Pizza

We love pizza at our house. It is one of the few foods that we have regularly. I found a book by Peter Reinhart called American Pie that I absolutely love. It has recipes for all types of pizza dough - Napoletana, Roman, Neo-Nepolitan, New York -style, Americana, Chicago style deep dish and more. It also has some recipes for sauces, and even ideas for toppings. I've also used a wheat recipe out of his book Whole grain breads. That was quite good too. Our favorite to make is Neo-Nepolitan with whatever toppings we like, but we also like all of the others we have tried, and we had tried most of them. We even like the super thin crust - it comes out like a cracker - super fun to try something different. I highly recommend the book if you are a pizza nut like we are.
Here is a slightly amended and definitely abbreviated (instructions) version of Neo-Nepolitan recipe. If you want more details or to try his exact recipe, check out his book. I got it at the library and liked it so much I bought it.

This is actually not a picture of the pizza I have put the recipe to. I thought I had multiple pictures of pizza already taken, but this is the only one I can find. It is a picture of a super thin crust. If I find more pictures I'll post them later. This recipe is for a medium crust - not too thin, not too thick.

Ingredients

• 4 1/2 cups bread flour
• 1 Tablespoon sugar
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 1 teaspoon instant yeast
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 3/4 cup room temp. water

Directions

1. Mix all ingredients in mixer with dough hook 4 minutes (until it forms a ball.) Let rest 5 minutes. Mix again on medium low speed for 2 minutes or until dough clears side of bowl and sticks to bottom. If it is too sticky add more flour, if it is too dry, add more water. (It should be soft and slightly sticky, but not so sticky that it will stick all over when you try to roll it out later.)
2. Divide into 4 balls. Round into a ball and brush with oil. Put each ball in it's own container with a lid (or zip top bag.) Let set at room temp for 15 min. Refrigerate overnight of freeze any pieces that won't be used the next day.
3. The next day, take dough out 2 hours before you want to use them. Preheat the oven to highest setting. After 2 hours, roll out dough or toss if you are good at that. We put our dough on a pizza peel that has cornmeal on it then add the toppings. (Today we had ham an pineapple, cheese, and pepperoni.) Then we slide it into the oven right onto the pizza stone.
4. Bake on a pizza stone for 8 to 10 minutes until done.

Like I said, that is my version and it is a super abbreviated version of the directions. Check out his book if you want lots of details and pictures. Not to mention the fact that it is a decent read - talks about his travels to try different pizzas.

Another idea I love from his book is his pizza sauces. He has a crushed tomato sauce and marinara pizza sauce that are both yummy.
Here's how I made a crushed tomato sauce based on his today.

Ingredients

• 1 28 oz can crushed tomatoes
• 1/2 teaspoon basil
• 1 teaspoon oregano
• 1/2 teaspoon thyme
• 2 1/2 teaspoons minced garlic
• 2 Tablespoons lemon juice
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon pepper

Directions:

Mix it all together in a bowl.

Honestly I was surprised by how much I loved this sauce. It is so simple with no cooking involved. I guess because I like spaghetti sauce that simmers all day I thought that this would need to do the same. I change the herbs up all the time trying different ones out. I'm not a huge fan of basil, but I like thyme, so I tried changing those up today. You can sub out red wine vinegar for the lemon juice, and add more salt if you like it more salty. Have fun experimenting. I just like the idea of using crushed tomatoes and making my own sauce.

Update 12/04 - This time when I made the sauce I used a full teaspoon of thyme and red wine vinegar in place of the lemon juice. I think I liked this better. This may also be the day my basil ran out so I only ended up with about 1/4 teaspoon. Still yummy. Here are pictures from that day. In one I rolled the dough out a little thinner and then rolled the edges back to form the crust. In the other, I semi-tossed it -DH is the one who can toss, not me and he was not home. Still, I spread it more on my fists and ended up with a bit thicker crust that was automatically a tiny bit thicker around the edges. Toppings today were ham and pineapple (left over from Thanksgiving.) and sauce and mutz (fresh mozzarella) with the cheese placed right on the crust and the sauce put on top of that.