DA Sauce

I have a recipe I pulled from the internet ages ago, it was supposed to be a rip off of the Pizza Hut recipe. I'm not sure how close it is to the real deal but we like it. It starts out with tomato sauce, then we add in a lot of different spices etc. We use it for Italian sausage sandwiches too by adding a little tomato paste and red pepper.

Pizza sauce

1 15oz can tomato sauce

1/4 tsp dried oregano

1/4 tsp basil leaves

1/4 tsp dried thyme

1/4 tsp garlic powder
1/4 tsp salt

1/8 tsp ground black pepper

1 bay leaf

1/2 tsp lemon juice

dash of onion powder

1/2 tbsp sugar

combine ingredients in saucepan. Heat to bubbling then turn down heat and simmer covered for 30-60 minutes to desired thickness.

This time I cooked up a link of Italian sausage I had left over from Italian sausage soup and threw that int he sauce. It just gave it a little extra sumpin sumpin.

Since I was making a double batch of personal sized pizza I decided to try a recipe I found in this months Cooking Light magazine. Oh how I love that magazine....*SIGH* Anyway....I loved the simplicity of it. You saute the garlic in the olive oil and add the crushed tomatoes to the mix with salt and oregano. Now I veered a little from the recipe. I read it wrong and instead of putting in 28 oz of Marzano tomatoes I used 14 oz of a store brand tomato with oregano and basil already added. I couldn't have been more pleased with the result. It was fantastic! I have been on a crusade at my house to get rid of as much of the extra sugars, preservatives, and processed foods as I can. I've found that the big brands have added high fructose corn syrup to many of their varieties. If I want sugar I'll add it myself thank you! This sauce was divine coupled with a little mozzarella and basil for a margherita pizza.

PIZZA DOUGH

Found a recipe for whole wheat margherita pizza on the Dr. Oz Website. The way the crust was prepared was so different to me I had to try it. First you put your warm water, agave nectar, and yeast in your food processor. That's right food processor! Let it do it's thing for 10 minutes, till it's foamy.

Add in your all purpose flour, whole wheat flour, salt and olive oil.

Give it a whirl till it comes together in a ball. Knead it a little on a floured surface and then put it in a bowl to rise for about an hour.

Here is where I ran into trouble! HA! The recipe says to divide dough into 3 parts. Then press each part on to a piece of PARCHMENT paper into a 10 inch disk. Well.....I didn't have parchment paper so after reading the box on my waxed paper I decided to give it a whirl. Not good man....The dough was sticky, a problem I fixed with the second batch. I got the dough all pressed out onto the 3 pieces of waxed paper and popped the first one into the oven on my baking stone. Now the idea is that after about 3 minutes you pull out the parchment paper like the ole tablecloth trick. Well that didn't exactly happen. Instead smoke came out of the oven vent...After the 3 minutes I pulled it out to find that the waxed paper was STUCK to the dough! Not good. I peeled it off as well as the outside of my pizza crust and did the best I could. I found that spraying the paper had better results but it still wasn't a breeze.

The second batch I did away with the waxed paper all together. I just floured my counter top and the dough and pressed it out. Transferring it to the baking stone wasn't all that difficult not with the added flour.

I like to partially bake my crust before I add toppings. It ensures that the middle gets baked and doesn't end up doughy.

I decided I really like this pizza dough recipe. I think it had great taste and a wonderful texture. Once I get parchment paper I'll even give that step another try! Hee hee!