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).