I have a pizza sauce recipe if you like making pizza from scratch. The entire process takes lots of time. Making the dough requires that you be on hand when it has risen to it maximum so you can turn it into the pizza pan. We have a bread maker which allows one to put the dough on a time table. Here is the recipe which I do hope you will at least try on a store bought crust:
1 quart tomato sauce
3 cloves garlic, chopped
1 large onion minced
1- 6 oz can tomato paste
olive oil for cooking garlic and onions
1 teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon cayenne pepper
¼ teaspoon pepper
¼ teaspoon marjoram
½ teaspoon thyme
½ teaspoon oregano
1-½ teaspoon sweat basil
¼ teaspoon sage
1 very small pinch of cinnamon
1 tablespoon grape jelly
sugar to taste (adjust sweetness to compensate for lack of sweetness of tomatoes)
1 carrot pureed with tomato sauce
¼ cup red wine
Pizza Crust for Large 15” Pan:
3 cups Flour
2 teaspoon salt
2 Tablespoons Bread Machine Yeast
1-¼ Cup warm water
½ teaspoon sugar
2 Tablespoons butter (melted)
Proof yeast with sugar and water on bottom of bread machine or large mixing bowl. Add butter, flour, salt. Mix together and kneed, or set bread machine on “first rise” and start. When raised to size of a large grapefruit, lay out on pizza pan and flatten out. Stretch out dough to edges of the pan. In an oven set at 425 degrees, put pan with dough in oven for 4 minutes. This precooks the dough so that the topping does not cause the dough to get gummy. You do not have a professional pizza oven and this step is necessary.
Method for the sauce:
Chop onion and garlic until finely minced in food processor. Sauté onion and garlic in olive oil using the pan you intend to use for simmering the other ingredients. The onion mixture should just start to turn brown. Do this on a low enough heat to keep this browning process under control to keep from burning.
Puree tomato sauce with carrot until smooth (about 4 minutes in food processor). If there are bits of onion and garlic left in the bowl after emptying the minced onion mixture in the pan, these bits can mix in with the tomato sauce. This puree can be used to stop the browning process of the onion at the perfect stage of browning (the browning of the onion and garlic gives this sauce a unique taste). When the onion mixture has browned, add the tomato puree and adjust the heat for simmer. Use the wine to rinse out the food processor bowl to be poured into the tomato sauce in the pan.
Add the other ingredients and simmer in the pot uncovered, stirring every 10 minutes, until the sauce is thick. Add sugar at the moment the proper thickness is reached to give the sweetness desired. I like my sauce on the sweet side, which seems to bring out the rich seasonings found in this recipe.
Enjoy!
A note about my pizza sauce recipe: The sauce will make several pizzas. Use enough sauce to coat the pizza dough. Add the toppings of your choice. I like to make 1/2 Canadian Bacon, pineapple onion and green pepper; with plenty of mozzarella cheese over my sauce. The other half, I top my sauce with plenty of pepperoni, black olives, and mozzarella cheese. MMmmmm. Goood!
You didn’t REALLY say to put grape jelly in pizza sauce, did you? EWWWWWWWWWWW!