Cooking pizza

THE BASIC EQUIPMENT

Pizza Stone.  Due to its ability to retain heat, it replicates the concept of placing pizzas directly into giant brick or clay ovens. 

Now…the instructions on your pizza stone may tell you to preheat your stone. I’m not going to tell you to ignore the manufacturer’s instructions (okay, so I am), and don’t shoot me if your pizza stone breaks after putting it into a hot oven, but in my experience and my completely non-scientific opinion, I don’t think that 425 degrees is hot enough to shatter your pizza stone as long as it isn’t cold to begin with and as long as it has something on it (like a crust). If you do preheat your stone, you’ll have a heck of a time getting your dough onto the stone in some semblance of a round shape before it starts to cook. 

French rolling pin. By no means do you HAVE to have a French rolling pin, but I much, much MUCH prefer my French rolling pin to my traditional rolling pin, especially when I’m working with large quantities of dough or when I’m shaping dough (like for a pizza). Because of the tapered ends, you can hold a tapered end in one hand and press the other tapered end against the dough in order to achieve whatever shape you’re after. Also, because it’s longer, it rolls the entire quantity of dough at one time rather than going back and forth over the dough, hoping that you’re achieving the same thickness.

THE BASIC INGREDIENTS

Dough. No matter what kind of pizza you make, you’ll need dough. I experimented with manydifferent dough recipes and my friend Lisa’s breadstick recipe ended up being my favorite!
I have to admit that I would love to learn to throw dough. But I also think that anyone who knows me personally would know that it would be a bad, bad, BAD idea for me to toss food products into the air. If any of you are more physically coordinated than I am OR if you already have mad dough-throwing skills (or if you just find food in the air fascinating), check out this video:

Sauce 

Pizza Sauce

1 6-oz. can tomato paste
6 oz. water (just use the empty tomato paste can)
3 Tbsp. garlic bread seasoning
1 Tbsp. sugar or honey (I usually use sugar because it’s easier and hey, I think we’ve established here that if there’s an easy road or a hard road, I usually take the easy road…)
3/4 tsp. onion powder
1/4 tsp. red pepper flakes (optional)

Empty tomato paste into a bowl and add water a few tablespoons at a time, stirring constantly until combined. Add remaining ingredients, stir to combine, and allow to stand until ready to use. Covers two average-sized pizza; freezes extremely well.

Guiltless Alfredo Sauce

2 C low-fat milk
1/3 C (3 oz) low fat cream cheese
2 T flour
1 t salt
1 T butter
3 garlic cloves
1 C grated Parmesan cheese

Toss the milk, cream cheese, flour, and salt in a blender.

Process until smooth and set aside.

In a non-stick sauce pan, melt butter on med-high heat and add garlic. Stand above the pan (but not close enough to scald your face) and inhale. Ahhh…butter and garlic. Okay, now get cooking again. Let the garlic saute for about 30 seconds, you don’t want to burn it. It should be nice and bubbly like this:

Then add milk mixture to the pan. Stir constantly for about 3 or 4 minutes or until it just comes to a simmer. Keep stirring and let it cook for a few minutes more. It should be much thicker now.


When it’s nice and thickened remove the pan from the heat. Add the cheese, stir it up and then cover immediately. Let stand for at least 10 minutes before using. It will continue to thicken upon standing. Also, if you have leftovers in the fridge, the sauce will thicken almost into a solid. Just re-heat and add a little milk and it will be back to normal again.

I use this sauce for so many things. Here’s a few ideas:

-Over pasta (obviously)
-As a dip for breadsticks
-As a sauce on pizza (this is the garlic cream sauce I was referring to in this recipe) and a half batch of sauce covers 2 medium pizza’s.
-Mix it with pesto for a creamy pesto sauce (so good)
-Mix it with marinara for a creamy marinara sauce

One time when we had dinner guests over with a bunch of kids, we did a pasta bar. I made a couple different pastas, a couple different meats, and then made this sauce, marinara, and pesto. Everyone had so much fun mixing and matching and combining. The adults could get fancy with alfredo-pesto over bow-ties and the kids could have plain ol’ spaghetti if they wanted to. Toss in some french bread and a salad and you have a really fun, and really easy meal!

This clocks in at around 100 calories for 1/4 C sauce!

Olive oil; it makes your crust crispy and delicious

Garlic salt; adds to crispy deliciousness.  Garlic Bread Seasoning works great too.Garlic Bread Seasoning

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1/2 c. powdered Parmesan cheese

2 tsp. Kosher salt

2 Tbsp. garlic powder

2 tsp. oregano

2 tsp. basil

2 tsp. marjoram

2 tsp. parsley

Combine ingredients in a jar (preferably one with a sprinkle top) and shake. Well, don’t shake until you’ve put the lid on, but I assume most of you are smart enough to figure that out! :)

Sprinkle on top of breadsticks or combine 1 1/2 Tbsp. seasoning with 1/2 c. of softened real butter and spread on a loaf of French bread (cut in 1/2 lengthwise). Wrap in foil and bake at 375 until butter’s melted. If you want, you could also pop it open-faced under the broiler for a few minutes so it gets brownish and crispy.

Cheese (about 8 ounces, shredded or in deli slices; for most pizzas, I just use Mozzarella)

Dried oregano; this is the “secret ingredient”–everyone will ask you what made your pizza so dang good and this is it! However…use it on your “traditional” pizzas; I don’t think it would be so tasty on abarbecue chicken pizza!

Desired toppings. Whatever you like on pizza! We’re going into greater detail on this later on in the week, but the possibilities of what you can put on pizza are endless! 

but our secret weapon pizza, especially in pizza pockets , is pepperoni, black olives, green peppers, red onions, and pineapple. Mmmmmm…

THE METHOD

1. Begin preparing your dough. Complete steps through the first rise.

2. While dough is rising, prepare your sauce.

3. Preheat your oven (and your pizza stone, if you want) to 425 degrees. While oven is heating, punch down dough and shape into a disc. Spray your work surface, rolling pin, and pizza stone with non-stick cooking spray. Place dough disc onto work surface. Roll and shape into a circle. (Disregard all of this, by the way, if you’re a stinking dough-thrower). Very gently transfer the dough onto your pizza stone and continue to shape up to the edges of the stone.

4. Using a fork, prick several holes in the crust. Drizzle crust with a little olive oil…and brush all the way up to the edges. Sprinkle with garlic salt. Both oiling and garlic salting the crust help crisp it up, give it a great flavor, and keep it from getting soggy in the middle.

5. Bake crust in preheated oven for 10-12 minutes or until golden. Remove from oven.

6. Spread a layer of sauce (if desired) over the surface of the crust. Top with whatever toppings you like (I do the flat stuff, i.e. the meat, first).   Sara does a layer of cheese first to “glue” on the toppings and then tops with a bit extra after. 

Then sprinkle with oregano.

7. Return crust to oven and bake 10-12 more minutes or until cheese is melty and the crust is golden brown.

And there you have it. Beautiful pizza, completely non-doughy in the middle, a little crispy on the edges and chewy on the inside.