Part of cooking from scratch is knowing just how "from scratch" it needs to be to feel good about what you're making. The other part is knowing where to buy the parts you're not going to make for yourself. This time it was getting a pizza crust from Alesci's and doing the sauce from scratch.
Ingredients
28 ounces (one large can) crushed tomatoes
1 cup diced onion
2 tablespoons basil pesto
2 tablespoons dried oregano (3 tablespoons fresh)
1 clove garlic (two if they're small)
2 teaspoons kosher salt
Directions
Start out by dicing the onion ...
... and mincing the garlic.
Heat some fat in a pan over medium heat -- butter, olive oil, or like I did, rendered bacon fat.
Sauté the onion until it just starts to turn clear ...
... then add the garlic and keep stirring until the garlic starts to get darker, but not brown.
Add the tomatoes ...
... and the pesto and oregano.
Simmer over medium heat for about 15 minutes, stirring frequently, until the sauce is warmed through.
Remove the pan from heat and blend with an immersion blender (AKA stick blender) until the sauce is smooth.
If you used a large pot, like I did, you'll need to tip it up to keep the end of the blender submerged. Otherwise you'll spray tomato sauce all over the stove ... the wall next to the stove ... the front of your shirt ... If you've read any of my other posts there's a good chance you've seen the phrase, "Don't ask how I know this."
Once it's smooth, put one large ladle full on the crust ...
... and have your daughters spread it around.
Wait, hold on, back up. Doesn't that title up top say "How To Make Pizza Sauce From Scratch"? And I don't see any "pizza crust" in the ingredients list. What's up with that?
Yeah, well, a picture of a bowl of tomato sauce would be pretty boring. So I helped the girls make the pizza and included the rest of the steps here.
So ... have the girls spread about a half-pound of shredded mozzarella and provolone cheese (Alesci's sells a 50/50 mix).
Make sure the cheese goes right up to the edge, but not over. You don't want it melting and dripping over into the inside of the oven.
Have the girls add whatever toppings they want. In this case, pepperoni on half, the other half plain cheese.
Think about how you're going to cut it -- six cut, eight cut, etc. -- and make sure the toppings are evenly distributed.
Bake at 450° for 15-20 minutes, until the cheese is bubbling and starting to get just a little brown around the edges.
And that's it.
24 comments:
This is a great-looking recipe - I'll definitely have to try it. And how sad is it that I've made TONS of homemade pizza, and never thought to distribute the toppings according to how it will be sliced! That is a brilliant idea!
Yeah, well, when you're as smart as I am ... [cough] uh huh, right. When you order pizza from someplace that does it that way, like I do, after about the third or fourth time you realize, "Hey, that's a pretty good idea."
This looks great! I would have never thought to use rendered bacon fat to saute the onions and garlic for the sauce, but I imagine it gives it a nice meat flavor.
"Everything's better with bacon."™
Bacon fat is my first choice for all frying/sautéing. The only time I'll use olive oil or butter instead is with really lightly flavored foods, like flounder.
Actually I was just talking to someone yesterday about the sauce she makes that has beef bones cooking in the sauce for eight hours. I'm drooling again just thinking about it.
If I'm going to do an eight-hour sauce, though, it's going to be a huge batch, so I'm holding off on that until this fall when I start canning.
Yes! Finally a recipe for pizza sauce even I can make :-p Thanks for sharing.
Hi Drew, you stopped by to visit my cooking blog, so I just had to come and say hello. I just love your posts and everything looks so yummy! Blessings, Kathleen
I love your blog. Partly because I feel so smart when I read it. It's kind of sad that folks don't know how to cook like this anymore...well, except for me, and my kids. I learned from my Grandma! Thanks for doing such a great public service :-)
Very good post there as usual! My basic tomato sauce is roughly the same as this - although I don't think onions go so well in a pizza sauce. And I cannot resist putting chillies in everything usually too.
@Ben, something tells me you've got a perfectly fine recipe for pizza. It just isn't the "traditional" version we get here in the U.S. Would I win that bet?
@Kathleen, thanks for the visit. Count on seeing me at yours to steal some more recipes.
@Cerwydwyn, you reminded me of something I heard years ago. "Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune both make you feel stupid. Jeopardy because you don't know anything. Wheel because you're watching it." :-)
@Ryan, I didn't used to put the onion in, but way more garlic. (Like four or five cloves, yumm.) My wife wouldn't eat it because, while it tasted great, she didn't like smelling like garlic for the rest of the night. So this was a compromise, but I still like it.
Just came over here from your comment on my blog. Thanks for the salad recipe! That's a good-lookin' pizza! I'll have to try that pizza sauce. And what a great idea to distribute the toppings according to how it'll be sliced!
I sort of used this recipee, except i didnt use a can of tomatoe paste... thats not cooking from scratch! anyway i blended about 5 sliced tomatoes then put them in a pot with some garlic and onions and seasonings of course! Then I just boiled it to get most of the water out while stirring, and i had this amazing sauce! i also did NOT add any salt and it was great! All organic as well.
thanks for the inspiration!
Trance, I don't care that people follow my recipes exactly. I'm just happy when someone sees one and decides to go make something similar.
TOO MUCH SALT!!!!
I threw away the pizza and the dinner was ruined!
I'm sorry it didn't work for you. My first thought is that the tomatoes you got already had salt in them. I've noticed a lot of variation in how much is in canned tomatoes. Next time I'd recommend checking the flavor of the sauce before assembling and baking the pizza.
If there's still too much salt, slice a potato in quarters lengthwise and simmer it in the sauce for about 20 minutes. It will absorb lots of the salt.
Yo Drew! You da man!
I used your recipe and even made the pesto too (though I don't have a stick blender, so my counter top blender wrestled with it quite a bit). I also added about 1 fat Tablespoon of authentic Hungarian paprika my mom-in-law sent over from Budapest. Additionally, 1 small can of tomato paste thickened up the sauce quite nicely. Tomorrow, I'm making the dough for the crust then throwing the whole shebang onto a pizza stone inside my bbq grill...thinking about adding some mesquite smoking chips to the fire for a bit of a Southwest twist to pizza. Will probably not do that though, cuz the smoke will permeate my zah stone and I'll be forever making mesquite flavored zah. Glad I posted this blog, so I could think with my fingers for a change. Thanks for a great recipe here. Appreciate the pics added to the instructions! Take good care.
Jim, I never thought about the stone absorbing flavors. How serious a problem is that?
Hey Drew,
From everything I've read about pizza stones, they are like sponges...that's why you don't use soap on them, cuz the soap taste soaks into the microscopic spaces between the stones grains.
Now I'm in a real dilemma...tried the pizza stone in the bbq. Heated bbq with stone to about 450F. Put the first pizza on parchment paper instead of corn meal. Results: completely charred pizza dough on the bottom all the way through to the toppings. Had to toss out that pie and extinguish the burning parchment paper.
second attempt: no parchment, but cornmeal on the stone. Results: same as the parchment...charred pie. Scraped off the toppings from the charred crust and ate them.
Now I have a completely charred pizza stone that I'll end up tossing out in the garbage. I'm not sure why the crust charred so much. I only had the first pizza on the stone for 10 minutes; I let the stone cool to 350F for the second pizza and it sat on the stone for only 5 minutes. It looked great on top, but the bottom was completely black, up to about 1/8 inch thick.
So I'm not sure that I'll use a stone on the bbq again, unless I find a different stone. the one I used without success was by Genius BBQ products...won't go back to them again.
Good luck with your pizza travels.
Take good care.
Damn Jim, that really sucks. I've never heard of using a pizza stone in the BBQ, so I have no idea what to expect there. If yours is made by a BBQ company, I would think it should be able to handle the heat like that.
Drew:
Fantastic recipe, I'm bookmarking this to try on the next pizza I make!
And hello from right outside Cleveland!
Matt, where outside Cleveland?
Way to go Drew! (And me too!) I was fortunate enough to have everything in this recipe growing right outside my back door, (except for the salt) I used Roma tomatoes, fresh basil and oregano and garlic! Yummy, I thought this would be a difficult task, finding a good recipe, but when I put in pizza sauce from scratch in the google box, there you were! My first stop and WooHoo!!!
Holy cow, Cheryl, where do you live that you've already got all that ready to harvest?
hey thanks for taking the time to post this recipe. helped me out alot. im 16 and i dont really have anyone to teach me about cooking.
so i just wanna say thanks. =]
Martyna, I think that's great that you're already interested in cooking. I really wish I had started earlier, instead of living on Ramen and Pop-Tarts all through college.
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