Instead, I decided to make pizza this last week which is kind of an event for me. I try not to eat pizza too often because Gainesville doesn't really have much in the way of good pizza, and for health concerns I try to save more unhealthy food for when it's actually well prepared and cooked, which basically translates to when I make it myself. You may have heard the saying that "sex is like pizza. Even when it's bad, it's still pretty good." I'd amend the last part of the saying to "Even when it's bad, it's still satisfying."
When I reviewed Satchel's I talked a bit about what I think makes a good pizza. The components are crust, sauce, cheese, toppings. When each one comes together just right, you start thinking of pizza outside of the above paradigm. That being said, ostensibly, we're all on budgets and cannot afford to import some Buffalo Mozzarella, so the challenge is to make an affordable pizza that can still blow away pretty much whatever you get at a normal pizza place here in Gainesville.
We start with the crust, which is, without a doubt, the hardest part of the pizza to get right. I tend to loathe baking because of all the specific measuring that is involved. I find that to be counter to the nature of cooking in a general way where cooking is commonly and expression of the person making the food. You get everything down to some exact measurement by weight or whatever, and it loses its character.
I should mention that I lack a Stand Mixer. This should explain why I do this stuff the way I do. Stand mixers make the whole kneading process substantially easier. I've done the kneading thing before, and it's just not worth the trouble when people have already formulated ways around this. What way am I talking about? Well, it's called the "No Knead" technique, and I use the technique as formulated by the venerable Jim Lahey.
I do it a bit differently, but the purpose is the same.
Ingredients:
4 cups of flour
1 tbl of salt
2 tsp of sugar
1/4 tsp of instant yeast
1 tsp of dried Italian Herbs
1/4 tsp of black pepper
So I season my pizza dough. Why? You see this with a lot of artisan baking. Personally, I just enjoy the flavor. Now, a person might see the salt and freak out. Honestly, I give them a little space, but instant yeast doesn't require proofing as much as the dry active type. The flour I'm using here is King Arthur's Whole White Wheat. I used to use a mix of white and wheat to give the flour a bit more rustic flavor, but the whole white wheat does that without having to mix the two. If you just want the lightest and most glutenous dough though, use the bread flour.
So...dry ingredients are there. Wet ingredients are just a couple tbls of olive oil and 2 cups of warm water.
Probably the most unappetizing picture I've put on this site. I use my spatula here because with this much water to dough, you're going to get a very sticky mixture. If you really can't mix in that last bit of flour, use a tablespoon of warm water, but realistically, you probably just aren't mixing it in that well if you can't incorporate the flour. All the same, mine ended up looking like this:
I get some water on my hands and wet the top lightly before I put on some plastic wrap with slits cut in, so the top of the dough doesn't dry out.
On goes the wrap with the holes cut in. Now...we wait. How long? About 20 hours or so. Good gluten takes time. Patience is a virtue. Etc. etc. After the 20 hours or so, you can take out the dough and form it into as many dough ball as you want pizzas. This much will make 4 individual pizzas or you can make 2 large pizzas. I went with 2 large because it's easier. Flour your hands because this thing is quite sticky. Use your hands to form it into dough balls in way where the dough looks something like this:
You want a smooth exterior. Now you wait again. About 2 hours should do it. It makes the whole thing easier to handle.
When you're ready to bake, you'll roll or stretch one of these out to your desired thickness. I find rolling give you a more even crust, and the gluten should be good enough to still give your outer crust some rise. If you want some dough that has irregular crust density throughout, by all means, toss away.
This is how mine turns out before I put stuff on it. A pizza stone helps in this situation if you want a crunch to your crust. About 425-450 degrees will crunch up this crust a decent amount on a pizza stone. This large one took about 23 minutes or so at 425 to be right. Smaller pizzas take less time of course.
Now for the sauce. Ingredients:
1-2 tbls of Olive Oil
1 28 oz can of San Marzano tomatoes
1 small can of tomato paste (the 4.5 oz ones)
1 onion (I like the sweet ones)
1 bulb of garlic (I use a lot of garlic)
1 bunch of basil
1 bunch of oregano
Few tbls of red wine
1 tbl of crushed red pepper
Good amount of salt and pepper
About a tsp of sugar. This'll depend on taste, but I don't like going much more than this on the sugar. Some people like sweet sauces for their pizzas though, so whatever.
I tried making this in my cast iron this time, and enjoyed it, but it doesn't really matter what you make it in. You start at mid-high heat with your diced onion. Once that starts to get translucent, you dump in your garlic and dry herbs (if you're using any.) I sometimes use some dried Italian herbs along with the fresh ones to get some more depth of flavor. I use this little dry roasting trick that I picked up from making Indian food. It works well here.
As you can see, full cloves of garlic. I immersion blender this sauce at the end. If you don't have an immersion blender...have fun chopping that stuff. You can just pulse a couple of times with a normal blender, but that's kind of a pain in the ass. Your choice in where you want to spend your time.
After having cooked the stuff to the point where it's tarting to carmelize, I add the tomato paste. I begin dry roasting this, which takes an edge off the tomato paste. It'll look like kind of a mess at this point. Just keep stirring, so the whole thing doesn't burn.
At this point, I drop in my fresh seasoning to cook out some of the water from the herbs and get it all kind of homogeneous before I add my plum tomatoes.
It'll cook down into kind of a mush. Takes about 5 minutes. At this point, you can start stirring in some wine. It'll get you this super rich looking tomato sauce. Stir in that stuff for about 5 minutes as well.
This is how you make sure your sauce has body along with a complex and rich flavor with a pretty small amount of ingredients. It's largely all in the technique. After the five minutes, you can add your tomatoes.
It incorporates very easily at this point. A couple hours, and an immersion blend later:
That's the perfect kind of pizza sauce to me. Wonderful color certainly.
Personally, I like my cheese to be a mozzarella and parmesan combo. Stuff was on sale at Publix, so that was just a bonus.
For toppings I like to go kitchen sink style. Tomatoes, mushrooms, garlic, onion, and basil. To add an element of freshness I added some spinach as well. To give it some meat, I added some sausage, which I removed from the casings of some hot Italian sausage from Publix. My girlfriend wanted some pepperoni as well, so I threw a couple of pieces on to appease her. 25, minutes later.
You'll notice the crust puffed up and colored. This is what you want. You can't really tell by this shot, but the crust was sort of golden. Here's a different one from a different time I used the same recipe:
With whole wheat, that's a pretty nice accomplishment.
In the end, the toppings are up to you, but the crust and the sauce I consider to be winners for what's feasible in Florida, and certainly top shelf for what you can get in Gainesville. I suppose one of the things I love about doing pizza this way is that it always comes out slightly different, while always being good. At that point, pizza goes from beyond the easy satisfaction of bad pizza to the profundity of good food made from scratch.
--Charles
