(Homemade) Pizza Night Failure

My hubby loves pizza and a few months ago, we "made our own" pizza so to speak, at a restaurant we went to in Mo Gan Shan, near Hangzhou. But really, it wasn't making your own pizza because the dough was made and ready, as was the tomato sauce, and all the ingredients were chopped and ready. It was really just a matter of playing with the dough, combining things to taste and sticking it in the nice wood-fired oven they had.

Homemade Pizza! Looks good but...

Making my own pizza at home was a slightly different story...

So first I went on an internet quest for yeast-free pizza dough recipes, because I don't have yeast and am not sure where to get it in Shanghai (tips, anyone??)

The recipes that showed up were all pretty similar, so I kind of averaged them out and chose one I thought I could work with:

2 cups flour
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
2/3 cups water
1/4 cup vegetable oil

I sifted and mixed the dry ingredients and then slowly added the water and oil. It was pretty straightforward, and the dough looked normal enough to my untrained eyes...

I rolled the dough out onto a baking tray, since I don't have a pizza stone. Before adding the toppings, I used my fingers to spread about 1 teaspoon of olive oil onto the surface of the dough, since some websites suggested this would stop it from becoming soggy from the tomato sauce.

Looked like it was going to work!

For topping I used some of my own homemade tomato sauce, grated mozzarella cheese, Italian pepperoni and olives. Seemed like a classic enough pizza, and one that my meat-eating husband would appreciate...

It baked in a hot hot oven (about 220 degrees Celsius, or 425 degrees Fahrenheit) for about 20 min.

Ready for the oven...

The Verdict:

This pizza, pretty as it looks, was barely edible! The crust was way too salty and, combined with the salty toppings, made this pizza really intense on the palate. The real killer though was the crust. It was SO HARD! It was impossible to cut a slice of this pizza and get it off the pan without a struggle that lost you most of your topping, but this would be tolerable it is was at least crispy and light (it wasn't). Eating it was kind of like chewing baked cardboard.

Honestly, as someone who has been living in China for almost 5 years, I have had some pretty mediocre pizza. And my hubby and I can can usually polish off just about anything. But not this pizza! We ended up leaving the better half of it, and it wasn't even that big! Ended up scraping up a salad from some leftover veggies because we were both still hungry!

BOO!

Any tips on homemade pizza dough? Any recipes anyone would like to share? Help/comments would be much appreciated!

The (Almost) Completely Homemade Tomato Sauce

Growing up in an Italian family, I was spoiled with fresh pastas and delicious, homemade sauce. I am a picky eater of Italian food and yet I do so love it, and love to make it at home. Pasta for me is often a spur of the moment comfort food, and I need to be able to have it when I want it! And I simply cannot STAND anything from a jar or can coming anywhere near my pasta... or almost nothing!

Making tomato sauce from scratch, while not rocket science, is somewhat time-consuming and really only worth doing in large batches. Growing up we would usually make about 5 litres at a time and freeze it, but I am currently somewhat limited by my small Chinese refrigerator. While I do definitely plan to make use of these delicious summer tomatos to make a batch soon, I also thought I would share a trick my Italian family often used when we were out of our homemade kind: Pomodori Pelati

The secret to having homemade tomato sauce in a snap!

Pomodori Pelati translates literally to "naked tomatoes" and it's just what Italians call whole, peeled, canned tomatoes. Except it sounds so much cooler in Italian. With a can of these, you can have the deliciousness of homemade tomato sauce in just 15 minutes, I promise!

But first things first. Even if you can't buy an Italian brand, which is perfectly fine, make sure you are getting the right thing. They should be whole, peeled tomatoes. Not crushed. Not diced. Not anything else! They should be canned in their own juice. There should be NO OTHER INGREDIENTS except for citric acid, which they need to put in to can them. Check the ingredients list! Mine says

"INGREDIENTS: peeled tomatoes, tomato juice, acidity regulator: citric acid"

Ok, so if you have the right stuff, your tomato sauce will be delicious!

Here is what you need to do:
Open the can and pour the contents into a saucepan. You can rinse the can out with some water to get the extra juice out, and add that to the saucepan too!
Turn the burner on medium and, as the sauce begins to warm up, use a wooden spoon to crush the whole tomatoes against the sides of the pot. You can have the sauce be as chunky or homogenous as you like it, depending on how long you do this for!
Add a pinch of salt.
Add a spoonful of sugar or honey (this helps to break the bitterness/acidity of the tomatoes and is the secret ingredient in many Italian family recipes!
Add a couple of dried bay leaves, whole.
Add a couple whole, peeled cloves of garlic.
OPTIONAL:
Add a dash of pepper (black, white, red, whichever you prefer!)
Add a couple of fresh basil leaves.

Let the sauce simmer until you have the desired consistency. If you are making pasta, 10-15 minutes should be plenty. If you want to use the sauce for lasagna or pizza and need it to be thicker, let it simmer longer.

I sometimes make extra and freeze or refrigerate this kind of sauce for later too.

Notice no oils or fat of any kind are added! This is important since the heating process changes fats, altering their flavor and making them less healthy. In my family, we only add the fats/oils once the pasta is ready to be served, i.e. AFTER the sauce has been poured over the hot pasta! Once this happens, you can add a spoonful of butter and/or a drizzle of olive oil to the pasta and sauce together. The pasta will be hot enough for the butter to melt and it makes the sauce SO rich and creamy! And olive oil is just delicious and healthy and Italians add it to pretty much everything.

Enjoy!