Father Dominic Garramone knows all about pizza snobs, people who loudly insist that only certain ingredients belong on a pizza. He is not a pizza snob. “I don’t particularly care for Provel, but I don’t look down my nose at it.
I don’t care for barbecue pizza or pineapple on pizza, but if you want to put that on your pizza I’m not going to look at you like you’re a barbarian,” he says. “As someone who puts sherry cream sauce and grape halves on a pizza, I’m in no position to look down on anyone else for their choices.” Garramone is out with a new book, “Thursday Night Pizza,” with more than 50 recipes for pizza, pizza dough, pizza sauce and other pizza-adjacent foods.
It’s actually the second edition of a book that first came out in 2010, but with one new chapter and at least 20 more recipes. Garramone is also a monk at St. Bede Abbey in Peru, Illinois, a hundred miles southwest of Chicago.
He is the chaplain and head of the religion department at the high school run by the monastery, St. Bede Academy. He is a pizza-baking Benedictine monk, and in some circles he is something of a minor celebrity.
Twenty-five years ago, he had a show on KETC (Channel 9), St. Louis’ public television station. “Breaking Bread with Father Dominic” ran for three seasons and then another three seasons in reruns.
At a time when most Americans only knew about a few types of bread, the show revealed how to bake examples from around the world. “I’m more likely to ma.