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
I learned the hard way that you use half of what the recipe calls for when using dried seasoning (dried onion flakes in my case). And I would've agreed with you about adding water to the sauce (Chris would have sided with Spencer).
ReplyDeleteOk, so below is the sauce recipe with a correction for using dried oregano instead of fresh. We doubled this recipe when we used it.
ReplyDeletePizza Sauce Recipe
Ingredients:
2 teaspoons olive oil
2 cloves garlic
1/4 cup onion
3-4 Roma tomatoes
5 fresh basil leaves
1/4 cup fresh oregano (1/8 cup if using dried oregano)
a medium-sized sauce pan
a wire whisk
salt and pepper to taste
1. Start making pizza sauce using fresh ingredients by peeling and chopping ingredients. Peel and mince the garlic. Cut the onion into small pieces. Peel the Roma tomatoes.
2. Pour two teaspoons olive oil into a medium-sized sauce pan. Heat over medium about two minutes until the oil is hot. Add the minced garlic and finely chopped onions. Cook about two minutes, until the garlic and onion are soft. Stir often with the wire whisk.
3. Add the tomatoes. You can chop the tomatoes roughly before adding them to the sauce pan or you can add them whole. I usually add them whole so as not to lose any of the juice from the tomatoes before cooking them. Use the wire whisk to smash the tomatoes in the pan.
4. Cook, stirring and smashing the tomatoes often, for five to ten minutes. The tomatoes will become softer as they cook, making it easier to smash them. You can add salt and pepper at this point, if you desire.
5. The tomatoes, onion, and garlic should have a sauce-like consistency by this point. You can leave some chunks if you desire, or cook slightly longer to ensure a more even consistency. Use your hands to tear the basil and oregano into pieces and add the pieces to the sauce. The pieces of basil and oregano should be about 1/4 inch by 1/4 inch or so.
6. Cook between three and five minutes longer, stirring often. Remove the pan from heat. Allow the sauce to cool slightly before adding to the pizza crust dough.