The great pizza divide - William loved them, I wasn't thrilled.

I experimented with my personal favorite food last night, which, if you've looked through the blog at all you have to have guessed, is pizza.

I've never made a really slow rise dough but came across a recipe for one that sounded too good to ignore. Slow rise dough uses less yeast but rises long and slow in the refrigerator. The slow rise adds a depth of flavor to the dough. If you try this, heed the instructions and make sure that your refrigerator is no cooler than 40 degrees or you will kill the yeast and end up with hardtack.

I found the dough recipe here:
http://cookeatshare.com/recipes/pizza-time-pizza-with-long-rise-dough-366817

I made three variations - once plain cheese, once cheese and pepperoni and two "supremes" with black olives, onion, Italian sausage, pepperoni and mushrooms.

William liked these more than I did. If I made these pizzas with this dough again I would increase the oven temperature or increase the cooking time to 10 minutes. The last pizza I made I left in for 10 minutes and that's the one I think turned out the best.


I like my own sauce so that is what I used:

Pizza sauce

Ingredients:

1 28 ounce can of peeled Italian plum tomatoes

1 4 ounce can tomato sauce

1/2 large onion, minced

3 cloves garlic, minced

2 Tablespoons olive oil

2 teaspoons dried oregano

2 links Italian sausage with fennel (optional)

Put the tomatoes in a large bowl and crush them with your hands.

Heat the oil in a sauce pan and add the minced onion and garlic. Saute until the onion is translucent then add the tomatoes, tomato sauce, oregano and sausage links, if using.

Simmer until the onions are very soft and the sausage is cooked through. Remove the sausage links from the sauce and set aside to slice as a topping for one or two of your pizzas.