I'd still rather make a cappuccino.

Listen, lemme tell you secret. (Keep it between us, okay?) If you asked me what the one job was I’d like to do for forever and a day, provided I made a living wage?

I’d throw dough.

Maybe that’s a bit cryptic, sorta behind-the-schenes cook lingo. What I’m trying to say is that I could happily take a well-tempered ball of dough and turn it into a beautiful base on which to build a pizza, using equal parts ninja dexterity, Mitch Williams anatomical chaos, and Jedi mind tricks, many times in an hour and for hours on end. (Let me stipulate right here that I get tickled in very nearly the same way by running a busy espresso machine, especially one as excellent as the Adonis at CapoPenn. Rhythm, repetition, result.) I’ve trained people to throw dough, and it became clear over an extended period of time and considering a wide group of subjects that, as in so many different little ways in our lives, some people can learn how to do a thing only to discover that, somehow, they always knew how to do it. Others…others have to study. And practice. And succeed once, then fail for a few weeks, then succeed in a small way again.

It’s surprisingly meditative, once you learn to toss confidently. And the bugger of it is that you’ll never get the opportunity to really throw dough unless you’re working in a pizza restaurant. If you’re making pizza with friends and/or family, you’re going to make, what, three pizzas? Maybe four? So, like a run of a couple dozen espresso drinks crafted on a true, professional machine or throwing a knee-buckling eyeball-to-kneecap curveball, throwing dough for both quality and quantity is not something you’re going to do outside of a professional setting. Which is a shame, because I think I could probably create a yoga regimen inside a pizza restaurant.

And it’s true—like people who try to pitch a baseball, some people who try to throw dough just have an intrinsic set of mechanics that provide them both towards quality and durability. On one hand you have to be able to feel the tips of your fingers and the tips of your toes simultaneously. On the other hand, the entirety of the motion has to be sufficiently organic within your being that you’re anatomically capable of doing it for long periods of time. I’ve worked with people that can spend five consecutive hours producing four identical pizza crusts every minute. I’m not quite that good. I can only throw three crusts a minute, though my stamina is second-to-none.

So no, Capogiro doesn’t make pizza. And sometimes I get a little nostalgic for ending a shift coated in an arguably unappetizing layer of sweaty flour. But knowing that I work with people who use similar Jedi mind tricks to produce the awesomeness that is our gelato? Highly satisfying.

So the outdoor seating’s out. Our mangoes are back, and so are our starfruit. The Bluecoat and Blueberry Sorbetto is right around the corner. Sure it may snow again, but we all know that’s a temporary hiccup. The weather’s warming, the sun’s out more…it’s a good time to be at Capogiro, even if we don’t make pizza. Yet.