1.2.3. The Game of Dough & The Pursuit of Wisdom

Three quick bites to enhance your pizza game

ONE

Dough has been the biggest black hole I’ve encountered since being in the pizza industry. I’ve worked at restaurants for a long time where the dough formula was 6 cups of this, 8 scoops of this and 2 TBS of that. The results were never 100% consistent, but it always produced a similar enough outcome. This is how I came up in the pizza game.

Life is a lot like a dough recipe. If you are just blindly following a recipe somedays are going to turn out better than others.

What I learned when deep diving into bread was the amount of detail it took to continue to get the same results every day. Dough truly is a game of exacts. I learned about starters, flour mixtures, hydration, and of course, weighing ingredients instead of relying on “measuring cups.” All this gave me a clearer understanding of what I was doing. It’s why today I try to explain that A + B = C not because it’s the next letter in the alphabet but to explain the values of each ingredient, task, or responsibility. I wish someone had told me how dough worked so I wasn’t just now cutting the top of the iceberg in my late 30’s.

TWO

Check out this Gluten Free Dough recipe that will blow the socks off of anything you have made before.

THREE

“Wisdom is not a product of schooling but of the lifelong attempt to acquire it.”

Albert Einstein

I am reminded everyday about how much I do not know, as a chef, business owner, husband, father, and friend. It’s truly the biggest blessing and the most exciting part of life to wake up and have the opportunity to be better at those things every day.

EXTRA SLICE: Learning the hard way every time can usually be avoided, but it can also be a gift.

Love, crust and pizza dust,
 
Alex

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