Pizza University & Culinary Arts Center — Local services in Beltsville

I just finished Pizza University's 3-Day Intensive class “Bridging the World of Pizza from Italy to New York” taught by Maestro Leo Spizzirri, and it was truly something!

The facility itself is top-notch, featuring a variety of high-end pizza ovens from Marra Forni, excellent kitchen space, an excellent support staff and all the pizza making materials you could ask for.

Most of the students in my class were professional chefs and restaurant owners, but there were also a number of home cooks looking to up their pizza game.

We also had a series of presentations and samplings from purveyors of pizza ingredients including manufacturers and importers of flours, tomato products, cheeses, and vinegars. It was something to sample half a dozen mozzarellas, several different ricottas, and a taste flight of more than a dozen Italian imported vinegars!

But for me the real highlight was Master Pizzaiolo Chef Leo himself. He says if you were to cut him he'd bleed tomato sauce and mozzarella, and I believe it. He has a huge wealth of experience making pizza, and he really is great at explaining it -- he really wants you as his student to understand the fine details of the art of pizza making. We spent much of the three days just learning about how different flours, dough recipes and ingredients, oven temperatures, and dough mixing and handling techniques all come together to form a unique finished product.

This course was pretty intense, but I'd highly recommend it to anyone who is seriously...

Pizza University class with Business 101 is an incredible immersion into the pizza business, products, techniques and tutoring by Marra Forni Chefs, led by world class Master Pizzaiolo Giulio Adriani.

The art and craft of Pizza through history, trial and error, jubilations and heartache of opening a store with real economical expectations are expertly illustrated and applied by the entire team.

The class is structured in that you learn hands on with top quality ingredients, mixing, resting, shaping, proofing various doughs with flours and recipes that enable one to craft their style of pizza and oven style.

The Culinary Center presents classic Neapolitan Dome ovens with Gas, Wood, or electric fuel, the Static Deck surface or Revolutionary Rotator Deck for any beginner to expert to hone their skills. The electrical stacked oven combinations with stone hearths provide configurations to meet demands or stack for growth.

Pizza University not only has master instructors, they partner with food growers and manufacturers to present tastings and comparisons; fresh mozzarella making demos and the partners themselves take the class to better educate themselves.

Pizza University is a must resource for anyone interested in Pizza. From the home Pizzaiolo to the Brick and Mortar...

Pizza making is my now avocation (fast becoming an obsession) in retirement. With a large Neapolitan Pizza Oven in my backyard and friends and family for whom I love to cook...it was time to up my game. A three-day intensive at PU was nirvana for me and I learned so much about the history, science and extensive hands-on work with flours, doughs, toppings, ovens and so much more. Hats off to the Marra Forni team who created and sustain PU, and especially to the three co-instructors who were always so eager to help every student (professional, aspiring, or just a backyard pizzaiolo like myself). Hats off the world class expertise, insights and coaching to excellence of Peter Reinhart (Pizza Quest), Leo Spizzirri(Ask Chef Leo) and Scott Wiener (Scott's Pizza Tours), Would highly recommend any of the PU courses to anyone along their pizza making journey. Gained three pounds in three days, but the sharing of pizza creations across the class was so worth the pizza deprivation diet that necessarily...