New York Style Pizza and Sauce

The last and the best!!

This month its Baking Partners Challenge #10 (a group that has been delivering steady stream of delicious bakes both known and unknown every month and is Swasti’s brainchild) and the chosen one (sounds Harry potter style right.. cannot be helped I am home and on a HP diet with the girls) was New York Style Pizza and Sauce from Scratch. There were 3 recipes of pizza suggested & we were free to choose one of them.

I choose the Pizza suggested by Pam of Living Rancho Deluxe basically because the crust did not need bread flour that the others needed and based on the general discussion on the Baking Partners page I reached the conclusion that the others will not give me the needed crust. But that does not mean I am not going to try that out sometime, hopefully, sooner I will be making the others too.

Needless to say that we enjoyed the pizza a lot. The girls were especially thrilled that I was making pizza for lunch!! As they had different jobs they were in a hurry but that did not stop them 2-3 slices then off they went but at night they continued with their Pizza Party for dinner!

Now let us get down to the making of this yummy yummy pizza that I am told (by the girls of course) is the, “most awesome Pizza I ever made”.
I found it easier to work in parts on day 1 I made the sauce and the dough and the pizza 3 days later. I should have made the sauce on day of making the pizza at least then the queries would have been lesser and I would not have had to hide the sauce, sorry “the yummmmmmy sauce!” the wok ladies and make the New York Style Pizza Sauce where I have followed the instructions only replaced the canned tomatoes with fresh, yellow onion with regular onion. The final product was pronounced as tasty but “what are those onion pieces, basil stalks?” So I pulsed it.

Tomato Sauce for New York Style Pizza

Yield about 3-4 cups enough for 12-inch pies (depending on how much sauce you like)

Active Time: 15 minutes

Total Time: 2 hours

Special Equipment:  hand blender/ blender

Ingredients:

For the Sauce:

2 ½ cups whole tomatoes or 3 big ones (forgot to peel them)

1 cup water

1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil

1 tablespoon unsalted butter

2 teaspoons garlic cloves, grated

1 teaspoon dried oregano

Pinch red chilli flakes

Salt

2 six inch springs fresh basil with leaves attached

1 medium onion, peeled and chopped roughly

Method:

•  Process tomatoes and their juice in the blender or with the hand mixer until pureed to a coarse mixture no chunks larger than 1/16 of an inch. Set tomatoes aside.
•  Combine butter and oil in medium saucepan and heat over medium-low heat until butter is melted.
•  Add garlic, oregano, chilli flakes, and large pinch salt and cook, stirring frequently, until fragrant but not browned about 3 minutes.
•  Add tomatoes, basil sprigs, onion halves, and sugar. Bring to a simmer, reduce heat to lowest setting (bubbles should barely be breaking the surface), and cook, stirring occasionally until reduced by ½, about 1 hour.
•  Season to taste with salt.
• Allow to cool and store in covered container in the refrigerator for up to 2 weeks.

Now as the heady aroma of the sauce permeates the house get the pizza dough ready.

New York Style Pizza Crust

The original recipe makes 4 14” pizzas or can be halved to make two 14” pizzas

I halved the recipe but since my oven is small I made 4 pizzas.

This recipe is from Author Marie B, Feeling Foodish.

Ingredients:

3 cups Maida or all-purpose flour

A little less than 2 ¼ cups water (cool to room temp)

1 teaspoon instant dry yeast

2 ½ teaspoon salt

3 teaspoon olive oil

Method:

• Place water in mixing bowl.
• In a separate bowl, mix salt and yeast into the flour.
• Add the flour, salt and yeast mixture into water and mix until all the flour has been incorporated.
• After flour has been totally incorporated, add oil and knead for about 4 to 5 minutes.
• Divide dough into 4 equal pieces.
• Place in freezer bags and refrigerate overnight or up to 72 hours.
• The day you are to bake the pizzas remove your dough balls within 1 or 2 hours of baking and allow the dough to come to room temperature (the dough will tend to blister more if the dough has not been allowed to come to room temperature).
• Half an hour before you are to roll out (I know I am not supposed to use the rolling pin but I did) the pizza preheat the oven. (You can use the pizza stone if you have one then remember to heat that too.)The original recipe said 550 degrees or 287°C my oven setting the maximum is 260° C so I used that.
• Open each dough ball using care not to de gas, transfer to a counter and roll out to the desired thickness. Transfer to the pan in which you plan to bake.
• Top with sauce, cheese and other toppings of your choosing. (I used onion, red capsicum and frozen corn, olives. The herbs were oregano, Italian seasoning forgot all about chilli flakes.

• Transfer pizza to oven and bake for 25-30 minutes each until browned and cheese has melted but not burned.

The notes that were provided were where useful I am keeping them as they are. The only change I will like to try will be next time try making the pizza without the rolling pin. Remember it’s possible when you do not have hungry hordes with little time at hand descending on you!!!

Notes:

• Weighing the flour is highly recommended. Using a cup to measure will typically yield inaccurate results, plus different flour brand has different weights. (I used cup measure as we have only one kind of Maida (I presume).
• If you want to use the dough the next day, knead a little more (slow speed for about 8 to 10 minutes) or if you have time to let the dough rest for 3 days, knead 4 to 5 minutes, low speed or hand knead.
• If using King Arthur Flour it is 6.5 cups of flour.

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Archana

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