I love making pizza. With fresh mozzarella and a hot enough oven, basically anything becomes an incredible pizza topping. A great fridge clearer or minimal-effort gourmet dinner, pizza is flexible and always delicious.
I recently got the baking itch again, so I found a pizza dough recipe that let me put the dough together days in advance. Making a slow-rising pizza dough is always a safe bet, since it'll be delicious when you want it (and let's be honest, who doesn't kind of want pizza all the time?) and will last up to 5 days, getting more and more delicious all the time.
For the toppings, we had some wonderful fresh mozzarella and kroger brand pizza blend, some zucchini from our CSA which needed a home, and tons of fresh mint. We didn't have pizza sauce, but we did have fresh roma tomatoes on the counter and anchovy paste in the fridge. And honestly, that's 9/10 of pizza sauce already. The tomatoes seared down into a beautiful relish-like consistency in a pan, the anchovies brought a deep umami to the sauce, and water at the end let everything steam and cook and break down into a beautiful paste that went great on pizza.
I'm including the recipe for the sauce in this post. The dough is via the New York Times--it's a recipe from Roberta's, a storied NYC institution. I don't have Type OO flour, so I just used 100% all purpose and cut the yeast in half since I let it ferment for 3 days in the fridge. The toppings are simply 5-ish rounds of fresh mozzarella; a shower of pizza blend; a zucchini, cut into thin slices and sauteed with oil, salt, and pepper; and the sauce, this beautiful sauce. I baked the pizza in a 500 degree oven for 10 minutes in a preheated cast iron skillet, using a floured cutting board as a pizza peel. All in all, a very lazy pizza recipe. No special equipment, no fussy flour, hell, you don't even need mozzarella. You could use cheddar, or pepper jack, or whatever cheese and veggies or meat you have in your fridge.
It's more the theory of the thing, anyway, than a real recipe.
Pan-Roasted Pizza Sauce
Makes enough sauce for one 12 inch pizza.
2 roma tomatoes, sliced into half inch rounds
2 tsp olive oil
1/4 tsp kosher salt
1/2 tsp anchovy paste
1 clove garlic, sliced
splash soy sauce, if desired
generous pinch red pepper flakes
Preheat oil in a nonstick or stainless steel pan over medium-high heat.
Add tomatoes, season with salt, and sear until dark brown on one side, about 3 minutes. Flip and sear the other side, about 2 more minutes.
Smash tomatoes with a spatula, and add garlic, anchovy, chili flake, and 1/4c water. Add soy sauce if desired. Cover and cook for 2 minutes.
Remove lid and cook about 2 minutes more, stirring occasionally, until water has reduced. Remove from heat and slather on pizza dough.
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