This is kind of a different post but in the end you will be rewarded with a very yummy recipe for deep dish pizza dough courtesy of Matt Broussard. So if you don’t want to read about the world of creative collaboration, feel free to scroll to the bottom.
Still with me? Ok let’s talk about a really weird but fun part of my job. Occasionally, more so now than ever, I get the chance to collaborate with other creatives. Usually it’s just one or two other people, maybe a photographer or other blogger, but this time it was with a bunch of other creatives. Photographers, a stylist, a cook, a business coach, another fashion blogger. All people who do different stuff than what I do, well ok Megan the fashion blogger does similar stuff, but you catch my drift. A bunch of different individual projects all came together and intersected around some pizza and wine on a rooftop in Seattle. And I got to be a part of it!
Sure I could flip my hair and be like, “oh I do this all the time, it’s no big deal.” But it is a big deal! At least it is for me, and I am real enough to admit that I was f***ing nervous as f***. The plan was for me to be the model for some of the wine shots. All I knew was that I needed my nails to be painted a color that looked good with wine and I needed to look modern PNW. Easy enough, right? One of my talents is that I’m pretty good at meeting new people, talking to strangers, starting conversations. Put me in a room with people I don’t know and I’ll probably have fun and likely make new friends. There’s sometimes so much excitement and energy that I have to come down from the people high when the event is over.
But before that event happens, before I get there, I’m a ball of nerves. My stomach gets twisted in knots. I wonder, “will they like me? will I have anything to say? what if they’re boring? what if I’m boring?” I agonize. And agonize I did over this collaboration. So much so that when I met Josiah, the photographer, my hands were shaking. I wanted so badly to do a good job. To some this eagerness to do well is probably a bad quality. You know, relax, chill, everything is fine. If you don’t know what you’re doing then fake it. But that’s not how I work. I wanted to be the best darn wine holder there ever was! And then we realized that wine bottles are heavy and holding up a bottle with one arm extended results in shaking.
Thankfully the photos turned out really well. And I was even able to collaborate with Josiah and take shots of him holding the bottle and direct him on how to hold the bottle which was fun and different.
What I’m trying to say is that despite all the nerves, the overthinking, the neurosis, the way things actually turned out was entirely different from the how I pictured it (a good thing). I got to model, be behind the scenes, meet new people, eat pizza, drink wine, make new collaborator friends.
And here’s what happens when you collaborate with people who have different talents or jobs than you, you learn things. You’re exposed to other people’s creativity and it inspires you. Your network expands. You realize that there’s an entire world of people you can collaborate with if you just ask. Matt, the chef, saw Megan taking pictures on the street and invited her to this pizza and wine collaboration. He didn’t know who she was, he just saw a girl getting photos taken of her outfit and said hey, you wanna come to this crazy random thing? And she did.
Our lives as creatives are weird. We spend our time writing blog posts, or doing wedding shoots, or being photographed on downtown streets, or styling gorgeous tablescapes, or video’ing a new recipe. But every so often we creatives come together and combine our talents to create something beautiful and fun, such as a wonderfully styled and delicious pizza and wine party on a rooftop in Seattle on a Monday afternoon.
Here are the people involved in this collab who you should check out and follow cause they’re cool and nice and talented. Plus the wine we were drinking is delicious:
Photography: @josiahmichael of Josiah Michael Photography – Josiah was great. He and I took a bunch of wine photos and my only regret is that we didn’t have more time to “get it right” with the table shots. Perfectionists we creatives are.
Photography: @danny.owens
Cook: @acooknamedmatt – check out his pizza recipe below.
Styling: @kalebnormanjames
Collaboration Organizer: @uncommoncartography – Esther is my business coach and the awesome person who organized this entire thing. Check out my post about her and creative coaching.
Fashion Blogger: @meganmlittle
Wine: Canoe Ridge @canoeridge // @preceptwine
Deep Dish Dough recipe courtesy of Matt Broussard
Deep Dish Dough Ingredients : Yields 1 Pizza
• 452.5 G Flour
• 112.5 G Semolina
• 340 G Water
• 107.5 G oil
• 4 G yeast
• 4 G salt
• 2 G sugar
• pinch of Turmeric (for color)
This should make one pizza. One of my great mentors and Chef passed this one down to me and its delicious.
Mix warm water, oil, yeast. Let the yeast bloom for ten minutes. With dough hook in stand mixer, combine everything and mix until it just comes together (don’t overmix!)
Fold a few times and place in a buttered container covered with plastic wrap. Let it rise overnight or for 12 hours for best flavor. Do not punch it down until an hour or so before you’re going to bake it.
Butter your pizza pan of choice and sprinkle it with cornmeal or polenta (helps it from not sticking and also rising).
Thank you to Esther for making this pizza and wine on a rooftop collaboration happen, thank you to Matt for letting me post his recipe here, thank you to Josiah and Danny for the photos.
image credit: 1,2,3,4,6 @josiahmichael of Josiah Michael Photography and 5,7,8 @danny.owens
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