NY PIZZA PART 4

In this post I will talk about the ingredients that I will use to make my pizza. I will start from the bottom up.

Sauce

I really like the way fresh tomatoes taste on a pizza. There are a lot of ways to go about making sauce, and in the end it is a personal preference thing. Some people are content to take a can of tomato sauce and spice it up a bit. Other people, like this guy, make extremely involved sauces. Mine is somewhere in between.

I start with fresh Roma tomatoes. The DOC specifies that they have to be San Marzano, but unfortunately I don't live in Naples so I can't get fresh San Marzano tomatoes, only canned. A couple years ago I grew a strain of tomato in my garden called Super San Marzano. They were amazing. I canned a bunch of them up but they are all gone now. When I can't get vine ripened garden fresh tomatoes I settle on vine ripened store bought roma tomatoes. If you can't get vine ripened, oh well, you'll just have to make do with regular plum/roma tomatoes. Let them sit on the counter for a few days ripening.

To process my tomatoes I preheat the broiler. I take the tomatoes and wash them and put them on a cookie sheet. I then broil the tomatoes under the broiler for a few minutes, turning occasionally, so that the skin blackens a bit on all sides. There are usually a few spots of skin that stay red. After the tomatoes cool, I peel most of the blackened skin off, leaving a little behind. Then I run the tomatoes through a food mill to grind them into a thick chunky sauce.

The next part of my sauce making involves a little tasting to get the flavor right. If I used 4 plum tomatoes, I add a teaspoon of sea salt to the ground tomatoes along with 1/4 t freshly ground black pepper and 1/4 t very finely ground fennel seed. After stirring for a while, you have to taste the sauce. The flavor that you will be adjusting for will be the saltiness. BE VERY CAREFUL. You don't want the salt to be too overpowering. Add just a little at a time. 4 plum tomatoes makes more than enough sauce for a 12 inch pizza. You can serve the remainder as a dipping sauce for crusts.

Cheeses

I am going to use 2 cheeses for my pizza. I am going to put down a layer of low-moisture part skim mozzarella. I am planning on using the store brand at the Kansas City Hen House Grocery stores - Best Choice. That is the cheese I use for my deep dish and I have had some success with it on thin crust as well. I like it because it has a lower moisture content than Kraft.

The other cheese I will be using is fresh buffalo mozzarella. There is a little Italian grocer in Kansas City that I get mine from. It has worked out very well in the past on pizza Margherita. I usually put a few slices, about 1/8th to 1/4 inch thick, on top of the shredded mozzarella.

Pepperoni

Yeah Yeah. I know that the DOC doesn't say anything about pepperoni on pizza Napoletana. I don't care. I like pepperoni pizza. There are very many different kinds of pepperoni, and everyone has their own personal favorite. To avoid offending people any more than I absolutely have to I am not even going to name my favorite brand. Suffice it to say that it is readily available.

Fresh Basil

Fresh Basil is available pretty much year round in the produce section of most grocery stores. When I make my 12 inch pizza I will take a few leaves and chop them up and put them over the top of everything.

In part 5 I will talk about assembling and baking the pizza.