Seventh Attempt: Not Many Changes

Spencer and I decided to make pizza this time at my cousin Kristen's house in Brigham City. While Spencer and I started cooking my cousin (graciously) conceded control of her kitchen and we whipped up our homemade crust, homemade sauce and fresh toppings. As you can see below, Spencer had a great time cooking, and Kristen had a great time NOT cooking.




We (FINALLY) bought a basting brush for our garlic butter application which (not suprisingly) works much better than a fork and is less painful than using our fingers.



Kenny (Kristen's husband) and Kristen both really enjoyed the pizza. Kenny loved it so much he had seconds and thirds! We got two emphatic thumbs up from both of them.




The combination pizza turned out really well but we had to bake it twice because the crust didn't firm up on the stone. It only took a couple of minutes on the pizza pan to get it to perfection.






The only changes we made were the application of the garlic butter with a brush, using more wheat flour in the crust and we altered the sauce slightly because we did not have oregano. We used Italian seasoning instead and the flavor was a lot more subtle. The crust had a great flavor but was a lot more dense.





Our final ratings are as follows:


Sauce: 3.91
Garlic Butter: 4.01
Crust: 4.19
Overall: 4.33

Sixth Attempt: We Have a Winner!

Ok so perhaps we have not yet attained "perfection" but we have definitely gotten close with our latest attempt. After our last attempt we listed 5 suggestions to try - we used 3 of those and the results were incredible. Spencer said its the best pizza we've EVER made. We did not invite anyone over this time (since Spencer is working weekends right now and has Tuesday - Thursday off work), so you'll have to take our word for it that this was delicious pizza.

We started with a new crust recipe (which Spencer found online and made entirely on his own) that used whole wheat flour in addition to white flour. It was a lot more dense than plain white flour crust but we rolled it out pretty thinly and Spencer felt that next time we should do a double batch.

Above you can see Spencer applying the garlic butter to the edge of the cooked Combination Pizza. We only used about 1/4 lb of turkey sausage (which Spencer also made) and it was the perfect amount.

For the stuffed crust pizza we just put 3 types of cheese as toppings; feeling, as previously mentioned, that additional toppings were not needed because of the awesomeness of the stuffed crust. We used mozzarella cheese sticks in the crust (we used 9 sticks for a solid ring of cheese) and topped the pizza with mozzarella, parmesan and sharp cheddar. It was definitely our favorite of the two we made.

We used our same old sauce recipe, without variations (except that I burned the garlic because I didn't peel the tomatoes prior to beginning to cook the olive oil, onions and garlic in the pan). I did not puree the tomatoes (because I forgot) and ended up using twice as many as the recipe called for because I am not as skilled with the peeling knife as Spencer and ended up wasting about 1/3 of each tomato. We unfortunately could not use fresh oregano because I couldn't find any at Walmart.

Above you can see Spencer's final judgment and that he was thoroughly enjoying the pizzas. Please review our rating below and, as always, if you have suggestions or a desire to attend a pizza party (and you are in the Tremonton area) please call 555-PZZA....or just let me know and we'll invite you!

On a scale of 1-5, here is our assessment:

Whole Wheat Crust: 3.76

Overall Pizza: 4.49

Ideas and Tips for our Next Attempt

These are our ideas for next time...

1. Obtain a source of fresh oregano - it really matters!!!

2. Fewer toppings on the stuffed crust pizza - the stuffed crust is the highlight and does not need to be jazzed up by mushrooms, peppers, onions and such.

3. Puree tomatoes in the blender prior to adding to sauce for cooking - this would help the consistency problem.

4. Adding garlic butter to the edge of pizza AFTER cooking using a basting brush (which will need to be purchased) - we used our fingers on the prior to cooking attempt (don't worry we washed our hands!)

5. Try a new crust recipe - either whole wheat (my mom would be so proud) or homemade pita bread.

Fifth Attempt: Back to the Drawing Board

So this evening we invited Spencer's sister, Liesl, and his dad over for dinner. Liesl assisted us by bringing fresh tomatoes from her garden which were delicious and so much juicier than our store bought tomatoes. There just is no substitute for garden fresh ingredients.

We tried to alter the sauce recipe we have been using. We looked up another recipe and selected some new elements for our sauce. We added a teaspoon of thyme, two teaspoons of lemon juice and two teaspoons of parsley. The thyme was WAY too strong and I think if we include that again we will cut the amount in half. The consistency was different, it was more watery and chunky. Also, although the flavor was different we feel that it was not as good as our previous sauce.

We also made 4 different pizzas tonight (which was a bit too much but we were unsure how many guests we'd be having so we over prepared). We did two combination pizzas, one with stuffed crust and the other without. We used slices of colby/jack cheese for the stuffed crust instead of mozzarella sticks. We prefer the mozzarella sticks because the cheese flavor is more pronounced and they are much thicker (and quicker). Also, Spencer noted that the mozzarella sticks melt better.

We made some garlic butter to put on the edges of the pizza. We added it before it was cooked and there was no noticeable taste difference. However, Spencer felt that the consistency may have been too weak (in terms of the garlic to butter ratio).

We also made a Four Cheese pizza (seen above) which was pretty delicious. We used mozzarella, parmesan and colby/jack cheese. Paul said it was his favorite and that we had done much better than the last time he was invited for pizza (hooray!!! we are improving!!!). Liesl brought her son Zak and he seemed to be enjoying the cheese pizza until it ended up on the carpet, fortunately we had just vacuumed :-)

We also tried a cheese pizza with a garlic butter sauce instead of marinara but it was a total bust. It tastes like cheese bread only less delicious. We are going to try to turn it into normal pizza tomorrow.

Liesl said the pizza was good but felt that the turkey sausage was overpowering. As you can see from Spencer's judgment above, it was just ok. We feel like our last attempt was much better.

Sauce: 4.29

Cheese Pizza Overall: 4.22

Combination Pizza Overall: 4.31

Garlic Cheese Bread: 1.21

(I can't believe I only took 3 pictures! Sorry fans, I will do better next time).

Fourth Attempt: Success!!!

I guess its fitting that for our fourth attempt we would try four new things (well, technically 3 new things and 1 modified thing) but all four were a resounding success!

First, as previously mentioned, we modified our pizza sauce recipe. Last time we used too much dried oregano so we found fresh oregano and only used about 1/3 of what the recipe called for. As you can see below, the result was a less green, more saucy pizza sauce, which all agree was a great success. Spencer and I decided that since we have "mastered" this particular sauce recipe we will move on to another for our next attempt.



Spencer mentioned that a TRUE combination pizza has more than just pepperoni and vegetables and expressed his desire to add sausage to the pizza. So for our second addition to the pizza he took a pound of ground turkey and added Italian Seasoning, salt and pepper. We all enjoyed the sausage and will probably make that a permanent addition to our future attempts.

My dear old friend Brooke (and by old I mean I've known her a long time not that she is "OLD"...I mean we are the same age and I don't think I'm old...sorry I digress) joined us for dinner. She was our photographer for part of the evening. She can be seen below enjoying her first bite of the stuffed crust pizza, which was our third addition to this attempt. This was an easy addition and also one that we will repeat in the future as we all enjoyed it. Spencer rolled out the dough about 3 inches larger than the pan size. We placed mozzarella cheese sticks along the edge of the pan and folded the dough over. I tried to spread the excess out to the center of the pan so the dough would cook more evenly.



Our fourth addition to this attempt was trying a new crust recipe. Brooke turned me on to a website called http://thepioneerwoman.com which has a ton of cool recipes on it. I found several pizza dough recipes and selected one for this weeks crust. The major difference between this crust and my previous one is the amount of yeast used. This recipe called for less than half the amount of yeast and I liked it better.



We always make 2 pizzas (because we always have guests AND we like left-overs). The pictures above show the Combination Pizza and the Stuffed Crust Pizza prior to cooking. (The toppings on both pizzas are identical but the rectangular pizza does not have cheese in the crust.) Side note: the toppings were divided evenly between the pizzas, however the rectangular pizza has a larger surface area and is therefore less dense in terms of toppings; it was agreed by all that the rectangular pizza, as opposed to the stuffed crust pizza, had a better mix of flavors due to the lower density of toppings per slice.



We cooked the Combination pizza first for about 15 minutes but it could have used another 5 minutes or so. The crust was cooked all the way through but was not golden brown on the bottom and was quite pliable. This also could be due in part to being cooked on a baking stone instead of the normal vented pizza pan. As you can see in the pictures above and below, it was still a delicious success and received a thumbs up from both Brooke and Spencer.



We all loved the Stuffed Crust pizza and agreed it should also be a regular addition to our attempts. This pizza we cooked for 25 minutes due to the deficiencies in the Combination pizza crust and it turned out perfectly. The left-overs were highly coveted (Brooke took some home) and devoured quickly (Spencer and I finished it off as a late night snack before bed).



We feel this has been our most successful attempt to date.

On a scale of 1-5, here is our assessment:

Turkey Sausage: 4.37
Pizza Crust: 4.24
Stuffed Crust: 3.7
Overall Pizza: 4.82

We plan to have Liesl and her boys over next time so we may get to try even more new things!

Our Next Attempt

For our next pizza attempt we are going to try a different crust recipe and we are going to modify the sauce recipe we used last time (by using less oregano...and dang it we couldn't find fresh oregano). We are going to make our next attempt on Monday so if you, my (I'm sure) faithful devoted readers, have any recipes for crust that we could try, we would be happy to receive them. Also, if you are going to be in the Tremonton area, you are welcome to join us :-)

Third Attempt: Homemade Sauce

This week we decided to try to make our own sauce from scratch. We found a recipe on eHow.com that used all fresh ingredients and was very simple. We started by heating some olive oil in a sauce pan then adding fresh garlic and onions. We then added peeled roma tomatoes and cooked it down to a sauce. After about 10 minutes, during which we debated adding water (I was for adding water, Spencer was against) we then added oregano and fresh basil leaves. We did not add water and below is the finished sauce product.

We also used the dough recipe we used during our first attempt but we doubled the recipe so we could make two pizzas. The sauce was very thick and I opted to use less sauce on the square pizza. It made a big difference in the flavor of the pizzas.

We cooked the less sauce pizza first and the sauce had such a subtle flavor you couldn't specifically identify it. But the second pizza was very heavy on sauce (courtesy of Spencer's heavy-handedness) and we ascertained that the oregano was very over-powering.

The recipe had called for fresh oregano but we used dried. It was definitely too much. We are going to try this sauce recipe again but use less oregano. We are also going to try to find fresh oregano next time.

We invited Paul, Spencer's dad, over to eat with us and you can see the results below (as well as the family resemblance). Overall we really liked the sauce and the pizza.

On a scale of 1-5 our rating is:

Sauce: 3.32

Overall Pizza: 3.66

Second Attempt: July 25th Successful

So on Saturday, July 17th, me and the ladies went to lunch....meaning that Spencer's mom (Cyndi), sister (Liesl) and sister-in-law (Sidra) went to Taggarts up Ogden canyon (somewhere, I can't remember the name of the place specifically) and we had a delightful lunch. Taggart's makes and sells pita bread and it was like a roll made into a pita. So of course I fell in love with it and had to get some. Taggart's had pizza on their menu and they use the pitas so that gave me the idea of making our homemade pizza using their pitas.
Spencer showed me the proper way to spread sauce and load toppings onto the pizza. He has elevated pizza to an art form (like everything else he does) and I deferred to his expertise. Below are the combination and cheese pizzas ready to be cooked.

The pitas were great for pizza because it was basically like having an individual pizza. We cooked one at a time on our pizza crisper. So when the second one was cooking, we enjoyed the first pizza hot out of the oven (see pics below for a view of the tempting deliciousness.)

So the final judgment is that the pitas are AWESOME! They are a little sweet and great for pizza. Also they don't take quite as long to cook as making your own dough. Spencer was a big fan (see his big smile below)...

On a scale of 1-5 our rating is:

Pita Crust: 4.65 (Spencer would like to note that he would prefer to make the pitas from scratch so we are going to try to find a recipe.)

Overall Pizza: 4.27

First Attempt: Successfulish

So we began our quest for perfection by making our own dough. We found a recipe on allrecipes.com called Jay's Signature Pizza Crust. It takes a little longer because of the yeast but rose beautifully and had a good flavor. To ad a touch of flavor we melted 3 tbls of butter and added garlic salt and rubbed in into the entire crust - next time I will use less butter and only do the edges of the crust.

While waiting on the dough to rise (which takes approximately an hour) we chopped up our veggies and grated the cheese for our pizza. We decided on a combination pizza and using a food chopper, finely chopped up onions, green pepper and mushrooms. We also added olives, pepperoni, mozzarella and parmesan cheese.

Rolling out the dough proved to be a bigger task than originally expected but was not impossible, it just took a little finesse (and some half-hearted attempts at tossing it in the air). We used a round 16" pizza crisper pan and the crust was deep dish style. We easily could have done two smaller pizza's with the same amount of dough. We liked that the bottom of the crust was very crisp but the rest of the crust was very airy.

We baked the pizza at 425 for about 15 minutes. We ran into some minor technical difficulties because the oven was about 1" too small for the pan we used. As a result the sides nearest the oven were burned pretty severely. Unfortunately, this burned piece was the first one Spencer tried, hence his so-so assessment as seen below.

Spencers first impression, though not final opinion.

On a scale of 1-5 here is our assessment:

Crust - 3.4

Overall Pizza Flavor - 3.7

So clearly we have still have some work to do :-)