When I first met my husband he subsisted on his own personal five food groups: pizza, cheeseburgers, bacon, peanut butter, and chocolate. While these are all unarguably delicious, I set to work to help him branch out a bit. His idea of pizza, unfortunately shared by many, was a frozen number that baked up to a thick goopy mess of rubbery cheese and questionable pepperoni. The pizza I love is the classic street food of Italy, a true Neapolitan Pizza. It’s crispy and delicious with a light herb laced tomato sauce and flavorful melting fresh mozzarella cheese. The best thing about this pizza is that it can be made very easily at home without a lot of work or fancy equipment.
Here’s the story of my introduction to pizza. I’m sure many people who grew up in the South around the time I did have similar memories. When I was very young pizza hadn’t quite made it to the menu of most Southern homes. There were no pizza parlors and New York was a lot farther away. One snow day when temperatures never made it out of the teens and my mother was trying to entertain two small girls and a baby she announced she was going to make a pizza pie. She had, after all, gone to school in New York and was prone to occasionally mentioning some of the more exotic dishes she had enjoyed there. I was personally unimpressed with this plan; I didn’t have much of a sweet tooth (over that now) and thought it was just another dessert. What my mother made may not have been the most authentic pizza, but what I remember is a fabulous concoction of tomato sauce and melting cheese that guaranteed I was hooked for a lifetime.
Now I love to experiment with sauces and ingredients but in truth nothing really beats this classic. With a stand mixer, anyone can make a fantastic pizza crust in minutes that will keep in the fridge for about a week. There is some disagreement among professional pizza chefs about ingredients; some call for sugar, some call for olive oil, some no salt in the dough. I’ve experimented and the recipe here is a combination of trial and error and just what we love. It’s a low yeast, low rise dough, that creates a very crispy crust. To make a slightly less crispy crust, substitute part of the water for milk. That creates more of a bread dough consistency. In any case, I think you’ll like how easy this dough is to handle. And the sauce, which is really my son’s recipe, is good enough to drink! This recipe makes two pizzas, about 16 inches each.
Dough
5 cups flour
1 tsp yeast
1 Tbsp sugar or honey
2 tsp salt
1 ½ cups warm, not hot, water (maybe more)
You can mix this by hand, but I use a mixer with a dough hook, which truly makes this effortless. In a mixing bowl add warm water, yeast, sugar or honey, and let sit for around 2 minutes. Add flour and salt and mix to just combine. Let that sit about 5 minutes. Turn mixer to lowest speed and it will do the work. Mix about 3 to 5 minutes until the dough comes together and leaves the side of the bowl. Add ¼ cup more water if necessary. That’s it! I spray the inside of a couple of baggies with cooking spray and divide the dough putting half in each baggie. These go in the fridge. An hour before I want to make pizza, I take the baggies out of the fridge and set them on the counter. Remember these bags of dough will keep for about a week.
Sauce
28 oz can whole peeled tomatoes
1 clove garlic, chopped
1/8 tsp red pepper flakes
1/2 tsp basil
1/2 tsp oregano
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar
1 Tbsp red wine vinegar
Makes enough for two pizzas
For topping: fresh mozzarella cheese that usually can be found in a plastic container in the deli section of your grocery store
Pour tomatoes, juice and all, into a big bowl. Mash up the tomatoes with your hands, letting seeds settle into the liquid. Pour out all but about ¼ cup of the juice and any seeds that come with it. Don’t worry that some seeds remain - they won’t hurt you. Add the rest of the ingredients through vinegar. At this point, either use a blender or emersion blender to mix everything together in a coarse puree, not a smooth paste.
To bake, turn your oven up as high as it goes, mine hits 550 degrees, and let it really heat up, about 20 to 30 minutes. I have a pizza stone. They are pretty inexpensive, but definitely not necessary. For years I used a cookie sheet. I put the pizza stone in the oven while it preheats. I make the pizza on a cookie sheet sprinkled with a tablespoon of cornmeal (optional). The dough is easy to handle, spread it out and add sauce. Top with cheese to taste. Again, this is my own weird technique, I put the pizza in the oven on the cookie sheet for 5 minutes till I can slide the partially baked crust on to the pizza stone, then bake till crispy, another 5 to 8 minutes. Slice and enjoy. Frozen pizza will never taste like this!
