My pizza recipe

For years, I thought homemade pizza was the bummer of all bummers. It wasn't something to be made by home cooks because it couldn't come close to anything you could find in the thousands of pizzerias in downstate New York. It was always a huge disappointment. I'd get served jarred sauce or leftover pasta sauce and shredded mozzarella baked on rolled out bread dough or boxed dough mix, or on an English muffin or, worse, an embellished frozen pizza. It was what was available and it was because we lived nowhere near the closest pizza place. Later, I would come to appreciate other forms of pizza like that sold at Nick's in Forest Hills or the touristy pizza Marghareta in Amalfi or Rome. I was also discovering that my kids weren't closed-minded pizza snobs. They probably would have eaten and enjoyed an English muffin pizza or a Chef Boyardee kit pizza with browned ground beef on it or, God forbid, sliced hot dogs. At the same time, I was beginning to love working with my precious stand mixer and it's groovy dough hook, so I decided we'd give homemade pizza a whirl. Now I get requests and compliments, although we still buy the real deal all over town. This is NOT standard pizzeria pizza, just so you know. It's for when you're in the mood for something different.

A stand mixer and food processer are helpful/kind of necessary with this recipe.

FOR THE SAUCE:

preheat oven (yes the oven) to 350 degrees.

2 lbs plum tomatoes, halved lengthwise, cored and seeded

2 cloves of garlic halved

2 tsps dried basil

kosher salt

pepper

TBS olive oil

fresh basil

Coat a jellyroll type sheet pan with the olive oil. set the tomatoes on the pan, cut side up. Sprinkle with dried basil, salt and pepper. add the garlic. Roast for about an hour. Allow to cool a bit and then puree the whole thing (skins and all) together with the fresh basil in the food processor, adding salt and pepper as needed. This won't taste like Sunday sauce. It will have a milder, fresher flavor.

FOR THE CRUST

1 pkg dry active yeast

1 cup water (110 degrees give or take five degrees)

2.5 - 3.5 cups flour

1 tsp. olive oil

1/2 tsp. salt

In the bowl of a stand mixer, dissolve the yeast in the water. Add the oil and salt. With your dough hook, mix in the first 2.5 cups of flour for one minute on a medium setting. If the dough doesn't come away from the sides of the bowl, start adding more flour, 1/2 cup at a time, until it does. To knead, just keep mixing with the dough hook for two more minutes. Form the dough into a ball, place in an oiled bowl and turn once to get all sides of the dough oiled, cover with a clean dish towel and allow to rise one hour in a warm place.

Preheat oven to 450 degrees.

Punch down dough to deflate and roll or press into a fourteen inch circle. Place on lightly greased pizza pan, top with sauce, julienned basil, perhaps some very thinly sliced garlic and FRESH mozzarella and perhaps a little freshly grated Parmagiano Reggiano. You can add other toppings but PLEASE NO HOT DOGS. Bake 20 minutes and enjoy.

[tip: you can prebake the crust for five minutes before you put the sauce and cheese on it]