We are excited to discuss another remote and relationship first event that we held recently at Informed K12. This event, the Operations and Engineering Teams got together for some pizza making!
What we did
Working with a partner organization, we were able to send all employees the ingredients needed to make their Italian style pizzas before our event. Armed with our basil, oregano and LOTS of garlic powder, our Operations and Engineering started our event by meeting a professional chef, Chef Daniela, who would guide us through the pizza making journey.
Step 1: Yeast
We started off our pizza making with creating dough from scratch using our flour and yeast. Some of us had beautiful, frothy yeast cups, others were a bit more flat (myself included). During this time, Chef Daniela answered any of our baking and yeast questions and helped troubleshoot when the yeast wasn’t behaving quite the way it should.
Step 2: Sauce and Shapes
Part two was gathering our spices and creating our sauce. Employees heated our pans and augmented any personal preferences in the sauce. While the sauce was cooking, we stretched out our dough into our pans. Our pizzas came in all shapes and sizes from the traditional round and thin New York Pizza to a ticker, more square Chicago Deep Dish preference. One trick we learned from Chef Daniela was the importance of poking holes in the bottom of the pizza to help the air escape which in turn creates a flat base. You can see these holes in the bottom of pizzas you order or buy at the store!
Step 3: Cheese, cheese more cheese and an anchovy?
Our final, and arguably most important step was adding the toppings to our pizza. Folks topped their creations with cheese, mushrooms and pepperoni. We even had an anchovy-on-pizza-as-a topping enthusiast (yikes). Cooking for about 15 minutes we finished chatting with Chef Daniela and peppered her with our burning questions about her favorite meals, cooking techniques and tips for any future pizza making.
Once the pizzas were cooled, we broke into small groups for some small team discussions and pizza comparisons.
How did it go?
See some of our creations below! We loved this event for a few reasons. First, we were able to learn or practice a new skill (dough making), see some folks on different teams we might not interact with on a daily basis and eat pizza together.
We’re always trying out new activities at Informed K12 as a group. Stay tuned for some more events and activities in our next blog posts!
