Tuesday, 8/17/2010

I have to start out by quoting Ben.  He said "this is the best pizza you have ever made" about the pizza I made tonight!  I'm sorry that we ate it too fast to take a photo.  Here's what I used to make it.

Crust- I used Trader Joe's wheat pizza dough.  If you haven't tried this yet, and you live near a Trader Joe's, try it!  The dough it mixed up and ready to purchase in a plastic bag. For less than $2 you just have to turn the dough out onto a floured surface, wait 20 minutes, and then roll out into the pizza shape of your choice.  I chose to make four small, kind of round pizzas, instead of one large pizza.  

Sauce- I pulled sauce out of the freezer that I made probably a year ago.  It was still wonderful!  We started with a recipe that came from foodnetwork.com, but have made it our own with quite a few changes. 

ZESTY PIZZA SAUCE

Ingredients:
1 tablespoons olive oil
1/4 cup diced red onion
2 teaspoons chopped garlic
1- 11 ounce can tomato puree
8 ounces no sugar added tomato sauce
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon dried basil
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper flake

Directions:
In a saucepan over medium heat, heat olive oil and then sweat onions and garlic in oil, cooking just until softened and translucent.  Add remaining ingredients and simmer for about 2 minutes.

Toppings- I covered the dough with a generous helping of the pizza sauce, a layer of low-moisture mozzarella cheese, and hot Italian chicken sausage.  I bought the sausage from the meat counter at Fred Meyer.  It was raw link sausage that I browned in a frying pan while the dough rested.  Once browned, I let the sausage drain a bit on a paper-towel-covered plate.  I put just a little more cheese on top of the sausage; you can never get enough melted cheese in my opinion.

Baking-  I put a pizza stone in the oven while it preheated to 450 degrees.  Well, it got super hot, released a bunch of oils which burned, and caused a bit to much smoke in the house.  The fire alarm went off a couple times when I opened up the oven.  I am pleased to say that the alarm did not send Katie into a hysterical crying fit like it has in the past.  Good job dealing with the noise Katie!  Once the alarm stopped, thanks to Ben's nice manual fanning and the addition of a rotary fan in the kitchen with the window open, I cooked the pizzas for 10 minutes.  The crust had turned golden brown and the cheese was bubbling. 

Tip- When you watch pizza cooks in restaurants and on TV, they always slide completed pizzas into the oven using a pizza peel.  Pizza peels are those large wooden spatulas the cooks use with such skill.  Well, I've looked at them in the past and have never found one I liked for the price it was being sold for.  Instead, I use a large, rigid plastic cutting board that I sprinkle with corn meal.  The corn meal helps me to slide the pizza onto the heated pizza stone with all the toppings already on top.  It works just fine for how rarely I make pizza.