Make Your Own Inspiration – and Pizza

I’ve been painfully uninspired lately.

Such a morose and dramatically artistic thing to say, right? But it’s true.

I’m not sure if it’s the darker days or the looming new year, but something in the air has me feeling extremely URGENT in wanting to create and plan for what lies ahead and yet at the same time, entirely tapped out from an exhausting year of major shifts.

Usually in these bouts, my instinct is to find a change of scenery.

It’s one of my brattier — or perhaps we lean back into this term artistic — traits, but I find it challenging to feel open to inspiration when I feel too stuck in a single set of surroundings.

Whatever you want to call it, there’s no denying that a bit of movement stimulates our best ideas.

Sometimes this means dining in a new space, walking down a unexpectedly stunning street, or creating our own beauty at home with a new vignette or styled stack of books by the desk.

At the same time though, there’s tension within this part of the process.

In the low, uninspired times, this desire to move shifts to an internal pressure, which has the opposite effect on creativity. There is a nuanced difference between absorbing inspiration and consuming content to a detriment.

I wish this post could teach you (and me) the balance between the two, but this is simply an overly-poetic lead-in to a delicious pizza recipe and a few poorly-lit photos of our little family unit cooking dinner on a Sunday evening.

It’s the artist in me, you know?

Making pizza at home was, oddly, the recipe for inspiration I needed.

On the heels of our recent trip to New York we decided to stay in for an entire weekend — and for the first time in a long time, I focused on releasing the urge to MOVE in favour of making something beautiful out of what has been right in front of us.

Keep scrolling to get our recipe for DIY pizza dough, insight into the deepest depths of our souls (AKA, our pizza toppings of choice) and hopefully a little reminder that whatever you’re looking for is already right here… you just might have to make some pizza at home to find it.

INGREDIENTS

DOUGH

1 1/2 cups warm water
1 tablespoon sugar
2 teaspoons active dry yeast
1 teaspoon salt
3 cups flour (plus extra for workspace)

TOPPINGS

Of course, this will depend on personal preference, but here’s what we went with:

Frank – Red sauce, fresh mozzarella, spinach, mushroom, red onion, pepperoni, fresh basil
Xanthe – Red sauce, spinach, ricotta, mushroom, red onion, jalapeño, fresh basil
Sandy – Red sauce, fresh mozzarella, red pepper, mushroom, black olives, parmesan, fresh basil

INSTRUCTIONS

DOUGH

Combine warm water, sugar, and yeast in a bowl. Let stand for 5 minutes until foamy.
Add salt and flour. Mix thoroughly. Knead dough on a floured workspace about 20 times and form into a tight ball. Put dough in a well oiled bowl and cover with a damp towel.
Put in a warm place to rise for minimum 1 hour.

ASSEMBLY

Preheat oven to 500F
Roll and stretch the dough to about 1/4 inch thickness and press into greased baking sheet
Add the toppings (sauce + cheese first, usually, but we won’t tell you how to live your life)
Once topped to perfection (save the fresh parm + basil for post-bake, if you’re going that route) pop it in the pre-heated oven
Bake for 15-18 minutes, turning halfway (but keep an eye on it because we forgot to keep track of this part).