Making good pizza¹ took longer to figure out than sourdough. Lacking an authoritative book to help build intuition, I had to mess up a lot of pizza before I was happy with my results. Getting good at most things requires messing up, but there’s two tips that would’ve helped me reach good pizza faster

Flour is your friend in the fight against accidental calzones

Many of my pizzas met their demise in the transfer from counter to oven. Scrunched up, folded over, toppings scattered messy doughy failures. Wet pizza dough would stick to the peel, preventing a smooth transfer to the oven. I tried so many tricks. Flouring the peel heavily ended up with burnt flour on the bottom of my misshapen pizza.

In a rare win for scrolling, a video of a pizzeria showed me a very obvious solution: just totally flour the dough. In a bowl of flour, pat both sides of the dough ball and then go around the edge. A very simple solution that has fixed pizza stickage for me.

You can’t turn a square dough into a round pizza

1. Build internal tension in the dough when portioning. See Brian Lagerstrom’s video for a good demonstration on how to do this.
2. When cold proofing the dough (which you should do if time allows), do not use a container that will touch the edge of the dough, distorting its shape. Whenever my dough is not a perfect circle, I’m not able to get it to be a perfect circular pizza either (see the image at the top)
3. Let the dough come up to room temperature before shaping. Cold dough springs back when stretched.
4. Pressing down and not outward is the best way to stretch out the dough. By moving your hands out in concentric rings, you’re pushing the dough out further and further. Trying to pull the dough out by force will just end up tearing the dough

I’ve been listening to new (to me) music. Here’s a few bands I wish I had found sooner, and a track of theirs to try.

Getdown Services - Dog Dribble

Relentlessly high energy unserious dancey post-punk rock.

For fans of: Daft Punk, Wet Leg

Halfmass - Back On the Horse

Noisy melodic stylish experimental rock. The album is not cohesive, jumping between its different styles without warning, but isn’t any less for doing that.

For fans of: Daughters, DEVO, Black Country New Road

friends& - Examine the hideous machineries[…]

Schizophrenic plunderphonics “new internet sound” pop(?). I’m not an enjoyer of “ironic” music generally (I get on my soapbox about how very non-ironic the pop music made by SOPHIE / Hannah Diamond / A.G. Cook is), but this album’s totally illegible insincerity means it’s easy to ignore and just enjoy for the music.

For fans of: 100 gecs, The Avalanches

I’m a few years late, but Colson Whitehead’s The Nickel Boys is an excellent book. The grim subject matter makes it tough to read at some parts, but it’s worth pushing through.