It is not unusual for old
and rare cookbooks to fetch handsome prices. Even some new
cookbooks, like the multi-volume set of Modernist
Cuisine, cost several hundred dollars. However, a recently
released tome about pizza may be setting a record for the most
expensive new cookbook. The extremely limited edition Pizza
from Scratch (available through the NYC bookstore Kitchen Arts & Letters) is selling for a
whopping $2,400 USD.
Pizza from Scratch is no ordinary book. Only 40
copies have been produced, and each one is handmade by artist David
Esselmont. Esselmont's current passion for food and
cooking have lead to a string of "food" books - visual narratives
that include Pizza from
Scratch, Taxi Driver
Curry and his prize-winning Chili:
a recipe.
For his latest work, Esselmont tells the story,
in woodcuts and linocuts, of how he literally grew a pizza on his
farm in rural Iowa. Wholly embracing the farm-to-table movement, he
grows wheat, garlic, tomatoes and basil; designs and builds an
adobe clay oven (scale plans are included in the book); gives
instructions on how to make the dough, tomato sauce and mozzarella
cheese; fire up the oven, assemble the pizza and cook
it. "There is something magical about cooking
in a wood-fired oven: the rolling flames, searing heat and
tantalizing aromas are quixotic. If you've grown the ingredients,
and harvested the tomatoes and basil that afternoon - the flavors
will be out of this world," he says.
Each of the 40 copies is hand printed from the original blocks.
There are thirty-six images in the book, plus the plans for the
pizza oven. Five volumes were bound in goatskin and have already
been sold (for $4,800 USD each). All the images are available
separately as individual prints. Printed in editions of no more
than fifty copies they vary in price from $120 to
$700. You can learn more about the book at Kitchen Arts & Letters, and at the author's website.