By Charlie Pogacar
In 2019, Jim Mumford had to make his way from his home in Kalamazoo, Michigan, to Connecticut in a hurry. There were no available flights due to the last-minute nature of the trip, so Mumford hopped in his car for a road trip that would soon turn his world upside down.
On his way to Connecticut, Mumford ran into bad weather. An ice storm shut down the highways, and he was forced to find an alternate route through Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York. Along the way, Mumford—who has been a home chef and food blogger on his site Jim Cooks Food Good since 2018—began sampling the best pizza he could find and was blown away by the diversity of styles from town to town.
“What amazed me was how much the pizza changed every hundred miles,” Mumford told PMQ Pizza. “Cleveland was different from Youngstown, which was different from Buffalo. I started writing things down. Later, during the pandemic, I finally had time to go down the rabbit hole and try to understand these regional styles.”
This eventually led Mumford to write a book, which is due out June 24. PizzaPedia: Favorite Recipes From Across America helps the home baker experiment with the wide variety of pizza styles made across the U.S. The introduction breaks down much of Mumford’s philosophy as it pertains to home pizza making, complete with tips and techniques he’s learned over the years. The main part of the book is broken down into four different style categories—Neapolitan, Pan, Sicilian and Thin—with various regional styles listed in each chapter.
Mumford tested his recipes with members of his family. He also asked them to try to take his recipes and recreate them at home in order to figure out exactly what did—and didn’t—work for the average home baker. For example, he wanted to include recipes with sourdough starters, but received feedback that it felt like too much work to a novice.
While the book is the product of Mumford’s 2019 road trip, it was also informed by an endless list of personalities in the pizza space. During the pandemic, Mumford joined Pizza Club, a group of pizza makers and enthusiasts who hold weekly free-flowing conversations. Mumford eventually became the host of a Pizza Club podcast called Pizza Roundtable, which covers the biggest stories in the world of pizza each week. Through Pizza Club, Mumford became acquainted with all sorts of pizza pros who helped guide the way he thought about and baked his recipes.
“The pizza community is so welcoming,” Mumford said. “This book would have been good without them, but if it is at all great—or really inspirational—it’s because of all those people that I met through Michael [Fox] and Pizza Club.”
Related: Michael Fox: How the Man Behind ‘Pizza Club’ Has ‘Changed Lives Forever’
The following is a conversation with Mumford. It has been lightly edited for clarity.
PMQ: Tell me a bit about your background. What do you do professionally, and how did that lead to the healthy-yet-comforting food you make?
Mumford: My background’s in engineering—that’s still my day job—but about eight or nine years ago, I started doing recipe testing for a buddy who was writing a cookbook. I’ve always loved to cook. I grew up in a Sicilian household, so food was a big part of life. That recipe testing turned into ghostwriting, and eventually someone said, ‘You should really put your recipes on a website.’ So I did, and that’s where Jim Cooks Food Good came from. It started as the food from my kitchen—what I like to call ‘healthy comfort food.’ It’s not fussy. It’s just the food I serve at home.
PMQ: And it seems like there was a weight loss journey that connected to this idea of balance between health and comfort?
Mumford: Definitely. I played football through my teens and early twenties, but I kept eating like I was still working out four hours a day. Eventually I had to take my life back, and a big part of that was changing how I ate. I knew salads and roasted vegetables alone weren’t going to cut it. So I leaned into what I loved—cooking—and taught myself how to cook in a way that was both satisfying and sustainable. That’s really where the idea of ‘healthy comfort food’ came from. It was about food I could eat regularly and feel good about.
PMQ: So you honed your culinary chops on the side while also working in engineering. What did that actually look like?
Mumford: I literally went to restaurants and asked if I could wash dishes in exchange for learning. I lived in a suburb of Chicago, and I’d go to some of my local haunts—including a pizza place—and say, ‘Hey, it’s a Tuesday night, I’ll fill the tip jar. Can I just watch?’ Most places were happy to let me hang around. I did that for three-or-four years while also checking out every cookbook the library had. I was just trying to absorb everything I could.
PMQ: Is cooking a full-time gig for you now?
Mumford: Not quite. I’m still a chemical engineer by day. Cooking has definitely become a second job, though. Between the podcast, ghostwriting, consulting, and now this book, it’s more than a hobby at this point.
PMQ: You know, I’m not sure I’d really considered this before, but engineering and cooking seem like they’d overlap a lot. Is that fair?
Mumford: Absolutely. There’s very little difference between engineering chemicals and baking a cake. It’s ingredients, time, temperature and process. It’s just a different scale and different materials. But the logic is the same.
PMQ: I’m sitting here thinking about it…on your road trip, I’m not sure you could’ve driven a stretch of the U.S. that has more niche pizza styles than the route you took. That was kind of serendipitous, no?
Mumford: It really was. This book wouldn’t have happened without that trip. I’ve spent time in Chicago, Detroit and St. Louis, too, so I had this foundation. But driving through that ‘pizza belt’ really opened my eyes.
PMQ: The book is broken up in an interesting way, with a few major ‘style trees,’ if you will, and a bunch of subcategories. How did you decide how to categorize the styles?
Mumford: I wanted it to make sense for home cooks, so I started with equipment. What are you baking this on? What’s the dough like? Thin crust and pan pizzas are easy to visualize. Sicilian is thicker and breadier. Then there’s Neapolitan and its offshoots. There was definitely some debate—like, should New Haven be Neapolitan or not?—but I wanted the structure to tell a story. The flow from Neapolitan to New York follows the evolution of the style.
PMQ: That was one thing I noticed. Putting New York Style within the Neapolitan section… that had to be controversial. Do you think you’ll catch some flak for doing it that way?
Mumford: Oh yeah. But I tried to show the progression—Neapolitan to Neo-Neapolitan to New York. It’s a through-line. I know 100 people would categorize things 100 different ways, and that’s okay. I love the debate.
PMQ: This is a debate we’re constantly having in the background here at PMQ, but I want to know your take on the topic: What, in your opinion, makes a pizza style?
Mumford: Two things. First, it has to be made by different pizzerias, with some common factors—whether its shape, dough, cheese or technique. Second, there has to be regionality. Like Old Forge or Briar Hill—there’s a clear origin and a definable set of characteristics. Some are more amorphous, sure, but I tried to find patterns.
PMQ: You included Philly tomato pie in the Roman section. I hadn’t really thought of it that way, but it made sense to me.
Mumford: Yeah, that one surprised me too. But when you think about the dough, the texture, and where it came from, it kind of fits. I actually tested some of these categorizations with my family. I’d ask, ‘What does this remind you of?’ and they’d often come up with surprisingly accurate associations.
PMQ: You mentioned prioritizing accessibility. What were some of the choices you made to make this book approachable?
Mumford: A big one was trimming down complexity. I had starter-based doughs at first—no one wanted to do them. So I rewrote a lot of recipes to be practical. I included tips for using grills, cast iron, even upside-down sheet pans. I also spent a good chunk of the intro talking about equipment and technique so people could feel comfortable. The one non-negotiable was weighing ingredients. I tell everyone: if you measure with cups, you’re going to have a bad time. Use a scale. Please.
PMQ: How did you land a publisher?
Mumford: I had a few conversations fall through and got frustrated. I wanted a publisher who really understood niche cookbooks and understood pizza. Fox Chapel is based in Pennsylvania, which just felt like it made sense. I had read some of their books, so I decided to get their attention. I looked up a pizzeria across the street from their office, ordered 10 pizzas, taped my manuscript to the boxes and had them delivered unannounced. Two minutes later, they called me. Three years later, here we are.
PMQ: That’s an incredible part of the story. Do you have any advice for pizza professionals who want to write a book?
Mumford: Find your publisher before you get too deep. Collaborate early. Don’t write an entire manuscript and then try to shop it—especially if you’re new to publishing. Get a partner who shares your vision.
PMQ: One thing that caught my eye was the Kalamazoo style… I hadn’t heard of that one before.
Mumford: That’s because that one’s mine. I live in Kalamazoo, which is halfway between Detroit and Chicago. I wanted to mash up the best parts of Detroit (the frico), Chicago pan (the crust), and tavern style (the sauce and party cut). I didn’t expect it to work—but it does. It’s like a greatest hits pizza for the region.
PMQ: What is a style that you think is due for a breakout?
Mumford: I don’t think Sicilians have had their moment yet. Outside New York, people don’t really know what a proper Sicilian is. But I’m starting to see really good, nuanced versions come up—and with them, grandma pies too. They’re cousins, and I think they’re next.
PMQ: Jim, this has been unbelievable. Last question—what do you want people to take away from this book?
Mumford: Confidence that you can make pizza at home. That you can make a lot of different types of pizza. And that it doesn’t have to be perfect to be meaningful. Have fun. Even a ‘meh’ pizza you make with your own hands, for people you care about, is going to be incredible.
PizzaPedia: Favorite Recipes From Across America will be published June 24. You can preorder the book here.
