Pizza for Days!

I dont know if it is the stress of traveling, the unfamiliar food of eating out too much or the lack of organic produce but when I am not in my own kitchen I never feel as good.  So when I got home from a conference in Monterey CA I was keen to do something exciting!  Fortunately my cook partner justin was on the same page and we made pizza!  

People always debate whether a good pizza depends on the crust or the sauce or the cheese/toppings.  Ill tell you now IT IS ALL THREE.  Sure you can still pull off a good pizza if the crust is perfect while the sauce is just ok but why bother with ok when you can have a really top notch pizza by getting all three right?  

First the dough:  

If there is a good bakery or pizzeria around the easy way is to buy your dough from them (which is what we did).   They have the industrial mixers and  A LOT of practice in making dough.  If you have the time of course make your own dough.  Not only does this give you the satisfaction of doing it all but it also gives you the chance to add extras (garlic, rosemary, dried basil or other spices, be creative).  A simple home recipe is 

7 cups white bread flour 

1 level tablespoon fine sea salt

1/4 ounce active dried yeast (about 1 tsp)

1 tablespoon raw sugar

4 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

2 1/2 cups lukewarm water

First mix the warm water, raw sugar, olive oil and yeast in a bowl and let it sit.  While the yeast wakes up sift the salt into the flour.  Slowly add the flour to the water with a gentle fluid stirring motion.  The idea is to work up the gluten from the flour into long elastic strands.  Mixing too fast or vigorously will break this process. Once it become stiff flour your hands and begin to knead the dough ball in a fold->rotate->fold process (check out The Tassajara Bread Book for a great pictorial representation). 

Let the dough sit for an hour while you make sauce and toppings!  

Sauce:

This is one of those things that I need to measure better.  I start with a can of fire roasted tomatoes.  Getting fire roasted tomatoes makes  a big difference so really go looking for them.  Again you can make your own but this adds another hour to the prep time.  The roasted tomatoes have their natural sugars better accentuated while also obtaining the rich full body of roasting.  Simmer the tomatoes for about 45 min on a low heat.  Add a touch of salt and pepper and really that will already be a wonderful sauce.  Of course I go further adding some crushed garlic, fresh oregano, minced parsley and some olive oil. The amounts of each depend on the flavors you want to have.  More garlic will give a bolder taste , more oil will give a smoother texture, fresh herbs will add complexity.  Just remember   after you add something wait 5-10 minutes for the flavor to mix before tasting and deciding to add more.

Toppings

I like to make cheese sauces with blended almonds and nutritional yeast but on this pizza I went for a hearty summer feel.  There are caramelized onions, mushrooms sauteed in olive oil, thin sliced green bell peppers and eggplant pan fried with coconut oil and a splash of balsamic vinegar.  

Creation:

get that oven heating to 450 or 500 with a pizza stone in the over.  IF you dont have a pizza stone you can fake it with a heavy baking sheet turned upside down but really that ceramic stone is important to baking the pizza evenly.

Since we have good crust, good sauce and good toppings we want to construct our pizza with a balance of all three.  We push our dough down and  knead it into a ball, cut off a portion and roll it out to a 1/4 inch thick.  Dont try to make a big pizza by rolling out the dough thinner just use more dough for a bigger pizza.  spoon the pizza sauce on and spread it so it is nearly even but not so tick that you dough is totally hidden.  If you like a saucy-er pizza I suggest keeping some sauce in a bowl for dipping, too much pizza sauce on the dough will interfere with the baking.  Same is true for toppings, they should be evenly distributed but not completely obscuring the sauce.  I always have a tendency to overload my pizza with toppings but each component has a flavor it is adding, more toppings does not necessarily enhance the flavor. . .Balance between the flavors is the goal.  

The pizza bakes for 15-20 minutes depending on the heat of your oven and how much stuff you put on top.  You want the crust to go golden while the pizza stone cooks the dough from underneath to create a solid crust the whole way across.  

we served our pizza with a tomato lentil soup full of the vegetables we had on the pizza and a simple green salad with olive oil and balsamic vinegar.  

In the above picture you can also see the baked potato pizza which featured an almost 'cheese' sauce.  As is always the case with pizza I am ready for more!