Sunday Pizza
Friday afternoon, I mixed the dough -- again using 50% White Whole Wheat (milled from Praire Gold White Hard Spring Wheat) and 50% Caputo "00" flour. I put the dough balls in the fridge and left for the weekend. On Sunday afternoon, I realized that I was out of canned tomatoes. Fortunately, I had a fresh tomato, and I decided to make my own tomato sauce.
Cored the tomato, put it in the blender. Added a few cloves of garlic, a tablespoon or two of olive oil, and some oregano. Blended. The sauce came out quite pink. Like a vodka sauce. I believe all of the air oxidized my tomato. It was very liquid and very pink. I took a few tablespoons of the sauce and spread it on the pizza, followed by sliced tomatoes, sliced red peppers, fresh cremini mushrooms and shredded fresh Mozzarella, cheddar and Parmigiano Reggio.
Oven was pre-heated to 525, with my lodge pizza pan on the top rack. I added a tablespoon or so of olive oil to a measuring cup, and when the oven was ready, removed the pan, put it on the stove top and drizzled the olive oil on the hot pan. Slid the pizza onto the sizzling hot pizza pan and popped it in the oven for 3 minutes, followed by 3 minutes of broiling on high.
It was stupendous.
Comments
I am absolutely starving and this post has not helped - what a mouth watering pizza! I find fresh tomato has a different flavour profile from the tinned ones, less sweet in fact, which I prefer on crostini, bruschetta and pizza - love the vodka inspiration. Stupendous indeed!! Well done & bake on!!
Thanks!
I will buy a can for the pantry in case I don't have any fresh ones, but as far as I can help it, I will only use fresh tomatoes to make pizza sauce from now on. While I haven't found my canned tomatoes to be tinny, I personally do not like the idea of eating canned tomatoes if I can avoid them.
David: It is getting close to dinner time here in the UK, and I am starving. Looking at your pizza is making me hungrier! I had planned to make pizza here, but with all the events and seeing family and friends and haven't been able to do it. Perhaps I can sneak a pizza-making session in before we have to leave! I already have the pepperoni. I think your crust is perfect; I would be lucky to get close to that. Congratulations. Best, Phyllis
I don't think you need to be lucky to get great crust, especially if you have good flour! I just blogged about my whole pizza making process. It is long on text and short on photos though. I think I need to get better at letting the pictures tell the story.
Looks great David.
If you want the sauce to be less watery, I would cut up the tomato and drain away the excess juice and seeds before adding to the blender. I like to add some acid to the sauce like a fresh squeezed lemon. To get rid of the tinny taste of canned tomatoes I drain the tomatoes in a colander and then rinse them with some cold water...assuming you are using whole tomatoes of course. I love using fresh from my garden, but alas the tomato season is done and I didn't have a great crop this year.
Fortunately, the sauce wasn't thin on the cooked pie. It also thickened up quite a bit in the fridge the next day. Didn't notice any difference in the final product though.
I saw Peter Reinhart also adds lemon to the sauce. I may try that when I have a lemon around that isn't destined for hummus.