Breadhead Friday: Pizza Sauce Recipe

Pursuant to the post on making pizza at home, I want to give out my recipe for pizza sauce.  It's easy, quick, and tasty.  There's a brightness to it from the red wine vinegar, a little heat from the red pepper flake, and enough spices to give it great flavor, but not overwhelm the toppings and crust.

And the best part is that you don't have to cook it.  The sauce cooks on the pizza itself.

This recipe is the product of trial and error across dozens of pizzas, and will make enough sauce to cover five (5) average-sized pies.

Ingredients
1 28 oz. can of crushed tomatoes
1 28 oz. can of tomato puree
1 tbsp red wine vinegar
1 and 1/2 tsp garlic powder
1 tbsp basil
1 and 1/2 tsp oregano
1/2 tsp black pepper
A few shakes of red pepper flake
Salt to taste

Mise en place

All you have to do is put the ingredients into a bowl and mix them with a whisk.  Couldn't be easier.

In the bowl, ready to be whisked

Once you've got it mixed together, give it a little taste.  I know it's not cooked, but it'll be okay, I promise.  The tomatoes have been steamed as part of the canning process.  If it needs salt, add salt.

All mixed up

If you use the pizza recipe linked at the top of this post, you'll see that the pizza is baked at a pretty high heat (500 degrees F or higher).  So you don't need to cook the sauce: it's a thin layer on the dough that will get cooked as part of the baking process.

The sauce is on the pizza - REPEAT: the sauce is on the pizza

Portion out the sauce into five containers and freeze or refrigerate them as you see fit.  You may want to make this sauce a couple hours before making the pizza to allow the flavors to meld.

The distribution of pepperoni here is reminiscent of the Tunguska Explosion of 1908

There you go.  Now you've got one less excuse to go to Pizza Hut.  Not that there's anything wrong with Pizza Hut.

Breadhead Friday: The Agony and Ecstasy of Raisin Bread

My earliest memories of raisin bread involve tearing off the top crust to eat the icing and throwing out the rest of the slice.  My brothers did the same, so my dad stopped buying it.  It just wasn't very good.

This focaccia-style raisin bread from Peter Reinhart is the complete opposite of that.  It's extraordinary.  It's the apotheosis of raisin bread.  It's what raisin bread is supposed to be.

I won't duplicate his recipe here; you can get it from Artisan Breads Every Day or from his Craftsy class, which is worth purchasing if you want to learn how to make delicious bread and pizza at home.  The main difference between the savory focaccia recipe and the raisin bread recipe is that you have to use a little more water in the raisin bread dough to plump up the dried fruit.

For these loaves, I used a combination of dried cranberries, raisins, and dried cherries.

Dough ready for overnight rise

The recipe makes three 9-inch loaves (or discs) of raisin bread, and requires cake pans, parchment paper rounds, and a little oil to drizzle on top of the dough to help in shaping.  I used a combination of vegetable and canola oil.

Portioned, cold dough

The shaping in the pan consists of little more than dimpling it: evenly pressing it with your fingertips so that it fills the entire pan.  When it starts to resist, you leave it in a warm place to relax for several minutes.

After the first dimpling

After the third and final dimpling; ready for a rise

Then the loaves get baked in a hot oven for around 10-15 minutes, depending.  You don't need the pizza stone for this bread.

Baked and cooling - note the bubbles

For icing, I just whisked together confectioner's sugar and whole milk and drizzled it on the cooled loaves.  I like a stiff sort of icing, so I only put in a few drops of milk.  For a looser, more gooey icing, put in more milk.

Iced and ready to eat

You could add vanilla or almond extract to the icing if you wanted, or even put in some orange zest or Grand Marnier.  Or substitute coconut milk for the whole milk.  Experiment, go wild.  

The obligatory close-up

The sweetness of the icing works very well against the tartness of the dried fruit.  The texture is light, with a pleasant crunch and moistness.  Even if you don't like raisin bread, you'll like this.  

Delicious and Easy Saturday Night Pizza

A casual trip down the frozen food aisle of any American supermarket or a few minutes of watching network television will show you that we love pizza in the U.S.  My family's no different.  However, we're no longer fetched by TV commercials, Domino's blandishments, or chichi artisan pizzas that cost fifteen dollars for a burnt flatbread with goat cheese and arugula, because I make delicious pizzas to our taste about once a week.  And it's very easy to do.

The recipe I use is taken, in part, from this Quick Rustic Ciabatta Pizza recipe.  I have just altered it a little.

Required Special Equipment

A stand mixer

A kitchen scale

Required Materials

Parchment paper

Spray oil

Olive oil

Equipment That Is Good to Have but Not Necessary

A pizza stone (if not this, a cookie sheet)

A pizza peel (if not this, a second cookie sheet)

Ingredients

250 grams of bread flour (8.8 oz) - King Arthur brand flour provides the best results

7 grams salt (.25 oz)

1 tsp quick-rising yeast

1 cup water

Your favorite pizza cheese

Your favorite pizza sauce

Your favorite toppings

Directions:

Mise en place

Put the flour in the mixer bowl.  On one side of the bowl, put your yeast.  On the other side, your salt.  Cover them up with the flour a little: this keeps the salt from killing the yeast early in the mixing process.  Add the water, and with the paddle attachment, start mixing on slow speed.

It will look like this after twenty seconds or so

Once the ingredients are incorporated, turn the mixer on as fast as it will go.  This will not burn out the motor.  Keep it on the highest speed until it cleans the sides of the bowl: about five minutes or so, depending.  It will come together, trust me.  As it mixes, get a non-reactive, transparent vessel like a plastic pitcher and put spray oil on the inside.

Dough coming together

As it begins to transform from a batter to a dough, don't leave the mixer alone.  The mixer has a tendency to move a little, and you don't want it to hop off the counter.  Once it cleans the sides of the bowl, turn off the mixer and put the extremely wet, sticky dough into your prepared vessel.

It will look a lot like this

Cover the vessel with plastic wrap and put it in a warm place to rise.  You want it to triple in size.  Depending on the warmth of your rising/proofing place and the warmth of the water you put into the dough, this can take 90 minutes to two hours or more.  

Before the rise

If you have a pizza stone, put it in the oven and preheat the oven to 500 degrees Fahrenheit 45 minutes before you plan to bake.  If you don't have a pizza stone, put a cookie sheet into the oven and preheat the oven to 500 degrees Fahrenheit 30 minutes before you plan to bake.  If your oven's temperature goes higher, take it to 550 or as high as it will go.  You want that oven very hot.

Tripled in size

Once the dough has tripled, tear off a sheet of parchment paper large enough to cover your pizza peel or the back of another cookie sheet and pour a tablespoon of olive oil onto it.  Spread the olive oil over the parchment paper at around the size you want the pizza to be and dump the risen pizza dough onto the oiled paper.

The dough on the oiled paper on the peel

Rub your hands on the oiled paper to get them slick and press the dough out into a rough pizza shape with your fingertips.  It doesn't have to be perfectly round.  I occasionally get them into that perfect circle shape, but it's not a big deal when I don't.  This is a homemade pizza, not a professional one.  The imperfection makes it yours.  Once the dough starts to really resist shaping, leave it alone for ten minutes to let the gluten in the dough relax.

Right after the first pressing/dimpling - note the air bubbles

After ten minutes, re-oil your hands and press the pizza out into its final shape.  Then spread the sauce onto it.  I have a delicious pizza sauce recipe that I'll post at a different time.

Saucy dough - yes, it's coming off the paper a little at the bottom there

Slide the sauced dough, along with the parchment paper, onto your pizza stone or cookie sheet in the oven and bake it for about 6 or 7 minutes.  If you put the cheese and toppings on now, the cheese will get very brown and crackly.  Which isn't bad if you like it that way.

Two minutes into the oven, and the bubbles are getting bigger

Get your cheese and toppings ready, and after that 6 or 7 minutes, open the oven and top the pizza.  There will be a good bit of steam that escapes from both the baking pizza dough and the sauce, and it'll be very hot, but if you top the pizza quickly, it's not a bad experience.  Just don't burn yourself.

Nascent pizza ready to be topped

I use a prepackaged cheese blend and turkey pepperoni typically, but we've also made some really delicious pizzas by putting on leftovers like burger pieces, grilled chicken, meatballs, sauteed peppers and onions, etc.  The dough's the canvas and you're the artist, so go wild.

Topped and ready for final baking

Bake for another 7 or 8 minutes, or until the crust gets golden brown and the cheese is melted.  The parchment paper will darken but not ignite.  Probably.  It never has with me, and I've done this in several different kitchens.  Still, be careful.

Done and out of the oven - note the char

A slice - the air bubbles in the crust give it flavor

You'll note that I don't add extra flour or water to the dough: just a little oil in the preparation process.  Despite that the dough is made of only four ingredients: flour, salt, yeast, and water, it's really, really tasty.  Crunchy, chewy, and holds up to sauces and toppings.  It's a pizza you can look forward to.  

Is it as easy to prepare as a frozen Freschetta from a box?  No.  But it's vastly better, and you know exactly what's inside it.  It came out of your kitchen and you made it to your personal tastes.  With rising and shaping times, it can take between 2 and 2.5 hours to make, but it's worth it.