Pizza for Lunch

We have a dear friend going back to our Middle School days coming into town right around closing time at work and we are going to meet him for some Vegas fun. Hence, our big meal today is lunch.

I had some white-wheat dough left over from making bread earlier this week which I wrapped in plastic and put into the refrigerator to cure. I took it out late this morning to warm up a bit.
















My pizza sauce recipe is very simple:

1 14.5 oz. can of diced tomatoes
1 6 oz. can tomato paste
1 tsp. coarse sea salt
1 tsp. granulated garlic
1 tsp. granulated onion
1 tsp. dried basil

Plunk it all into a plastic storage bowl and blend with a stick blender or process briefly in a food processor or regular blender. The mixture will be thick. If you like a thinner sauce (heresy), eliminate the tomato paste. If you can't use this all up within a week, freeze it in ice cube trays and once frozen put into a ziplock bag in the freezer for future use. The number of cubes you use will depend on the size of the pizza. When I had 4 kids in the house I would make at least quadruple this amount so that I always had sauce on hand.















To assemble the pizza I rolled the dough out in a large rectangle to fit my Silpat covered baking sheet (I still need to replace my big pizza stone) and spread with a layer of sauce. I added sliced mushrooms, sliced black olives, pepperoni, lots of shredded mozzarella, and a top sprinkling of parmesan. This was baked at 425 degrees for 18 minutes.

Yum!













Things I will do differently:

1. I decided I don't care for Trader Joe's Pepperoni when it's heated. It tastes great as a snack right out of the package, but when cooked it loses its "zippiness". I'm going back to buying Hormel brand at Smith's.

2. Todd loved the crust cooked on the Silpat because he likes a softer crust. I, on the other hand, like my crust super thin and crispy. I'm going to replace my pizza stone and in the future cook 2 separate pizzas to accommodate our tastes.

3. I forgot I had promised Todd that I would also include green olives and will do that next time. If you have never had pizza with both black and green olives, you are really missing something!