Homemade Pizza

We have recently instituted "pizza night" in the Reaton household, experimenting each week with different toppings. Tonight, on our 5th pizza night, we went traditional with red sauce & cheese.

The dough recipe came from Moosewood Restaurant New Classics cookbook. The recipe makes 2 pizzas, so last week when we made our dough, we split it in half and froze some for this week. For my first attempt at this recipe I did not have bread flour, just all purpose flour. I have since used bread flour (like the recipe calls for) and definitely noticed a difference for the better. I have made the dough both in a food processor and most recently in my new Kitchen-Aid stand mixer, both did the job, but the Kitchen-Aid with the dough hook is far superior!

The red sauce is Mario Batali's Basic Tomato Sauce recipe, this recipe comes out fairly chunky, which is great for pasta dishes, but for the pizza tonight we gave it a spin in the food processor to thin it out a bit. The cheese was a blend of Asiago, Parmigiano- Reggiano, and Mozzerella.

The Moosewood recipe calls for a baking time of 20-30 minutes in a 425 degree oven. After our first attempt resulted in a hard, dry crust, we did some research into pizza making and altered the recipe to about 10-12 minutes in a 550 degree oven. Much better.

It may not be perfect looking, but it was delicious....