Pizza Night!

Tonight is pizza night in our house.  We try as often as possible to make all of our junk food from scratch, that way it's usually not quite *as* bad for you.  Also, the ever-picky toddler will ALWAYS scarf down a piece of pizza or cheesy bread, so pizza's on tap quite often over here.  It took us numerous attempts to get our pizza dough recipe "just so", so I thought I would share it here with the world.  It's a combination recipe/method from one of my kitchen "bibles", Dining On a Dime and my Mumma's own recipe for pizza dough.  Figured this would be a good sequel to the marinara post, since that's what we use for our pizza sauce!

Pizza & cheesy breadsticks

Here's what you'll need:
1 Cup warm water (120-degrees F)
1 Tbsp. white sugar
1 Tbsp. yeast
1 tsp. salt
2 Tbsp cooking oil
2-1/2 to 3 Cups flour
Optional:
2 tsp crushed garlic
1 tsp basil
1 tsp thyme
1 tsp oregano

Here's what you do:
Dissolve sugar into water; stir in yeast, and let stand 10 mins or til mixture doubles in volume. Add salt, oil, and spices if desired. Mix well. Gradually add flour to form stiff dough. Knead on well-floured surface 'til smooth. Place in a greased bowl and turn dough over so as to grease all sides in the bowl. Cover and let rise 'til doubled. (1/2 hr to hour)

Divide dough in half for two medium pizzas and roll out to about 1/4" thick. Fold and pinch edges up to form crust. Bake on sheet for 3-5 minutes at 350 to firm up a bit. Remove from oven, sauce lightly and top as desired. Bake again at 350 for 5 minutes, then broil 'til crust edges turn golden and cheese is nice and bubbly.

Beautiful Bacon/beef/pepper/onion pizza

Garlic fingers with bacon and feta, in the style of Fadi's Pizzeria (Fredericton NB)

And finally, here are a few tips for personalizing it:
- Cream cheese or strips of mozza can be folded into the crust to make a "stuffed crust" version that is always a hit with cheese lovers.
- When it comes to pizza sauce, I find less is more.  Not many people like to bite into a slice of fresh pizza, hit a pocket of sauce that's the temperature of molten-lava, only to burn their mouth and have it running down their face, amirite??  Start with slapping a tablespoon or two onto your crust and spread it thinly in a circular motion until your crust is lightly coated.
- Speaking of sauce, don't limit yourself to the tomato variety!  Try it out with BBQ sauce (with chicken and peppers), ranch dressing, pesto or cream cheese (paired with spicy toppings, it's a dream!).
- Get creative with the toppings! If you can dream it, it'll be good on your pizza. :)
- Pizza dough also makes for good "cheesy bread" or garlic fingers.  Instead of sauce, slather the crust with some garlic/herbed butter and top with cheese.  Slice into fingers, and serve with a dipping sauce.  Here's my favourite recipe for homemade donair sauce. 

Jalapeno popper pizza; cream cheese instead of sauce, bacon, jalapenos and green onions! 2DIE4!

As always, I want to hear if I've inspired you, and how it went! :)

Tomato Sauce!

No matter what you call it (tomato sauce, pasta sauce, marinara, "red" sauce), it's something that I think every household goes through a lot of.  In our house, spaghetti and meatballs is a weekly staple, as is homemade pizza, so we use a TON of it.  Finally, five years into my "domestic-hood", and in keeping with our ongoing efforts to "healthify" things, I have decided to start making large batches of the stuff to have in the freezer and amp-up the veggie count in something we use twice weekly.  Plus, having a veggie-hating toddler, I'm always desperate for ways to sneak foods into him that pack a super-nutritional punch.

There's no real "recipe" for what we do, it's more of a method.  First, you've gotta do a big ingredient round-up.

- You'll need some kind of base (tomatoes, "durh") and we've found that pretty much any mix of the following will work well: canned tomato sauce (whatever's cheapest or a personal fave), canned tomatoes, and tomato paste.

- Then, gather as many different veggies as you can find, it doesn't even matter if you really LIKE a few of them or not, because in the end you won't even be able to tell that they're there!  It's usually my goal to get as many colours and varieties as possible in there because it's important to "eat the rainbow" and we all know, "variety is the spice of life", but if you only have a few lying around, it's fine.  Seriously, ANYTHING GOES on pasta sauce day.  Cut 'em, cook 'em up 'til soft, whiz 'em up in the blender and set 'em aside.

- Next you'll need your spices and special extras that make it "yours".   Oregano, basil and thyme are staples here, as well as a few bay leaves (try to find and remove them before bottling, though!).  I found out that my bonus-Mom's sister puts PINEAPPLE in her spaghetti sauce - tried it once and have never looked back since.  We blend that up along with our veggies and it gives the sauce a nice sweet note.  We like a bit of heat too, so ground black pepper and cayenne go in there, too.  Really use your creativity here, whatever you "think" might be good, probably will.  Dump some parmesan cheese in there, or even some booze, lol (it'll cook down, which brings me to the next step)...

- Throw it ALL into your biggest pot and simmer it on low for, oh, "a long time"...  Two to four hours?  The whole day?  As much time as you've got, but keep on the stirring, every 20-30 mins or so.  Cleaning burnt tomatoes off the bottom of your pot is never fun.  I despise cleaning BIG dishes for many reasons, but that's another rant for another day. ;)

- Bottle it up in some clean jars, plasticware, whatever you've got.  We went out and bought some 500mL bottles specifically for our last batch, they were pricier than I would have liked, but an investment for sure because we will re-use them and they're microwave safe (for when you forget to defrost it in advance).  I'm sure there's a way to safely "can" this stuff for shelf-storage... But we're not set up for that (yet), and recently purchased a deep-freeze so we have lots of space to fill, so my tutorial ends here. :)  

I'd love to hear YOUR suggestions on personalized pasta sauce, or at the very least, let me know how it goes if I inspired you to whip up your own batch!