pizza night
I’ve made a lot of pizzas on my own, and Will has stretched plenty of dough too, but somehow we’d never actually made one together. So the other night, when I already had the dough fermented and a pan of sauce cooled and ready, it finally lined up.
We had some great ingredients on hand:
imported pepperoni, shredded fontina and tellegio, Calabrian chilis, fresh basil, and a block of grana padano.
Nothing fancy for the sake of it; just good ingredients that make a noticeable difference.
Will grabbed his dough ball first. He’s always more intentional than I am; neat, organized creativity. He approaches things like he’s already mapped them out in his head. I’m more of the creative mess type, doing three things at once and cleaning up none of them until the end. So seeing him stretch dough with these clean, precise movements actually made me laugh. I, of course, had flour everywhere within 30 seconds.
He shaped his pizza into a perfect circle. Mine looked like a circle that had a long day.
When it came to topping, the differences showed up again.
Will arranged the pepperoni in these even, symmetrical rings, like he was designing a diagram. He placed basil leaves with intention, grated grana padano in a controlled snowfall, added Calabrian chilis with restraint.
I scattered things more… freely. My pepperoni distribution could be described as “enthusiastic.” My grana padano went everywhere. The basil landed where it landed. The chilis looked like I sneezed them onto the dough.
Both pizzas ended up looking great, just in completely different ways; his clean and balanced, mine full of personality. The imported pepperoni curled beautifully, the mozzarella melted into that perfect glossy layer, and the grana padano gave everything the right amount of salty crisp.
When we pulled them from the oven, we both kind of stood there like, “Alright… we did something here.” And the truth is, both pizzas tasted legit. His was thoughtful. Mine was chaotic. Both worked.
It wasn’t a big emotional moment; just a solid night cooking with my best friend.
Good pizza, good ingredients, good company.
We should’ve done it a long time ago.
And we’ll definitely be doing it again.