The Curse of the Craft
Some people are relentless in wanting to learn how something is done or works. At times I admire the craft for little things and I've always wanted to add dimensions to my life outside of tech, or even just tangentially to tech. As an Italian-made individual, after moving to Austin and being quarantined, I missed properly made pizza. Going from Italy to Los Angeles was a big difference but numerous places offering high-quality pizza, made me feel at home. After the move, I realized that there weren't that many options available and even less for delivery. That's when I started falling in love with dough making.
Ever since (and now it's been a few years) I've been making pizza every other weekend. In the beginning, I was experimenting so much with different flour, different water, different yeast, different temperatures, ... . And for a whole year+ I could never quite get it where I wanted. I kept chasing communities and videos to understand what was missing, until one day while trying to make dough for a different recipe, it clicked. The magic moment happened when I got it exactly right and I was finally able to understand how the doug is supposed to feel in your hands. That was a game-changer! Before that moment I didn't have a reference other than visual cues.
Since that one joyful day, I kept trying a few things to get a system of dough-making I was comfortable with at any level of hydration. If you're curious, for people not used to dough making, going over the 70% threshold makes your dough incredibly sticky and hard to work with, until you learn how to manage it. This accomplishment led to two issues: an eternal chase for perfection, and a very critical eye.
Eternal Chase for perfection
This stalked me for over a year. I was consistently dissatisfied with my pizza no matter what anyone said. Even my parents thought it was much better than some Pizzerias in Italy but I knew exactly what was still wrong and couldn't enjoy it as much. This is both good and bad, I was striving for better but I should have enjoyed my creation nonetheless. At the end of the day, up until a year prior, I had no idea how to handle dough! After the n-th pizza I was able to get less frustrated and enjoy the food.
As of today, I am quite happy with my results and I know that the only next step is to get a proper pizza oven. I hit the ceiling for dough making but I can still experiment with ingredients which keeps it fun!
The Critical Eye
This is mostly the reason why I'm writing today. Since I learned the fine details of the craft I'm often hyper-critical when I have a pizza. I'm honestly pretty laid back about it, and I enjoy my occasional Domino's. But today I noticed that I was scrolling through options available for delivery and realized that some of them would have been ok for me to order 2 years ago. Now, looking at the dough from the picture, I know it's not worth spending my money on it. I eventually found happiness in a place that looked legitimate and ended up being quite good.
Thoughts
When I was scrolling through delivery options, my mind was auto-skipping some restaurants because I knew they were poorly made pizzas. I realized that this applies to so many things beyond pizza making. Once you understand how it's made, once you learn deeply how things work, you are blinded by the incredible amount of mediocre products that are out there. While I know this sounds harsh, it's the truth and not necessarily a bad thing. Not everyone needs the absolute best-crafted anything, again I enjoy my Domino's and that's ok! Truth be told I noticed this in so many other places, like reading a beautifully written book that opens your eyes at how poorly written many others are. It's a bit of a curse because you can't stop noticing. I want to wrap this up on a positive note though. There are a few times where you get surprised, you find something so beautifully crafted that you glow in admiration. The only way you can appreciate it at a different level is because you've been through the process, and understand how much work and attention it requires. I sound a bit like a hipster but what can you do?