For several years, when our girls were younger, I decided it would be fun to make Fridays homemade-pizza night for our family. Years before that, my husband and I discovered the Boboli brand pizza crusts and used those occasionally. We also thoroughly enjoyed delivery-pizza as well as pick up options from the likes of Papa Gino’s (in New England), Papa Johns (in Kentucky and now North Carolina), and the quick standby of Domino’s (where David worked part time when we were paying down debt). But when the girls came into our little family, I thought homemade pizza options might be more fun. It was, and for quite a while, pizza dough rising was a regular part of our Fridays.
However, as I’ve written about in previous posts in this series, our girls have been through cycles of restrictive diets and at some point I cannot pinpoint, homemade pizza nights faded from our Friday routine. Still, it makes an appearance from time to time, and I always embrace it when it does. Call it nostalgia, but when I mix up the dough or when I’m rolling it out on the pan, my brain, or maybe it’s my heart, calls to mind so many of the other times I’ve done these same motions and, even more, the times my youngest helped me make the pizzas.
Recently, she joined me again in the pizza preparations, and it was for me a lovely moment of connecting. For me, food has always been one of the ways of bringing people together. We’ve all read those stories, or maybe we have one of those family members, like a grandmother, whose love language is cooking and baking food for family and friends. There is something lovely in that generational practice that echoes the rhythms of times past. Those times when breaking bread together, of gathering around a table to share a meal and conversation, helped strengthen community and repair relationships. Making pizza dough provides a similar sense of belonging and opportunity to me.
Perhaps it is in the ways making homemade pizza dough requires us to slow down, to make time for one another and for what matters. I enjoy the process and the way it ties me to my people. It requires effort and a commitment; unlike ordering delivery, putting together the dough demands my attention to my day as well as my family because the dough needs a few hours to proof and the oven time to preheat for at least an hour.
But beyond any of this, what I love about choosing to make pizza for my family is their delight—they genuinely prefer my pizza to any other. For a while, Pizza Hut ran ads declaring that no one out-pizzas the Hut. My girls talked back to that commercial every time it played, announcing with great enthusiasm, “Mama, you definitely out-pizza Pizza Hut!” Whether it was pizza purchased for a school event in their class or if they’ve tried another pizza option, they return to their refrain that my pizza truly is the best pizza.
Who doesn’t want to be lauded in their teens’ eyes? Who doesn’t want to hear their teenagers declare to whoever will listen that their mom is the best at something? They still sing the praises of my pizza. Even when there are more options, at least for my 16 year old, who will eat pizza from at least one other place when she and her dad head out for a music bingo night. I don’t always get things right as consistently as I would like (did you read yesterday’s post??), but one thing I can get right every single time? Homemade pizza. And that is worth the time, energy, and planning because they are worth those things. Every single time.