I saw a recipe for chicken pot pie last week and you know how it is sometimes: you see a good recipe, and it swirls around in your head for a few days. This is a common phenomenon. Someone says “coconut cream pie,” or “chocolate cake,” or mentions fried chicken with mashed potatoes and gravy and some people are going to figure out how to make one of those things part of their lives soon, even if it involves a drive-thru.

I believe it’s called a “hankering.” You might even call it a weakness, depending on what it is you’re hankering for.

I hadn’t had a pot pie in years and for some reason it became my reason for living after seeing the recipe. I’d only made a pot pie once before and it was pretty horrible, but years had passed and I was confident that I could make something really special this time around. And there would be no cheating. No store-bought crusts for me.

And that’s pretty funny since I don’t particularly like dough. I like what dough turns into, but dough itself befriends very few people in this world.

Oh, I know, some people seem to have a knack. Their pies could be on the front cover of a magazine, but if they called five friends, most would report some treachery with dough and that’s just putting it nicely. People I called had some pretty surly names for dough.

Friends talked about Christmas cookie dough stuck–even smeared–on the countertop, ruining cutouts of Rudolph and evergreen trees and stars. People told me stories about rolls that never rose at Thanksgiving and my cousin–who was a baker of bread for 18 years in an actual bakery–says she has problems with dough in her own kitchen.

So, I’m not sure what possessed me to make my own dough for this pot pie except that I’m an optimist at heart, really.

Now, whenever I endeavor to make something new, I try to learn something or to be better in the kitchen in some way. There was no reason my dough couldn’t look as good as the picture in the recipe. I just had to try harder.

And here’s what I learned: dough loves to fail. Mine kept cracking and falling apart although I swear I made it exactly like they instructed me to.

The truth is, dough is kind of like a horse. It knows you’re afraid of it and it takes advantage of you. It runs down the hill, cuts through the brush, tries to buck you off. But if you keep it up, and go back and ride it over and over again, eventually you’ll become more confident. And the horse will know and so will the dough. The dough will say, “There’s no messing around with this novice baker anymore,” and one day you’ll make a crust like your Great Aunt Betty and her three-berry pie that won an award at the county fair.

I told you I was an optimist.

But I made progress. I read that using really good butter would improve the quality of the dough. I bought 8 ounces of an Irish butter with a high fat content and it made a world of difference. And, I sprinkled a little apple cider vinegar on the dough because this is rumored to make it more flakey and it actually worked.

Dough wants it all. It’s not enough to make a tasty, workable dough because if you can’t roll it out into a perfect circle and have it roll out evenly, it’s not going to look as good as it tastes. And from what I’ve learned, it’s all about the looks here.

It’s all pretty shallow if you ask me.

The pot pie was delicious, and the crust was good but a bit too thick. And I was too frustrated to carefully decorate the edges, but I did use a little extra dough to cut out stars and place them in the more unsightly spots on top, which broadcast to the world that I am still in baking kindergarten.

Recipe 30 is a chef on Facebook who has some good recipes. Look for his pot pie. And don’t forget the good butter and the vinegar for the dough. And just smile a lot while you’re making it, as if you’re smiling at the bully on the playground.