If you see how easy it is to make pizza/pasta sauce using crushed tomatoes in the can, you'll never buy any pasta sauce or pizza sauce. I followed Heidi's (Author of 101 cookbooks) recipe almost but added dried basil and dried oregano to the sauce. It turned out delicious. For those who want to know how much I added - 1 tsp of each.
I am making pizza for lunch today and the dough I made is from 'Peter Reinhart's Napoletana Pizza Dough Recipe' which, Heidi has blogged about. What is so special about this dough is it uses cold water to make the dough and the dough is allowed to rest in the refrigerator. We had 6 inches of snow today and knowing that I will have to dig out the snow, I made the dough last night. Took it out 2 hours before the time to feed the kids. I can't understand why anyone has to buy refrigerated pizza dough when making the dough is insanely easy. I made one batch of dough and using only 1/3rd of it today. Rest of them are in the freezer for a later use.
Pizza turned out awesome. But, no pictures due to couple of disasters. Every time my oven is set at 500 F or 550 F and the oven door is opened, the smoke detector alarm starts the screeching noise. It happened today too when the first pizza was put in the oven. In all these commotion, I couldn't take a picture to show you all.
I made one with just cheese and the other without cheese but with lot of veggies. I don't have a pizza peel and was trying to use a cookie sheet as one to slide the pizza on to the stone. Disaster. It didn't slide off easily even when the whole cookie sheet was dusted with cornmeal. Then, I made another mistake. Slightly tried to reposition the hot stone. Big mistake. The stone broke. My pampered chef pizza stone is no more. I had to bake the second pizza on a cookie sheet which took longer to bake, but was delicious.
Do check out the links to see how good these two recipes are. When I make pizza again with the pizza dough that I have kept in the freezer, I will make sure to take pictures and post them.
Enjoy.
Ohh ohh ohh... Disasters!! Dont worry, it happens sometimes...
ReplyDeleteWaiting to see the pizza pics...
very interesting post...Waiting for the pics next time..
ReplyDeleteTasty appetite
Will try out the pizza dough recipe from that as it sounds so simple rather than the traditional way of finding the warm ambience for the dough. Sad to hear about your pizza stone. Looking forward to the pics next time. Thks for sharing the links.
ReplyDeleteSorry to hear about your pizza stone....I too find making your own pizza dough is easier than buying frozen one....just wanted to ask U do U think smoke alarms goes off because while shifting pizza from pizza peel to stone some of cornmeal falls inthe oven & it burns tiggering the smoke detector....because in my case it happens to be the case...just thought of sharing it with U....
ReplyDeleteThanks everyone.
ReplyDeleteSpice,
No. I made Naan once. Those were on cookie sheet and every time I opened the door to remove them and put the other cookie sheet, the smoke alarm would go off. It is just my smoke alarm is very sensitive. I get scared that it might trigger the sprinkler system. Thanks for your input though. It could happen like that to many people.
Champa, how can this dough be mixed by hand if its to be sticky? I would love to try this!
ReplyDeleteSuma,
ReplyDeleteHeidi uses stand mixer. I beat it with a wooden spoon and it was just fine.