Pizza sauce version 1.1
28 oz can San Marzano tomatoes
¼ cup + 1 tbsp tomato paste
1 ½ tbsp sugar
½ tsp salt
1 tsp oregano
1 tsp thyme
½ tsp garlic powder

The result: Meh. It was a really good pizza sauce, just not at all what I was going for. Bumping up the spices and tomato paste and reducing the sweetness just didn’t work out. It was too savory, and the sweetness was lost in the more intense tomato and spice flavors.

What I’m going for is more of a simple, fresh, sweet tomato sauce. So, I’m going to change it up again and try again this week.

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Imagine for a moment that you have in front of you a big, thick, juicy steak, cooked exactly the way you like it — beautifully browned on the outside, tender and succulent on the inside. You take one blissful bite of this heavenly hunk of meat, savoring it, marveling at the fantastically mouthwatering flavor. You reach your hand out to take a sip of your delicious pint of… [...]

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This festival, held at Clipper City Brewing in Baltimore, MD, will feature firkins, BBQ, and live music from 12:00-4:00pm on March 27th. Count me in!

Tickets just went on sale this week, and are limited to only 300 people, so get a move on!

Up until this point, I’ve just been puréeing a can of San Marzano tomatoes and throwing in whatever spices I felt like. I was more concerned with working on the crust, and therefore wasn’t really thinking about the sauce. But now I’m ready to take it to the next level.

The best pizza sauce I’ve ever tasted is from Peace A Pizza. It’s got this wonderful sweetness that makes it better than any other sauce I’ve ever had. So, I started off with this recipe:

Pizza sauce version 1.0
28 oz can San Marzano tomatoes
¼ cup tomato paste
2 tbsp sugar
½ tsp salt
½ tsp oregano
½ tsp thyme
½ tsp garlic powder

The result — a pretty good start.

Keep in mind that this recipe makes enough sauce to cover two batches of pizza dough. I love the flavor of San Marzano tomatoes, but I can only find them in 28 oz cans, hence the massive amount of sauce this recipe makes.

I think I overdid it just a tad with the sugar in version 1.0. I liked the sweetness, but I think it was just a tiny bit too much. I’m also thinking I should increase the amount of tomato paste because it needed more… tomato-iness.

Also, I’m going to bump up the oregano and thyme. They weren’t really detectable, and the sauce just needed a little more oomph in the spice area.

Like I said, this was a good start. We’ll see what happens with these adjustments.

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The Brewer’s Plate, featuring Philadelphia’s premier local food and craft beer, is a fundraising event for Fair Food, a non-profit organization dedicated to bringing locally grown food into the Philadelphia marketplace. [...]

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I’ll get to that in a moment. First, I’d like to report the sad death of my pizza stone…

Old and busted

It broke while I was baking a pizza on it, oven door closed, no drastic change in temperature… So I think it was just due to the fact that it was a cheapo stone. As soon as it broke, I ordered a new one from The Pampered Chef. It’s bigger, better, and it has sweet handles!

New hotness

Anyway, back to the pizza dough experiment. For version 1.2, I played with fermentation temperature. I wasn’t getting a good rise out of my dough, so I did an experiment to find the cause of the problem. First of all, I bought new yeast since I had a feeling that the yeast I was using was a little on the old side. That turned out to be absolutely the case, as both the refrigerated and room temperature dough rose significantly more than version 1.1.

So that mystery was solved. Now there’s the matter of refrigerated vs. room temperature proofing. As it turns out, I got a similar rise out of each. I let the room temperature dough rise for about 4 hours before shaping, topping, and baking. Here are before and after pictures:

Room temperature rise - before

Room temperature rise - after

The crust came out great! The texture was much better than version 1.1 – it was lighter, less dense, and really quite perfect if I do say so myself.

I let the refrigerated dough rise overnight and baked it the next day. And I pretty much got the exact same results. Again, before and after pictures (it looks like more dough, but that’s only because the bowl was smaller than the previous):

Refrigerated rise - before

Refrigerated rise - after

The resulting crust was pretty much identical to the room temperature proofed crust. One thing I did notice was that the refrigerated dough was a little easier to shape than the room temperature dough.

There was also a third portion of dough that I proofed at room temperature, then refrigerated overnight before baking. There was no change in the crust’s texture this way, but the dough did seem a little less sturdy while I was shaping it.

Overall, each method of proofing the dough gave me the same kick-ass result:

So, I think I’ll stick with the refrigerated proofing method. The dough was easiest to work with this way.

The two other small changes I made for version 1.2 were that I added a little more honey and subtracted a little salt, for the sole purpose of enhancing the flavor. And wow did it work. I’m gonna go ahead and say that this was the best pizza dough I have ever tasted. Seriously, it was that good. A hint of sweetness, the perfect light texture with just the right amount of chewiness… Fantastic!

And so, here we have it – my finalized pizza dough recipe.

Pizza dough version 1.awesome

Combine the flour, oil, honey, salt, and yeast in the bowl of a stand mixer with the paddle attachment. Add the water and mix on low speed until combined, about 1-2 minutes. Let the dough rest for 5 minutes. Switch to the dough hook and kneed on medium-low speed for 2-3 minutes. The dough should be a pretty tight ball, ever-so-slightly tacky, and should not stick to the bowl.

Lightly oil a bowl that’s twice the size of the dough. Roll the dough ball in the oil to coat it, cover tightly with plastic wrap, and refrigerate for at least 8 hours.

Remove the dough to a lightly oiled work surface, cut it into four pieces, and shape each piece into a ball. Place each ball on a lightly oiled piece of parchment and loosely cover with plastic wrap. Allow to come to room temperature for 1 ½ to 2 hours. (If not using all the dough at once, return the rest to the refrigerator tightly wrapped in plastic.)

Once the dough is at room temperature, you can shape it, place it on a pizza peel dusted with corn meal, top it, finesse it onto a pre-heated pizza stone (as hot as your oven will allow), bake it, and enjoy it. And trust me, you will enjoy it.

My pizza crusade isn’t over yet. Now that I’ve perfected (at least in my mind!) my pizza dough recipe, it’s time to work on the second most important element of a pizza — the sauce. I’ve already got pizza sauce version 1.0 in the fridge, ready and rarin’ to go for tonight’s pizza. Stay tuned to see the recipe and find out the results!

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Read more at The Hop Press!