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 (not quick). Add 1 teaspoon safflower oil after it is really bubbly. Add 1 cup plus 1 Tablespoon OO flour and 1 cup plus 2 Tablespoons all purpose flour and 1 teaspoon kosher salt. Mix with dough hook like 5 min. On low speed adding up to ¼ cup extra regular flour ONLY if dough is sticking to bottom of the bowl. 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 shutting oven off! It probably will take 2 hrs to rise that way. Now after the 4 hours, divide into 2 parts, make into 2 balls. If you make right away fine, otherwise, 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!!!
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.
Take 1 ball of your ready pizza dough. Make 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 place parchment on a heavy cookie sheet. Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Spoon about 4 heaping tablespoons or ¼ cup pizza sauce over dough- not too heavy! Use a spoon to spread it over the dough all the way to the edges. Sprinkle about 8 oz. of grated organic or regular whole milk, if possible, mozzarella over- not crazy heavy, but all the way to the edges. Sprinkle very lightly with parmesan, and then sprinkle with dried oregano.
Put in oven 5 min.at 450 degrees Raise temp to 500 degrees on lowest or 2nd lowest rack in oven. Bake about 10 more minutes after the initial 5 min. till cheese is nicely browned and bubbly. Slice into squares or triangles.