The Pizza
There have been many occasions on this blog throughout the years where I have compared my two most profoundly important methods of creativity: writing and cooking. Of course, the writing goes off into fiction, poetry, screenplays, non-fiction articles, blog posts, and just about any other form of written expression. Cooking includes baking, pastry and candy making, and craft cocktails. But there was one time, last year, when I approached the closest approximation of both.
I created a completely homemade pizza.
Now, wait, before I lose you to uncertainty and confusion, allow me to expand on this (and show you some photos to boot). When all the lockdowns were occurring during the pandemic, I continued to write. Not doing so would have been far more depressing than the circumstances themselves. However, I took my cooking to a new level.
A few years prior, I purchased a KitchenAid® stand mixer. I had been baking bread for years and was starting to feel entirely too arthritic to knead dough. I learned there was a meat grinder attachment as well as a pasta extruder. So, I’m thinking, I’d already invested in the stand mixer and these two attachments were a few dollars more and, well, that’s all the motivation I needed.
I played around with various pasta recipes and styles. I baked more kinds of breads than ever before. I started making muffins and cupcakes. And, to try to continue on a pattern of healthy eating, I made a variety of sausages out of chicken. There was a breakfast sausage, a bratwurst, an Andouille style sausage, a personal recipe, and, of course, Italian sausage.
That’s when the idea occurred to me that I had most of the makings for a pizza. I had come across a whole-wheat rosemary pizza dough recipe that I had made before. From an abundant crop of tomatoes from family and friends, I made a fantastic marinara sauce using my Instant Pot®. All that was missing was cheese. I was looking for something without rennet but the mozzarella recipe turned out to be closer to cream cheese than a nice chewy mozz.
In the picture, you can see all the homemade ingredients. Included as well are some homegrown tomatoes and freshly grown basil. The dough, being whole-wheat, took some effort to roll out to a thin crust. But after all the work thus far, what was a little more elbow grease.
In this picture, you can see the pizza put together before final baking. I was not trying to achieve a thickly adorned pie in which the ingredients would fall off. I also put chunks of the cheese in as many areas as possible. I knew it tasted good; I just didn’t know if it would melt well.
The final picture is, well, the dinner my wife and I had that night. I could be picky about slight, small aspects of it. But to perfectly honest, I’m not going to. This was the culmination of my years of cooking and months of experimenting. And just like ANYTHING I had ever written, it was completely created by me. Every single aspect. Every ingredient (the tomatoes and basil notwithstanding).
And I felt, after dinner, like I do when I complete the first draft of a book. Or, better yet, after all the revisions with my editor and the manuscript is ready to go to print. It is a gratification based on personal commitment and dedication. A celebration of the craft. And just as we publish a book and are satisfied, we go onto a new one.
My next forthcoming culinary adventure: A delicatessen bagel with homemade cream cheese and smoked salmon. Because, well, there aren’t any good delis in Wichita, Kansas!
Bon appétit and happy writing!
