We’re having pizza for dinner tonight and I was making my usual pizza dough recipe from memory.

But something wasn’t right about the pizza dough. The dough was too firm too quickly. Why?

Without experience in baking I would have never known something was wrong. Bread making (pizza is just a variation on bread making) is quite a simple food to make but is so interesting because of how small changes to any ingredient or step making it can affect the final product in any number of ways. This might sound scary to non-bakers (are there any?) but bread making is so forgiving that in fact I think it is quite difficult to make something that would be inedible. There is no knead to worry (sorry).

Experience in baking allows me to forget looking at the recipes and just play until it looks, feels and smells right. There isn’t stress in doing this for me because I know I’ll be OK in the end. Also, making bread necessitates involvement of your body, and this involvement helps to lower your stress.

I re-checked the recipe to make sure I had remembered the recipe correctly (I had) and went back into the kitchen.

I kept kneading the dough when it hit me: I had added water using the Japanese measure instead of the Western measure. I’ve been making pizzas for years and years, long before I came to Japan so the measures are the Western measures.

Once I worked the remaining water into the dough, it was ready to be blessed with some olive oil and put into a plastic bag.

The dough is doing fine now and come the evening we’ll enjoy some delicious pizza for dinner. I won’t send pictures because I’m going to be too busy eating. Time to do some pizza toppings prep work.