Pizza from Scratch!

I love pizza! Since meatless pizza alternatives here in San Pablo just don't do it for me* (Greenwich's Garden Fresh Pizza comes close), I oftentimes just make my own.

Previously, I would just buy ready made frozen crust and ready made packaged pizza sauce from the grocery to make them, but this time I thought I'd do one from scratch.

Since I'm not smart enough to invent something like this, I did what any sensible person would do, look for recipes on the Internet!

I found these two recipes from Foodwishes.blogspot.com. The first recipe is for the pizza sauce:

Pizza Sauce Recipe
http://foodwishes.blogspot.com/2012/02/pizza-sauce-lets-play-hide-little-fish.html

I gotta say, this sauce turned out fantastic! In fact, it's amazing. I wasn't able to find any of the specified canned tomato (San Marzano), but I was able to find another brand, also imported from Italy that surprisingly wasn't so expensive.

I'm NEVER buying ready made pizza sauce (or even spaghetti sauce) again!

For the dough:

California Pizza Dough
http://foodwishes.blogspot.com/2009/07/wolfgang-pucks-famous-california-pizza.html

Making the dough was pretty tricky so I had to follow the instructions very carefully.

The dough I made wasn't as good looking as what was in the recipe, but it worked fine anyway.

It is here I started to add my own thing. I added my own favorite toppings (chopped red and green bell peppers and mushrooms) and my favorite cheeses.

I also cooked the pizza longer than what's in the recipe because the bottom wasn't toasting as much as the one in the recipe in the time that was specified. Perhaps it's just my oven. I ended up cooking it twice as long.

It turned out pretty good! I can now make real pizza!

*I am not a vegetarian, but for health reasons I decided to cut down on my meat by 90%.