Buddy's Pizza Sauce & Crust

Before yesterday, my homemade pizza consisted of Just-add-water pizza crust, sauce from a jar, and some shredded mozzarella cheese (LOTS of cheese when Nick is in charge).  I successfully made homemade pizza crust and sauce yesterday, topped it with fresh basil and fresh mozzarella...Ta-dah! My first real homemade pizza!  The crust and sauce are really very simple, and so good!

Pizza Crust:
• 15 oz unbleached flour - about 3 1/4 cups
• 9 ounces tepid water (clue: 1 cup = 8 oz.)
• 3/4 teaspoon active dry yeast
• 1 1/2 tsp. fine sea salt
• 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1.  Combine all ingredients in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle and mix, low, until mixture comes together.  Switch to the dough hook and continue mixing, medium-low, another 3-4 minutes.  Check dough - if too dry, add a bit more water.  If too sticky, add a bit more flour.

2.  Dump dough onto a lightly floured surface and knead until the dough is smooth and elastic, 5-7 min.  (I kneaded longer because I'm not very good at it...I don't even know if it was "smooth and elastic" when I was done, but it was still fine!)  Form dough into a ball and place in a bowl lightly greased with olive oil.  Turn dough to coat, then cover with plastic wrap or a towel.  Let rest 1/2 hour to 45 minutes to rise.

3.  Turn dough out onto a lightly floured board and press down to deflate.  Cut the dough into 2 or 3 and form into tight balls to press air out.
Should make 3 8-10" pizza shells or 2 12-14" pizza shells.

If using today:  Place balls of dough on a floured board covered with oiled plastic or a towel, and let rise 1 hour.

If using tomorrow:  Place the dough on a lightly floured tray, cover with oiled plastic and refrigerate overnight.  Allow dough to sit at room temperature 10-15 minutes before shaping/baking.

Pizza Sauce:
• 1 14oz. can diced tomatoes
• 1 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
• 1 tsp. minced garlic
• 1 Tbsp grated Parmesan
• 1 1/2 tsp. sugar
• Salt to taste

Put the diced tomatoes in a food processor and blend until it is a think liquid (10-20 seconds).  Dump into a bowl.  Add remaining ingredients to the bowl and allow to sit at room temperature for one hour to let the flavors blend.

This is the recipe my way... I halved it the recipe, adapted whole peeled tomatoes in a food mill to diced tomatoes in a food processor, and made smashed cloves of garlic minced garlic, just because it's simpler.

For cooking our pizza...

We don't have a pizza peel, but it's okay!  I used our giant cutting board as a surface, made a pizza a little smaller than our pizza stone, and (with enough flour) it was possible (though not easy) to slide it onto the pizza stone by myself, and very easy to slide it off the pizza stone with Nick's help!  Much better than last time we tried this!

p.s. Fontinella cheese was our new discovery!  I will always use this now!


These recipes are from Buddy Valastro... the "Cake Boss" and now the "Kitchen Boss".
The originals can be found on the TLC website.
Pizza Dough
Pizza Sauce