Don’t use pizza sauce, try taco sauce instead.
what th- !?!
Oh, Norway, Never mind.
I had some pizza in Ireland and they offer pepperoni, corn and tuna. I kid you not. and if you want sauce on it they look at you funny and say “Hey Bob, the yank wants spaghetti sauce on his pizza!” they all get a good laugh out of this in the kitchen.
To each his own.
I make my own crust in my food processor. Really easy.
I make my own sauce (simmer canned tomatoes, garlic, a touch of sugar and whatever herbs you want, but do include basil and oregano. . . and they don’t have to be fresh. . .for 30-40 minutes. Cover the pan about 7/8 of the way or you’ll have tomato splotches all over your stove and walls!).
I use a perforated metal pan that’s about 14 inches in diameter. (IMHO peels and stones are best left to professional chefs. . . or their lackeys.)
But here are some tips that I think make the whole thing come together:
- Put the shredded cheese on the crust first. (This assumes that you have rolled or stretched out your home-made dough to the desired size.) I always buy pre-shredded mozzarella. Spend extra for the very fine shred.
- Then add minced garlic, sprinkled here and there. After that, put on your herbs – a sprinkle is fine, you don’t want to go into herb overkill.
- Then glob on your homemade sauce. The key is: NOT TOO MUCH!!! Less than one cup on any given 14-inch pizza. Too much sauce will sog up the pizza, even with the nice protective layer of shredded cheese underneath.
- Then add whatever yummy things you choose. I’m partial to pepperoni, mushrooms and small black olives that have their seeds already removed. But you can put on anything you like.
- Now sprinkle FRESHLY GRATED PARMESAN, the best you can afford, all over your creation. Drizzle with about 2 tablespoons of olive oil. Pop into your preheated 525 degree oven and bake for 15 minutes. Important note: put something to catch drips on the oven rack under the one your pizza pan is on. Air should be able to circulate all around the pizza, but you just might need to prevent a burning mess in your oven. Enjoy!
The one time I succeeded in crafting my own delightful pizza, I started with one of those kits & improvised heavily. I wanted to achieve something similar to LaRosa’s pizza in Cincinnati, so here’s what I did.
Boboli does taste weird, I used the competitor whose name I can’t recall (they may have lost that battle, haven’t seen any in a while). To the sauce I added a bunch of herbs, fresh tomatoes (mooshed up), honey and red wine vinegar. For the cheese I added another type under the Mozzarella & didn’t use as much Mozzarella to compensate. You know, for the life of me I can’t remember the name of the other cheese I used, but it was white, packaged as a block in a clear plastic bag, and had to be crumbled with a fork.
According to cheesenet.com, the pizza cheese we’re all accustomed to isn’t really Mozzarella; that might explain why your results weren’t satisfactory.
I used to buy the pre-made crusts a lot, but since I started making my own bread, I now look upon them as a variety of bread-flavoured chipboard.
It really is incredibly simple to make your own pizza base - I don’t even measure the ingredients anymore; just throw a load of flour (just ordinary flour, no need for anything fancy) into a bowl, tip in a sachet of fast-acting yeast, a little salt and enought warm water to make a soft dough; mix and knead for a while, press it out into a thin, flat circle by hand, leave it somewhere warm for half an hour, then throw on some toppings and bake it in a hot oven.
Pizza is such a subjective thing though and people have very strong ideas about what does and does not constitute a ‘proper’ pizza and what should and should not be added as a topping (I’m getting quite tired of people expressing surprise at seeing sweetcorn added to pizzas in the UK - it isn’t even that common a topping).
In Hong Kong, they have pizza with Thousand Island dressing instead of pizza sauce. I made the mistake of ordering it once. Never again. I still have nightmares about it.
I can still taste it. Blargh.