The Most Perfect Pizza to Live on During Covid-19 in 2020
Home with Benji and Titi for a few months (Coronavirus) and I made an amazing pizza!! This week, I made this dough 2 times, and it made 4 small pizzas, which we ate 4 nights in a row for dinner, and here’s Benji’s comment, “It’s better than Ledos. It’s the best pizza I’ve ever had, and I’ve had great pizza in Italy and New York. I like the flavor of the sauce- It’s out of this world, and the crust, while thin is still doughy and substantial. The small pie means that most of it gets pretty well done around the edges, and it has the perfect ratio of cheese to sauce to crust.”
Dough recipe is adapted from NYTIMES: Roberta’s pizza crust
Put 1 full teaspoon dry yeast and 1 scant teaspoon sugar into ¾ cup warm water in the smaller bowl of mixer. Make sure gets bubbly after about 5 min. If it doesn’t, start over with different yeast. I prefer to use Red Star Active Dry Yeast or Red Star Quick Active Dry Yeast. Add 1 teaspoon safflower oil after it is really bubbly. Add 1 cup regular bread flour (if you have Italian OO flour, you can use that) and 3/4 cup unbleached organic flour. If you only have all purpose, that’s fine, but use unbleached flour and organic if possible. Sprinkle in 1 teaspoon kosher salt. Mix with dough hook like 5 minutes on low speed adding up to ¼ cup extra regular flour ONLY if dough is sticking to bottom of the bowl. You will know dough is ready when it isn’t sticky. You should easily be able to get it off the dough hook. If it’s so sticky that the dough sticks to your fingers, then add another sprinkling of flour and mix with dough hook for another few minutes. Then put in lightly greased bowl and cover with saran wrap. If you have like 4 hours- let sit on counter to rise. If you need to go a lot faster, put in oven after turning oven on for 1 min. and then immediately shutting oven off! It probably will take about 1 hr. to rise enough that way, especially if you are using quick rise yeast. Now after the 4 hours, divide into 2 parts, make into 2 balls. If you make right away fine, otherwise wrap up balls in Saran Wrap and put in fridge over night.
Make homemade pizza sauce I adapted from Serious Eats recipe! This is what makes the pizza so great and tasty!!!
Or… just use half of a 13 oz. jar of Rao’s Pizza Sauce for each pizza from Target- https://www.target.com/p/raos-homemade-pizza-sauce-13oz/-/A-17275989#lnk=sametab
Here’s the homemade:
2 large garlic cloves
2 Tbls. olive oil
2 Tbls. butter
1 28 oz. can Cento whole plum tomatoes in puree
1/2 tsp. crushed red pepper flakes
sprinkling of kosher salt
1 tsp. dried oregano
1 scant tsp. sugar
Grate garlic cloves using microplane into sauce pan that has the olive oil and the melted butter. Bring up to medium temperature and saute garlic and the red pepper flakes for 2 min. or so till the garlic is translucent. Then using a food mill, puree the whole tomatoes with the sauce into a bowl and transfer into the pan with the oil and garlic. Add the salt, the oregano, and the sugar, and simmer with top off for about 35 min. till reduced by half.
Back to the directions to put the pizza together:
Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Roll your first ball of dough out on a sheet of parchment paper that will fill up your whole baking sheet. Sprinkle a bit of flour on the parchment. Use rolling pin to roll dough out to about a 9 inch roundish shape or a rectangular shape about 12 inches by about 8 inches approximately on parchment, using flour on hands, on parchment, and on rolling pin, if using. Then slide the parchment paper with the rolled out dough onto a heavy cookie sheet. Spoon about 6 oz.- of pizza sauce (or half the Rao’s 13 oz. jar) over dough- not too heavy! Use a spoon to spread it over the dough all the way to the edges. Sprinkle lightly with grated parmesan cheese. Sprinkle about 8 oz. of pre-grated or hand grated mozzarella ( I use this cheese from Target- the whole 8 oz. bag for each pizza https://www.target.com/p/tillamook-mozzarella-shredded-cheese-8oz/-/A-53290359#lnk=sametab) over- not crazy heavy, but all the way to the edges. Then sprinkle with dried oregano.
Put in oven on next to lowest position in oven for 5 min.at 450 degrees Raise temp to 500 degrees Bake about 10 more minutes after the initial 5 min. till cheese is nicely browned and bubbly. If it looks like it needs another 5 minutes, do so. Slice into squares or triangles.
