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