Another Pizza Recipe

Posted by Claude on November 08, 2003 at 15:09:38:

Hi,
I have seen some wonderful Pizza recipes on this page and I thought people might not mind another.

One of the first things my dad did when he first came to Australia was to build a wood burning oven and there was nothing like the bread and pizzas that he used to make. All of us in my family agree that the pizza we liked best was his simple, traditional Neapolitan Pizza that was just pizza sauce and Parmesan cheese and if you like it hot add dried chilli.

The sauce is important. I will tell you how my dad showed me to make it but I should say that he never used measurements. He would just grab a handful of something or pour some oil in and say "put that much in". What I'm saying, in effect, is that you don't have to be too precise about the quantities you use.

Sooo ... The most important thing about the sauce is that you need the right kind of tomatoes. I use this brand called Latina. They are an imported Italian brand of peeled tomato.

OK...the first thing you do is get yourself a large saucepan. Put in about a 1/2 to 1 cup of olive oil (if you want the authentic taste you really should use olive oil) Add 2 to 3 cloves of garlic (biggish cloves)and fry till they are golden (don't let them go brown - just golden). Take off the hot plate and add about 4 or 5 cans (375 gram) of peeled tomatoes and dice the tomatoes up before you put them in. Add about 300 grams of Leggos tomato paste. Put in about 1 to 2 tablespoons of ground pepper (best if you grind it coarsely yourself)and about 4 or 5 leaves of fresh basil (remember to rub the basil between your hands a bit before you put it in. This assists in flavour extraction as it boils). Then add enough water so that the mixture is like a thin soup. Then bring it to boil and once it starts boiling turn down the heat so that it stays on a light soft boil. Continue boiling until you get the thickness you like. This should take about 2-3 hours. Make sure to stir it every 10 min or so to ensure it does not stick to the bottom. The thicker it gets the more regularly you will have to stir it and turn down the heat as it gets thicker so that it is always on a soft boil. As the sauce reduces, taste it. If the tomatoes are a bit bitter add a little sugar, but only a little and of course some salt to taste.

This is really spaghetti sauce but for pizza it should be thicker than spaghetti sauce because you don't want the pizza base to go soggy.

Add a generous amount of sauce on your pizza base and put about 2 to 3 hand-fulls of grated Parmesan cheese on top. The cheese should be soaked up by the sauce. If you like chili add some of the dried chili flakes then put it in oven on really high so that the base cooks quickly and the sauce does not have time to make it soggy. That's it.

Hope it works out for those who give it a try.

All the best,
Claude