pizza sauce

[GardenGnome]

Looking for a thick earth toned pizza sauce without the tomato based taste.
Thanks[/I]

[webmaster]

Pizza doesn't need sauce. Sauce is just an accent, as important as any other accent ingredient. An ingredient like olives can be said to be an accent ingredient. Think of it as the ingredient with the broadest shoulders. All other ingredients should rest upon those broad shoulders, I.e. not compete with it but complement it.

One of my most popular pizzas is a slightly earthy pizza that doesn't have a highlight ingredient nor does it have tomato sauce. The best ones of this recipe have been the ones where I held back on ingredients instead of slathering on any one of them. It has a blend of flavors that don't call attention to themselves. It consists of less than a quarter pound of chantrelle or shitake mushrooms (sauteed until wilted, around five minutes), carmelized onions, mozzarella, and pieces of feta cheese as a slight accent of salt. Drizzle a bit of grated Parmesan or Romano cheese (it will turn brown and crispy) then bake for ten minutes at around 500 degrees. Pull it out, brush with olive oil, particularly the crust to keep it from drying out, put it back in for ten more minutes and then it's done. Feel free to dust with a little more grated romano if you really really like cheese.

A more flamboyant pizza is based on Puttanesca sauce, with steamed mussels on top. Here is how you make it: Brush a bit of Puttanesca sauce on dough (but don't blanket the dough with it end to end, just brush it here and there), then Mozzarella and a very light dusting of grated romano or parmesan cheese. Add olives if you want to make it more aggressive. Then sprinkle a little bit of the Puttanesca sauce on top here and there in spots. Cook for ten minutes at 500 degrees. Pull it out to brush with olive oil and add cooked mussel meat then cook for an additional ten minutes. Done.

[GardenGnome]

Thanks for making me hungry. I do like my red sauce and pepperoni. But I do like to try new stuff the first one sounded great. I think ill try it I bet my wife loves it she likes mushrooms.

[webmaster]

The recipe for the mushroom pizza is adapted from three different recipes. I came across a [url=https://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/29/health/nutrition/29recipehealth.html]recipe in the NYTimes for an onion pizza[/url] and used this part:

Heat the olive oil over medium heat in a large, heavy skillet. Add the onions. Cook, stirring often, until tender and just beginning to color, about 10 minutes. Add the thyme, garlic and a generous pinch of salt. Turn the heat to low, cover and cook another 10 to 20 minutes, stirring often, until the onions are golden brown and very sweet and soft. Remove from the heat.

I don't use salt and instead of fresh thyme I use a couple pinches of dried thyme.

For the Chantrelle or Shitake mushroom part I found inspiration from this [url=https://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Shiitake-and-Chanterelle-Pizzas-with-Goat-Cheese-238524]recipe from Epicurious[/url]:

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Heat 3 tablespoons oil in large skillet over medium-high heat. Add mushrooms; sprinkle with salt. Sauté until tender, about 5 minutes. do ahead Can be made 1 day ahead. Cool, cover, and chill. 

Again, I don't use salt, it's not necessary because it will be in the feta and romano. The original recipe is for Shitake but if the Chantrelles are on sale then definitely use those. Otherwise I use Shitake or the brown mushrooms. Shitake's are cool because they're so chewy.

The original recipe calls for goat cheese but I use feta. Doesn't matter if it's cow feta or sheep feta or goat feta. It's getting melted down for it's tangy/salty accent. You can't even tell there's feta in it. The tang is mixed and blended into the overall taste. Add it to the pizza with a light hand.

As for brushing with olive oil, this is something I observed going on in [url=https://www.pepespizzeria.com/]Pepe's Pizza[/url] in New Haven, CT, a pizzeria widely acknowledged as one of the best for East Coast thin crust style pizzas. I've eaten at most of the top New York pizzerias and I have to agree that Pepe's is up there with the best, (although I've had an overcooked pizza there once that featured pepperoni that had shriveled up to the size of a dime). The olive oil keeps the crust from getting hard and overcooked while giving the other ingredients a chance to cook.

You can lightly sprinkle grated romano or parmesan before cooking, which is what I do. It makes really nice looking brown spots. It will be best if you use the best quality though because cheaper quality versions contain other ingredients that tend to turn gritty, I think it's cellulose or something, which is like sawdust, imo.

Btw, you can add more grated parmesan/romano after the pizza is done. I learned that from watching the folks at a local co-op pizzeria here called [url=https://www.arizmendibakery.org/]Arizmendi Pizza[/url].

The most important thing is to go light. Don't smother the pizza with mushrooms from end to end, nor go crazy with the other ingredients as well. I did that once and everyone agreed that the over the top version with copious amounts of onion, feta, and mushrooms wasn't as good as the pizza made with a light hand, when I held back on the ingredients.

Good luck!

[webmaster]

Oh hey, circling back to pizza sauce, plain old tomato sauce like from a can of tomatoes or else a few tablespoons of your favorite pasta sauce works just fine. Ready made pasta sauce from the bottle works great and all you need is a few tablespoons. You can then save the rest for a pasta dinner or lunch the next day.

[striperbware]

Pizza sauce is the main use I get out of my tomato harvest. I grow Big Boy tomatoes and admittedly these are high in wtaer content and therefore not ideal for condensing to sauce, but they grow wel and that is my primary consideration.

I crush the maters and add either fresh or dried basil, salt and minced garlic, ten boil down to a thick suace and freeze it in 1 quart containers. The tartness and complexity of this suace is unbelievable. My kids and I have enough sauce to make a couple of big pizzas every month of the year.

[Gary350]

Tomato base pizza has always been my favorite but there are other sauces that are good.

Mild Enchilada makes a good mexican pizza. Cook the meat with a 99 cent taco flavor season pack from the grocery store.

A friend makes clam sauce I was surprised this is actually good. Clams in a can shopped in olive oil instead of pizza sauce.

Some people like cheese sauce instead of pizza sauce. Heat heavy cream then stir in cheese until it dissolves add spices.

I like garden vegetable pizza, slice vegetables in a bowl, onion, olives, squash, thin carrots, green beans, peas, tomato pieces, pepperonies, etc, what ever you like, stir in 2 tablespoon of olive oil to coat the vegetables. Sprinkle on the spices they stick to the oiled vegetables. Stir in the shreaded cheese stir well. Bake the crust 5 minute on bottom rack then sprinkle on the vegetable cook at 400 degrees until cheese melts on center rack.