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4.5
I first became a fan of Orangette when I was in college, around 2009 or so. I loved her style of writing, and her simple, yummy recipes. She writes with heart and she writes in a very conversational tone. I read her other book a couple of years ago, and enjoyed it sooo much. This one I enjoyed, but not as much as that book. I think I enjoyed this book because it was written by Molly, and I’m already sort of partial to her writing and recipes. So, first and foremost, if you enjoy the Orangette blog or the “A Homemade Life,” you might enjoy this book. Secondly, if you’re really into pizza—and I really REALLY—as in you’re interested in the mechanics behind opening your own pizzeria and all that goes into it, I think you might also enjoy this book. But otherwise, I’m not sure if the typical reader who has never heard of Molly would be too into it. Sure, Molly is a fantastic writer, and she’s very personable, but the book itself doesn’t seem to have much heart like the previous book. It delves into the marital issues and into the nitty gritty of the restaurant, dipping into things but never really fleshing them out. I’m guessing this is due to it being of a personal nature.Molly touches in the book about the lack of recipes, because it sort of morphs into this on its own, even surprising her. But there really is a super limited run of them. I would have appreciated more recipes associated with the pizza-making experience, even if very little other recipes were given. Most of the recipes (and again, Molly touches on this in the beginning) were simple in nature and often something a friend would make for them, because there simply wasn’t a lot of time while running around trying to open the restaurant. I understand if you don’t want to give us a dough recipe, but something like a cheese recipe or maybe even a poor man’s pizza might have been fun additions, or maybe even more of Brandon’s recipes, since the moon centers around him.All in all, I liked it, and I can only hope that Molly plans on eventually writing a true blue cookbook at some point in the future. I would buy that in an instant.