For this meal I decided to focus on the sauce. Let's be honest, tackling a sauce and dough from scratch is only a recipe for disaster. I took the easy route with the crust and purchased a thin crust store branded option. It wasn't too bad, but obviously making the crust myself would have been the best option. Maybe I'll try that next time....
For the sauce, I really wanted to try and recreate what we had while in Italy. To do so I got the following ingredients:
- 2 cans (28 ounces) of San Marzanos tomatoes
- Olive Oil (I used a brand we bought in Florence
- 2 garlic cloves
- 1 small onion
- 1 celery stalk
- 1 carrot
- 1/4 pound of italian sausage
- 1 block of mozzarella cheese
- 2 tablespoons fresh parsley
- salt and pepper to taste
First you will need to chop the onion, celery, carrots and garlic.
Once this is done, put the ingredients in a heated pan with a bit of olive oil. Cook for 5 minutes or until the carrots are tender.
While you let those ingredients sauté, it's time to work with the tomatoes. I chose to buy canned whole tomatoes, but if you have tomatoes at home and are feeling adventurous you could certainly use fresh (just be sure to core the tomato first).
First take the tomatoes out of the can and drain the juice. Be sure to save the juice, we will be using that in the sauce. After draining chop or mash the tomatoes into small pieces. You can pick the size based on how chunky you'd like your sauce.
Once the tomatoes are drained and chopped you will need to add them and the juice to the pan that has the carrots, onions, celery and garlic.
Once all of the ingredients are incorporated you will need to let the sauce simmer in the pot for 30 - 45 minutes. This will help build the flavor and thicken it up a bit. If you're finding that the sauce is too watery you can add some tomato paste to thicken it up. Once the sauce looks right and your kitchen is smelling amazing, it's time to add it to the crust!
I pre-heat my oven to follow the instructions for the crust I bought (400 degrees). I put the sauce on the crust and then added my favorite toppings.
Since I bought a pre-made crust the pizza really only needs to cook long enough to melt the cheese and get all the toppings warm. At 400 my pizza cooked for about 15 minutes. Once it was done I sprinkled on some fresh cut basil and was ready to dive in!
While I won't claim to have made a pizza as good as we had in Italy, this did turn out really tasty! The sauce is thick and chunky and all of the ingredients really made it flavorful. I probably won't use this thin crust again because the sauce didn't really stick to it so we had to eat with a fork and knife (which is actually how the Italians eat pizza anyway!).
This sauce was delicious and I had plenty of remaining after making 2 pizzas. I plan to freeze it and use it over pasta!