I made 200 pizza and 2 zines

Last year (2021 our year of Luigi), I made a goal to make 200 pizza in my home oven, and now I’m really good at making pizza. I love to eat but I hate to cook, although za is an exception because it feels more like a ✨craft✨ than a chore.

What I love is really dialing in my technique and process to my home tools (baking steel, bottom-heating oven) and za preferences (infinite cheese! infinite garlic!). Controversially, I don’t think you need an expensive fancy pizza oven to make ridiculously good za, what’s more important is that you reflect on and adjust your technique (like projecting a climb), and you make a LOT of pizza (send, send, send).

I have condensed my eldritch za wisdom into two single-sheet-of-paper zines, so that you can glean the skills without first messing up 200 pizza! JK it’s actually more about the za you make and eat along the way, but maybe these will still be of interest to you:

>ZA ZINE: dough

I document my pizza dough process

This is how I make the dough, time the rise, and shape it into the cheese delivery disk we know and love. Physical version, download/print version.

She wants!

Mica using the handy dough recipe look-up chart

>ZA ZINE: recipes

I made this za-shaped zine filled with the top pizza recipes I kept coming back to!

Pizza zine staying cool

You can get me to mail you a physical copy, or you can try to print and assemble it yourself: download link. (I’m sending you there in hopes that you will tip me for the grueling and ungratifying effort of documenting and streamlining the assembly steps so people who aren’t me can figure it out by themselves, but if you want to get it without putting in your email (which I will do nothing with), just message me and I’ll send it to you directly).

That's not a real za!!

>ZA ZINE assembly instructions

This one isn’t like your usual zine. Follow the steps carefully and soon a za will be beaming encouragingly at you.

1. Print out the zine. Make sure you use these settings:

   • two-sided ✓
   • orientation: landscape
   • auto-rotate ✓
   • scale: 100%
   • layout-> two-sided: short-edge binding

2. It should look like this, otherwise the back page is flipped the wrong way and it won’t assemble correctly:

   

3. Cut it into 4 pieces. If you’re cutting with scissors, I recommend folding it in half both ways first, then cutting along the folds.

   

   

4. Fold each piece in half. There’s a hint at the bottom corners above the page numbers which say “out” on the sides that should be folded facing out.

   

5. Arrange the pages in order, using the page numbers to help you. Align pages by the bottom, then staple in the middle of the fold, with the cover facing you (the pizza face should be staring at you)

   

   Stapling the zine

6. Cut out the za shape. A trick I like is using a binder clip to keep the pages flat and flush while cutting. Cut on the INSIDE of the dotted lines! I don’t want to see any dotted lines on a za!

   

7. It’s done! enjoy your za zine \o/