Is your fire big enough for the pizza of 2025?

Dutch says things that surprise you. He’s often stretching pizza dough while he does it.
 
In fact, it’s just a little challenging to participate in the conversation. This big guy from New York is there, making these little pizzas. In one moment, he’s telling stories, and in the next, he’s speaking in Zen koans about pizza.
 
Just before Christmas, I was sitting there in Dutch’s pizzeria. It's called Tribecca Allie, and it’s in Sardis, Mississippi. The town is two square miles with a population of 1,696.

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I was there eating one of Dutch's Margherita pizzas, which is a baffling and beautiful pie. He asked me, "Is it as good as you remember it?" I said, "No. It's better." 

I can’t quite figure out why it’s so good, other than it has something to do with his crust. I began thinking about the first conversation Dutch and I had just over a year ago. There were some good takeaways. 

​“We keep making mistakes until we make the right one.”
 
“Pizza is an imperfect science and the beauty of it is in the imperfection.”
 
“There’s an intimacy to using the oven when you’ve made the oven yourself.” (Now I want to make my own oven.)
 
But my favorite Dutch-ism is this one:
 
“Your fire is not big enough until it scares you.”
 

Thinking back on it, this is an important point. It helps to be scared.
 
Some of the biggest things you'll accomplish in life are the product of feeling the fear and doing it anyway.
 
For instance, I've done long ocean passages in small sailboats. That includes crossing the Atlantic Ocean. Twice. All that becomes relatively easy once you learn how to borrow courage from the experts around you. (Do it very quietly and pretend the courage is yours. They don’t notice.)


As an advertising copywriter, I won some big, national advertising awards.

And every time, the advertising was enough to make me scared. And it's just advertising, friends. 
 
You create a commercial, and suddenly you feel yourself on the edge of something—on the brink, on the verge, on the cusp, on the bouncy end of the high-dive for the first time yet again.

It doesn't happen very often, but it feels that way each time, even though it’s just about words on paper. 
 
It is said that an advertisement isn’t really good unless it makes the client nervous. I think it might be equally true that it’s not a good ad unless it makes the writer nervous. Those award-winning commercials made me more nervous than they made my clients.

And that nervousness has something to do with the creative fire. You let it burn and follow it where it leads you, and you end up near an edge you hadn't anticipated. You do your best work when you're not in total control of it. 
 
 
Following this line into pizza, and following Dutch’s lead, the fire in the oven’s not big enough unless it makes the pizzaiolo nervous.
 
I’ve literally heard professional broadcasters on food shows say things like, “Oh, my God! The oven! You turn your home oven all the way up! 550 degrees! It’s so hot!“

It scares them so much, they can only marvel about the "fire" (usually an electric heating element or a regulated natural-gas flame) and profess how scared they are to try it.
 
Dude, just try it. The number 550 is on the dial for a reason. If it was hazardous, their lawyers wouldn't let them do it. And we all know lawyers are experts at cooking, especially legal pizza. 

However, do you want to do something truly frightening and stupid? Disable the self-cleaning lock, heat the oven in self-cleaning mode, and bake your pizzas at 900 degrees. (Pro Tip: DO NOT try this. It’s dangerous. If you do try it, the liability is on you for the charred, smoking remains of your kitchen.)
 
Fear of the flame is commonplace. It ranks right up there with snakes. (Can you imagine: flaming snakes? People would lose it.) I've used charcoal grills that are belching so much flame that friends in my backyard look panicked. They cower nearby and say things like, “You’re burning it, dude!“
 
Later, after the flame, they marvel at the magic of the deftly charred and succulent meats before them, their eyes rolling back in their heads at the sensational decadence of it all.

Yet the fear of flame remains.
 
 
Once upon a time, there was my own pizza of revelation.
 
The full-on, home-oven oven bake at 550 degrees was never quite as daunting as the 1,200 pounds of Earthstone woodfired dome I used to have in my kitchen.
 
The first time I stoked that oven to almost 1,000 degrees, it was a revelation.
 
The pizza of revelation was one of the few pizzas I remember distinctly out of the 1,000+ pizzas I’ve made over 20 years.

Making that pizza of revelation is the kind of thing that can show you just how much control you don’t have. (Or how much hair on your arms you don’t have after you reach inside the oven. Or how much eyebrow hair you don’t have if you lean too close. Ever turned your bangs into clouds of ash? I have. Pat your head and it poofs into little puffy gray clouds. And your hairdresser can do nothing for you. She just laughs. You must wear that haircut as a badge of honor. In fact, I'm doing it right now. I'm standing arms akimbo with mangy-looking bangs.)
 

Come to think of it, isn’t Revelation the book in The Bible that frightens everyone?

The Four Horsemen Of The Apocalypse and all that? Here’s a tip: if you dig a little, you learn that the Third Horseman, who’s carrying the scales, is apparently a food merchant. Who knew? And was pizza ever involved?
 
The Book Of Revelation also has the alternate title "Apocalypse," a word that we use as a synonym for catastrophe.
 
But according to a professor at Yale, when going by the word’s Greek roots, a story of apocalypse is meant to interpret present, earthly circumstances and influence both understanding and behavior.
 
 
Bring on the Pizzapocalypse!
 
As in life, great pizza is a balancing act.
 
On one side of the balance beam is the shoreline of the kitchen counter. If you fall there, you’ll be safe.
 
On the other side of the balance beam is a lake of fire. Fall there, and it’s all over.
 
Except…
 
 
WHAT is all over?
 
Your life?
 
The lives of your children?
 
Your fortune?
 
Your perfect Wordle score?
 
None of the above.
 
 
What will be over is that particular pizza in that moment.
 
And you’ll move onto the next pizza, perhaps with just a bit more insight.
 
Feel the fear and do it anyway.
 
It’s just a pizza.
 
And the way to make great pizza is with a fire that scares you--even if it's just making the oven a little hotter.


And maybe this fire isn't even literal. Maybe your oven doesn't need to be hotter. Maybe it's about yourself and the fire within. 
 
Whatever. This is all how I’m interpreting something Dutch said while making a pizza.
 
He may think I’m nuts.

(He had no idea I was going to write any of this. I hope he doesn't ban me from my occasional forays into Sardis. Maybe I'll have to order through a proxy.) 
 
 
Thank you for following Free The Pizza in 2024.
 
You’ve helped move the needle here in great ways this year. Our audience is 500% larger than a year ago. And a user like you is the reason. 
 
Here’s to a fire in 2025 that’s big enough to scare us all into being our best pizzaioli selves. Let it light up the better angels of our pizza nature, especially if pepperoni is involved.
 
A belated Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Kwanzaa, and here’s to a fruitful 2025.
 
If you’d like to read more about Dutch, you can see the original story about his unusual and award-winning North Mississippi pizzeria by clicking this link.

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Want to make pizza in a way that makes you feel in control? You'll find all the simple steps to homemade pizza magic right inside my weird and award-winning pizzamaker’s manual, Free The Pizza: A Simple System For Making Great Pizza Whenever You Want With The Oven You Already Have. If you’re just beginning your pizza-making journey, this book is a convenient place to start because it doesn’t force you to make any decisions beyond making a pizza. It’s simply a step-by-step guide for getting from zero to pizza and amazing your friends and family. Learn more right here. ​ ​ ​