Pizza pockets + the modern wellness industry
A deep dive into wellness, and a deep dive into cheesy pizza goodness
Hello and welcome to Good Book/Good Bread! I’ve been on a fiction kick lately, with Broken Country, Camp Zero, Isola and Summer Sisters taking up space on my bedside table. My first love however, will always be non-fiction, so I couldn’t resist diving into this issue’s book. I love being the beneficiary of someone else’s multi-year journey exploring a specific topic. In this case, it’s Amy Larocca’s foray into the wellness industry, a $3.7 billion behemoth that has found its way into every part of our lives. I hope you enjoy the review below, and the delightfully un-well bread I baked to go with it.
Plus: I’ve launched a bread baking YouTube channel! 👇
Good Book: How to Be Well: Navigating our Self-Care Epidemic, One Dubious Cure at a Time by Amy Larocca (2025)
How to Be Well in a Nutshell
In How to Be Well: Navigating Our Self-Care Epidemic, One Dubious Cure at a Time, Amy Larocca takes an investigative look at the massive wellness industry and how it’s taken over everything from our diets to our beauty routines. She dives into all kinds of wellness fads—like juice cleanses, charcoal toothpaste, and expensive supplements—calling out the sketchy science and marketing tricks behind them. Larocca also explores how these trends often play on our insecurities, especially targeting women, and how they’re really just the latest version of the beauty industry selling us stuff we don’t need.
Instead of offering another how-to guide for being your “best self,” Larocca’s book calls out how wellness has become a luxury lifestyle more than anything else. She points out that most of what’s being sold as “health” is only really available to people who can afford it. With humor and insight, she encourages readers to question the hype and think more critically about what wellness really means—and what actually makes us feel good.
How to Be Well in Three Words
Funny, shocking, sharp
What I liked about How to Be Well
1. Shows the repackaging of the wellness industry
One argument in How to Be Well that really resonated with me is how the modern wellness industry is essentially just the diet and beauty industry, re-packaged as earthy, wholesome, and healthy. I grew up in the heyday of women’s magazines, when a constant dialogue on the virtue of thinness and a narrow definition of beauty seemed normal. Larocca shows how a lot of the marketing we now see around wellness is really just that same industry rebranded in a more palatable way.
2. Use of humour
The wellness industry is overwhelmingly sincere. And understandably so: people are trying to feel better and improve themselves. However, I enjoyed the levity that Larocca brought to the topic. She tries and reports on a vast range of wellness practices and fads—a $2k full body scan, visiting luxury doctors’ offices, coffee enemas, Ashwagandha smoothies—and finds the comedy in each while exploring the validity of their health claims.
3. Look at undiagnosed chronic illness
I appreciated the section in How to Be Well that looked at the great lengths people will take to find relief from undiagnosed chronic illnesses. I think it can be easy as a healthy person to look at those trying “dubious cures” and write them off. But Larocca gives us the perspective of those who have been sick for years, with doctors either unable to give them a clear diagnosis, or in some cases, disregarding their experiences. I came away with an understanding that when your everyday state is feeling terrible, you might be willing to try anything that might help you regain a sense of normalcy and control over your body.
Good Bread: Homemade Pizza Pockets
Reading a 300-page book covering all of the ways our modern society can help us be well really just made me want to eat some pizza. And no, not a cheese-less pizza with kale and a nut-flour dough. I wanted a simple white flour dough, tomato sauce, and cheddar cheese, and for it to be in pizza pocket form. This recipe below is very nostalgic for me, but a great improvement on the frozen-microwave ones that invariably scorched my tongue as a kid. Scroll below the recipe for a video walkthrough of the process!
Recipe for pizza pockets
Makes 12 pizza pockets
Ingredients
Dough:
2 cups warm water
4 1/2 tsp instant active yeast
1 tbsp sugar
5 cups white all purpose flour
1 tbsp kosher salt
2 tbsp olive oil, plus 1/2 tsp more for oiling bowl
1 egg for egg wash
Filling:
1 cup tomato sauce
450 grams of cheddar cheese (or any other cheese of your choice)
Roughly chopped basil
Place parchment paper on two cookie sheets.
Combine the 2 cups of warm water, 4 1/2 tsp instant active yeast, and 1 tbsp sugar in a bowl. Stir and let sit for ten minutes until surface is foamy.
Add 5 cups white all purpose flour to a large mixing bowl. Whisk in salt.
Add yeast mixture to flour mixture. Mix until a shaggy dough forms.
Roll out and knead on a lightly floured surface for 5 minutes, until the surface of the dough is smooth and springy. Lightly oil a bowl, and place dough inside. Let rise in a warm place for 45 minutes - 1 hour, until doubled in size.
Roll out dough on lightly floured surface. Use a knife or bench scraper to cut into 12 roughly equal sized pieces. Roll each piece into a ball. Take a ball, press down with your palm to flatten. Use a rolling pin to roll it into a disc about 5 inches across.
Add 1-2 tbsp of tomato sauce to disc. Add basil on top of sauce. Pinch edges, and slide in a piece of cheese. Seal the pocket. Place on parchment paper. Go around the curved edge of the pizza pocket and fold the dough over itself again. Flip it over, and lightly press down on the pocket. Take a fork and press down on the dough seal on the curved edge of the pocket, all the way around.
Repeat process with the remaining 11 pockets.
Pre-heat the oven to 425.
Crack and lightly beat an egg in a bowl or cup. Using a brush, paint a light egg wash over the surface of each pocket, ensuring you get into the fork crimp marks.
Use a fork to poke holes in the surface of the pizza pockets to allow steam to escape.
Bake the pizza pockets for between 20-25 minutes, until the crust is a deep golden brown. Remove, let cool on a wire rack for 10 minutes. Enjoy!
Pizza Pockets in Action
Looking forward:
Book I’m looking forward to reading: The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan
Show I’m looking forward to watching: Sirens on Netflix
Bread I’m looking forward to baking: Tartine’s sourdough baguettes
Thank you for reading! If you liked this issue, forward along to a friend. If you hated it, please forward along to an enemy.
I love it that you paired a book about wellness with pizza!