Jeff Varasano

Just did, and I'm mentioning that here so the OP won't get multiple correction votes. :)

Nevertheless, I don't really agree with fleitz. Haphazardly throwing cheese, sauce, and pepperoni together on dough never makes good pizza (in my not so unbiased opinion as a New Yorker). While good pizza recipes obviously require trial and error to get there, they need to be built on a foundation of deep understanding. See http://www.varasanos.com/PizzaRecipe.htm to get a feel for how difficult it actually is to make good pizza. You can have a successful business without a great product if your location and marketing are good, but I would not be happy running a successful software business that didn't sell good software. So I'm focusing this post on the quality of the business's product, not on how much revenue it makes. While you don't have to be the smartest person in the room to build a great product, you would need to be a great founder and be very good at surrounding yourself with smart people and knowing how to make them operate at their smartest, knowing which suggestions to follow, etc. Average founders almost never luck out completely (and stay successful) and in the specific case of pizza, the New Yorker in me doesn't believe that's possible. :)

That being said, the original OP (I know that seems redundant) was talking about the person with the fewest specific skills, not the least intelligent. Most great founders probably have intelligence or skills, if not both.

Many of my favorite websites from the old Internet were exactly this, and I think it's sort of a shame that I can no longer find sites like that with Google. For example, I once read a site about this person's journey for the perfect pizza dough. It was obviously a labor of love and he had tried tons of permutations and research into the topic. The site was very web 1.0, presumably doesn't have great SEO, but the guy had better, more in-depth information than anything in the first several pages of the Google search results.

ALL THE TIME when I'm researching topics, I'll think about how there is probably someone out there for whom it's their one true passion, and they have probably put up a little website on some corner of the Internet with more research and depth than 1000 well SEOd blog sites, but it's completely impossible to find.

Edit: I found the pizza website, it was halfway down the second page of google's search results. I only clicked it because it was the only one without a picture http://www.varasanos.com/pizzarecipe.htm

> he bakes those at 825F (440 °C), which unfortunately is unattainable with most regular home ovens

He was using a regular home oven, subverting the cleaning cycle: "The cabinet of most ovens is obviously designed for serious heat because the cleaning cycle will top out at over 975 which is the max reading on my Raytec digital infrared thermometer. The outside of the cabinet doesn't even get up to 85F when the oven is at 800 inside. So I clipped off the lock using garden shears so I could run it on the cleaning cycle. I pushed a piece of aluminum foil into the door latch (the door light switch) so that electronics don't think I've broken some rule by opening the door when it thinks it's locked. ..."

Scroll down to "4- The Oven" in http://www.varasanos.com/PizzaRecipe.htm

Impressive dedication, which he eventually turned into a restaurant: http://www.varasanos.com/

> Edit: I found the pizza website, it was halfway down the second page of google's search results. I only clicked it because it was the only one without a picture http://www.varasanos.com/pizzarecipe.htm

You can argue that this article is a case of the system working fairly well at surfacing high quality content. When I searched for "New York Pizza Recipe" this result came half way down page one.

Sure, there are other "high domain authority" listings on that page too, but this is an example of Google listing a well researched, in depth original post from a little known site on the basis of the strength of its content, even with quite minimal on page SEO.

You can argue about whether that's the right term to be optimizing for, but it's the term the writer chose to optimize for as it's the title of the page.

I have the Kettle Pizza with Baking Steel, and honestly, it's garbage. It's not worth the effort to set up once a week to get mediocre, not very repeatable results. Pretty sure I've ruined my Weber Kettle by using it too.

I got a RoccBox last summer (after watching Kenji's review videos) and it's freaking amazing. It's not much more effort to setup. So easy to just turn on the gas and wait for it to heat up.

I've been making VPN-ish style pizzas for 10 years at home and have a lot of experience with gadget and tips and tricks, and the Kettle Pizza just seemed too gimicky after I got it, and tried it once. Was honestly disappointing I spent so much money on it.

This is my go-to guide: http://www.varasanos.com/PizzaRecipe.htm ; Jeff is a great guy; talked with him for few minutes in ATL.

I highly suggest this recipe (From here: http://www.varasanos.com/PizzaRecipe.htm)

Ingredient (grams) 1 Pie 3 Pied 5 Pies
Filtered Water 110 330 550
King Arthur Bread flour 168 510 850
Kosher or Sea Salt 6 18 30
Sourdough yeast culture 15 45 60
Instant Dry yeast 0.5 1.5 2.5

All ingredients into mixer except 25% of flour.
Mix on lowest speed for 1-2 minutes or until completely blended.
Cover and Let it rest for 20 minutes.
Start Mixing on Low speed for 8 minutes. 5 minutes into it start adding held back flour gradually.
Mix for 1 more minute

Divide in to 300g balls and either let raise warm (3-10 hours) or cold (2-7 days).