Simple Homemade Veggies Pizza with Simple Homemade Sauce.

  I always wanted to make pizza from scratch, the dough, the sauce and everything, but closest I came to making it was getting ready made shells from Costco which comes in pack of 2 with organic pizza sauce. I would make the shell crispy in oven before putting sauce and topping on it and baking it.  And it came out pretty good.   However I still had this desire to make the pizza from scratch, I had bought the pizza stone many years ago to fulfill this desire but ended up using the stone to make homemade naan and pita bread, as you can see the pizza stone has many stains set in. 

Then at work I was talking to wife of patient of mine and she said they make pizza every weekend  and whenever they have get together. She printed a recipe for homemade sauce and pizza dough.

Temperature that she had in the recipe was for pizza pan at 425 F. I was not sure about the temps with stone.  So I called a very good friend of mine Mehul G, who makes lots of pizza and asked him and walked me through how to make pizza on stone.  He suggested that I a get pizza dough 00 and gets a steel pizza stone, a kitchen scale and a pizza peel.  I had none of these things. I just decided to go forward with the flour that he suggested and with my stone.

First I will give you recipe for the sauce which was from Mrs. Candace P,  and then her recipe for the dough but using the pizza flour. She used regular AP flour which is fine too.  For baking method, I give credit to our friend Mehul.

The dough recipe is for two 12-14 inches pizza, and so is the sauce, you can freeze the risen dough and sauce both if you just make one pizza. Just have to take it out at room temp for 4-6 hours before making pizza.  

• Make the dough first and let it rise of 4-6 hours, I have included the dough recipe after the sauce recipe. 
• While you are making the sauce you can preheat the oven to 550 F and place the stone in the bottom rack and let it heat for 1 hour.

 

Ingredients for sauce:

• 3 tablespoon of olive oil
• 2 large onions chopped finely (I used three medium size onions)
• 4-6 garlic cloves finely chopped or less if you are not a garlic fan
• 1 can (6 oz) tomato paste
• 2 and 1/2 cup of water + water from rinsing the tomato paste can
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon of oregano or Italian seasoning
• Pinch of sugar

Method to make sauce:

• Heat oil in a medium saucepan.
• Add onions and garlic and sauté until tender and light brown for about 5 min
• Stir in tomato past and cook for about 3 min
• Stir in water, oregano and sugar.
• Heat to boiling.
• Reduce heat to low,
• Simmer uncovered for about an hour until sauce is thick.
• Adjust spice to taste.
• Makes sauce for two 12-14 inch pizzas.

You can make the dough for crust ahead of time to give enough time to rise.

Ingredients for dough for pizza crust:

• 2 cups of warm water 
• 2 packs of active dry yeast (1 pack is approximately 1 tablespoon of active dry yeast for those who are using yeast from jar)
• 1 teaspoon of sugar
• 5 cups of un-sifted all purpose flour or 00 pizza flour
• 4 table spoons of olive oil
• 2 teaspoon salt
• Hand full of corn meal to flour the surface when rolling pizza in to round crust. 

Method to make dough for crust: 

• In a small bowl warm water, dissolve sugar and yeast.
• Let it sit for 10 min covered .
• Add flour,  and salt in stand mixer bowl mix it with whisk.
• Then add oil
• Then with the hook attachment add yeast mixture gradually to dough and knead for about 8 min until elastic.
• You can add little more flour to prevent from sticking.
• Place the dough in a large greased bowl, turning it so all side has is greased .
• Cover with plastic film and keep it in warm place to rise for about 4-6 hours.
• It will double in size.
• Punch the dough and let is rest for about 15 min.
• Divide in two balls and again rest for about 10 min.
• If not making both pizza at same time you can freeze the dough and half of the sauce as mentioned before.

How to assemble pizza:

• Hopefully you have been heating the stone at 550 F in oven while you were making sauce.
• Get all the topping ready, I sliced red onions, mushroom, green and red peppers and Fresh Jalapeno peppers.
• I used 1 and 1/2 cup of shredded Mozzarella and 2  slices of  fresh mozzarella broken in to chunks.
• You can add more or less cheese based on your preference.
• Take parchment paper and sprinkle flour on it   (I used corn flour) 
• Place  the one half of the pizza ball  on the parchment paper and put in on it and roll it in desired thickness, I roll in thin but mostly work with your fingers to stretch initially then gently roll it to round little less than your stone size.
• Spread sauce on the pizza round followed by cheeses and veggies.

• Slide out the rack with heated pizza stone and carefully place the pizza with parchment paper on it.
• DO NOT decrease the oven temp, let it be 550 F
• Slide the rack back and bake it for 5  min until the parchment paper starts turning brown, so stay with the oven while baking.
• Carefully open the oven and remove the parchment paper,
• leaving the pizza on the stone in lower rack.
• Close the oven, maintain the oven temp at 550 by doing rapid heating if you have that feature.
• Bake it until the crust is golden and cheese is melting (about 10-15 min)
• Then carefully remove the pizza with pizza peel (I used my pizza pan) and place it on the top rack.
• Bake for additional 4-5 min.

Enjoy !! 

I want to thank Mrs. Candace P. and Mehul G. for the recipes and for  helping me make the crust and sauce and bake the pizza at right temp on stone. It was delish and a hit with my family.

All the assembly of recipe and photographs by Surekha.

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