Pizza seems to be one of the most readily available foods in any town in the United States, and finding one is as simple as looking in a phonebook under "Pizza." Tonight though, I don't want a perfectly round pie served in triangular slices with the exact amount of cheese, sauce, and crust. I want something made with love delicious beyond belief, and with a little bit of chaos I can't find at Domino's. I want to make my own pizza.
Luckily, I have a tried and true recipe suited for the occasion. It covers everything, from making and kneading the dough to cooking the sauce. So without further ado:
The Homemade Pizza
The Dough
1 cup warm water
1 tsp sugar (or honey or agave)
1 tbsp yeast
1 tbsp olive oil
1/2 tsp salt
Flour (bread or all-purpose flour works)
Dissolve the sugar in the warm water and sprinkle the yeast on top. Stir it all together so the water is murky and the yeast has dissolved. Add the oil and the salt. Stir again. Add flour until the dough is a shaggy mass that can be lifted from the bowl. The dough should be tacky, but not sticky. If it's too sticky, add some more flour. Knead it for five minutes.*
*Kneading dough is pretty simple. Throw some flour on your hands and on the table, and then throw the dough onto the table. Kneading is the perfect time to work out some aggression, so get angry! Using the palms of your hands, push the middle of the dough down and away from you. Fold it back. Turn the dough a quarter turn. Push it away again. Repeat this process of push, fold, and turn until the dough is smooth and elastic and feels almost alive. Also, every 10th repetition, pick the dough up and throw it down on your kneading surface. Don't worry about breaking it; it's dough!Wrap the dough in greased tinfoil and place it in the freezer. Pizza dough is different than bread dough in that it shouldn't rise before going into the oven. The freezing retards the process.
The Sauce
This part can be bypassed, as any supermarket will have premade pizza sauce, but that isn't fun. Crushed tomatoes in puree
Tomato paste
1 tbsp olive oil
Salt, pepper, rosemary, and whatever other spices are lying around (I put sliced jalapeños in this sauce)
Get a pot. Toss in all the ingredients. Bring to a boil, and then let simmer for 15 minutes. The exact measurements of the salt, pepper, rosemary, and other spices are up to personal preference, but I end up using a 1/2 tbsp of each. My friend Andrew Marrone shared this tip with me: By adding the olive oil and boiling the sauce, the acidity of the tomatoes is removed or lessened. Be careful when the sauce is bubbling. As is evident on the right, my sauce blew up like Eyjafjallajokull, so put a lid on it.This is going to take awhile, so go do something. Do some laundry. Discover your next thrift store. Decide what your dream town is. Drool over bicycles or motorcycles.
Putting it all together
Take the dough out of the freezer (if it's frozen, thaw it out in the refrigerator or by rolling it around in your hands). Roll it out into whatever shape is pleasing and put it on a greased pan. The pan needs to be greased or covered in cornmeal. If it isn't, the pizza will stick. If it does, it's not the end of the world, but the pizza will be more of a blob than a plate.
Add enough sauce to cover the dough, leaving a little bit of room on the edges. The sauce should be thick, but not thick enough that you can't see the dough beneath. Now's the time to do what you've always wanted to do to a pizza. Put mozzarella cheese on top, or jelly beans, or chicken, or feta cheese, or Oreo's, or whatever you desire. Whose going to stop you?I like my pizza dough softer, so I take it out the very minute the crust shows hints of brown. One thing to remember is that if it's undercooked, the pizza can be put back into the oven.
That's it! Homemade, imperfect, delicious pizza, fresh from the oven. Pair it with milk, water, beer or whatever and you're golden.
