pizza-making methods to take the dough from a dough ball and into a stretched pizza ready for the oven.

Peter Boizot founded PizzaExpress in 1965, and now it is one of the UK's largest and most popular high-street restaurant chains. Sometimes the instructions can be a bit thin, which tilts it towards a book for serious pizza makers and restaurateurs.

Very minor, but I find his dough balling technique a little unconventional where he folds it in on itself. I see the “Jim Lahey no-knead” method pop up all the time across internet forums and comments – I think people just love its simplicity. This pizza promises to be a family crowd-pleaser, and could even trick your brain into thinking you’ve gone out for dinner. I would also add that Ken Forkish’s Elements of Pizza include free videos of him demonstrating different techniques. And now Pizza Express has revealed the exact recipe of its much-loved Margherita pizza, so you can recreate that iconic taste without leaving your house.

The book has the usual backstory and history of pizza, before diving into different city’s styles of pizza and the best restaurants – covering Naples, Rome, Paris, London, New York, New Haven, and Chicago. At around a quarter of the book, I couldn’t help but feel this was added to pad out the page number. The actual pizza dough recipe I find overly complex and has a few unnecessary hoops to jump through, like using iced water and lots of yeast to slow fermentation. I agree with above comment as “The Joy of Pizza” as a definite addition, it is well written and recipes are great.Jim has obviously spent a decent amount of time experimenting with flavors and coming up with new recipes for his restaurants, which he shares in the book. A home oven is cooler and needs more water in the dough – so he accounts for this by specifying doughs with different hydration percentages. The final section is about “toasts, soups and salads” which has some more interesting suggestions to feed your guests while they wait for their pizza. Over time I have learned to simplify my recipe with the same results ( my recipe), but still follow the basic principles.