The right ingredients: Valley 101 talks to the farmers behind Chris Bianco's famous pizza

Anyone who knows pizza or even knows Arizona cuisine knows Chris Bianco.

Bianco skyrocketed to fame when his pizza became world-renowned, making Phoenix an unexpected go-to destination for foodies worldwide.

Back in 2003, he was the first pizza maker ever to win the James Beard Award for Best Chef Southwest. Bianco is often referred to as the father of the modern pizza movement.

Twenty years later, he’s still winning awards. As recently as last year, Bianco collected a James Beard Award for Best Restaurateur.

But what makes his pizzas so good?

For this week's episode of Valley 101, a podcast by The Arizona Republic and azcentral.com, we traveled the state visiting the farmers who work with Chris Bianco and discovered just how rich Arizona’s agricultural industry is.

Listen to the episode:

Listen to Valley 101 on your favorite podcast app or stream the full episode below.

Click here to submit questions you have about metro Phoenix. We look for your suggestions for our upcoming podcasts.

Note: Valley 101 is intended to be heard. But we also offer an AI-translated transcript of the episode script. There may be slight deviations from the podcast audio.

Follow Valley 101 and all Arizona Republic and azcentral.com podcasts on Twitter and Instagram.

Listen to Valley 101

Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Stitcher. Turn on notifications to be alerted when a new episode is released.

Reach producer Logan Stanley at lstanley@gannett.com and on Twitter @LSscribe.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Valley 101 podcast: The Arizona farmers behind Pizzeria Bianco