On Failure
Recently, one of our friends shared an excerpt from The Pizza Book that resonated with him, and due to the large number of retweets, it seemed to strike a chord. When we were writing the book, we really wanted to keep the perspective one that was intensely personal and real. We wanted to keep it reflective of who we were and that meant we were approaching this as people, just like anyone else, who started knowing very little and eventually, with a lot of mistakes in between, got a lot better. Also, we swear a lot (so far only one person other than our mothers has complained about the foul language in the book). Here are our full words of encouragement, excerpted from the book:
You’re going to fuck up some pizzas.
We wish someone sat us down, looked us in the eye and told us that before we went on this journey. There were a couple times when propelled into a fit of rage, pizza peel thrown across the room, tomato sauce splattered against the kitchen floor, we honestly regretted ever even trying to make homemade pizza. The failure of a single pie extended to our entire existence.
What is it about the simple act of dropping a pizza that can cause an existential crisis?
AQ had a particularly harrowing encounter with imperfection. He carefully made the dough, waited patiently for several days, did all the necessary prep work, and had a plan for a perfect meal. Then disaster struck: the pizza ended up lying half-folded over on the black and white checkered kitchen tile, and all of AQ’s hopes for success collapsed into that half-baked mozzarella inferno. Disappointment wasn’t the root feeling. The inability to conquer the making of a simple pizza somehow was a sign of a deeper intrinsic weakness. He thought: “I am a failure.”
So AQ got angry. He started yelling, throwing his hands up, and tossing his tools around. He was angry at his own feelings of inadequacy, but he blamed those feelings on everyone and everything around him.
It took a while to recover and make pizza again, but the urge crept back and the next time AQ made pizza it came out better.
That wasn’t the last time either of us screwed up. Over the past eight years it’s happened more times than we would like to admit, and it even happened while we made the pizzas for the photos in this book.
What we learned along the way is that messing up is not actually a sign that we are shitty bakers (or worse). These incidents are reminders that sometimes you fail (we’re guessing that people who play competitive sports as kids learn this lesson sooner, but we will admit that we were more indoor kids). Failure isn’t something that you need to conquer and “defeat,” rather failure is part of being successful at whatever you’re trying to do, especially when there are many variables involved beyond your control.
Over time our pizza disasters have become fewer and far between. Practice makes us better. Our higher success rates stem from observation. We’ve learned to document every detail of the process. Our goal is to try to share as many of those details with you, but we know your pizza making success will come from becoming aware of all of the subtle aspects of the craft. You’re going to fail at least a couple of times no matter what, and we’re here to tell you that not only is that OK but it means you’re on your way to learning more.
Enough with being sappy, let’s go make some pizza.
