Homemade Pizza and Wine Garage Bordeaux

I love pizza, good pizza. I guess it is the same way I feel about my wine. Although I am often willing to pay a higher price for wine, I don’t like to do it for pizza. Perhaps it’s because it would be way more difficult for me to make my own wine. I have noticed over the last couple of years that pizza inflation is out of control. When we lived in San Diego, we would drop $20 for a large cheese at my favorite pizza joint. I decided it was time to master the making of my own pies.

Before you attempt to do this at home, I must ask “Do you have a pizza stone?” If the answer is “No,” then buy one. I got mine on Amazon over two years ago for $30 (that’s a 1 1/2 pizzas in San Diego). In order to make authentic tasting pizza at home, I believe a pizza stone is mandatory…not optional. You put the stone in the oven on the bottom rack and turn the oven on to 450-500° (I did 500° with my old oven but found with my current oven that the crust was a little crispier than I liked). Thirty minutes later, slide you pizza onto the stone (it may help to remove upper oven racks before heating so you have more room when transferring pizza to stone).  In less than ten minutes you have a delicious pizza including a crispy outside and chewy inside crust. I also strongly recommend bread flour as this results in a chewier, genuine crust.

Besides saving money, I like the convenience of making pizza at home. I can make the dough and the sauce ahead of time and put in the refrigerator or freezer (freeze if not going to make in a day or two). I do suggest rubbing olive oil over the ball of dough before placing it in a Ziploc bag. It will make it easier to remove. When I know I am going to have a hectic day, I just pull dough and sauce out of the freezer that morning. When I get home, I place stone in the oven and turn oven on. The dough will need to rest for 30 minutes at room temperature (conveniently the same time as the oven needs to warm up). I use the time to chop toppings, relax and/or tackle a household chore. Then I roll the dough out, top and bake. It might have taken 45 minutes to get dinner on the table, but only about ten minutes was actually active.

Since the majority of the work is done ahead of time, this is also an awesome entertaining meal. I make pizza every time we have guests for a few days. We can be gone all day, but I can easily make dinner when we get home. I also like to make this when we have more than 2-4 people over to dinner. Everyone likes it. It’s easy to adapt toppings for vegetarians. People like to help make it. I can have more dough handy than I need and keep making pizzas until everyone is full (then just freeze remaining dough and sauce).

Last Friday night, we invited some friends over for wine and pizza. My carnivore friends, Tony, Mariana, and Mike B. came over first, so I made a red sauce pizza with pepperoni, bacon, and Italian sausage (I precooked the bacon and Italian sausage). While eating that, Tony wanted to help with pizza number 2. He rolled the dough and topped with pepperoni, baby bellas and black olives. My vegetarian and non-cheese-eating friend, Jean arrived later and wanted half a pizza sans cheese. I suggested she help me make her pie. I rolled out Italian seasoned dough, and I asked her if she wanted red sauce or white sauce. She picked white with basil. Jean chopped up a bunch of baby bellas and oyster mushrooms. The mushrooms, fresh baby spinach, marinated artichoke hearts and some chopped onions were layered on top of the sauce. I completed the second half with a mozzarella/ provolone cheese blend (my favorite pizza cheese), sliced roasted red peppers, mushrooms, goat cheese and bacon. Omit the bacon and you still have a delicious yet vegetarian pizza. I sprinkled both halves of the pizza with Italian seasoning before baking. When the pizza was done, Jean drizzled a little more olive oil on top as well as a little red sauce.

WINE: N/V WINE GARAGE BORDEAUX BLEND, NAPA
http://winegarage.net/

One of the reasons, my husband, Mike and I wanted to have friends over was to drink a jug of wine we bought in Napa. Yes, I used the words “jug” and “Napa” in the same sentence. Located in Calistoga, the Wine Garage makes and sells wine out of a converted gas station. Two of their blends are pumped out of kegs via gas nozzles into jugs. Mike and I both really enjoyed their Bordeaux blend, a non-traditional blend of Cabernet, Carmenere, Merlot and Petite Verdot. We also liked the $30 price tag for an equivalent of 2 ½ bottles of wine, so we bought two. We knew it wasn’t a wine to store, so we needed an excuse to break one out. Everyone else agreed that the jug wine was fantastic, totally smooth with lush berry and chocolate notes. And it made an awesome pizza wine! We went through the first jug much more quickly than anticipated, so cracked open jug number two after dinner. I do think I need to make a small disclaimer if you want to order some of these jugs for yourself… “Drinking wine from a jug may result in spontaneous dancing.” I would be lying if I said “Footloose”, “The Humpty Dance” and the “Tootsee Roll” were not played at our house on Friday night.

To read more about our trip to Napa and the Wine Garage see my travel blog: Napa-Calistoga: Persian Palaces to Gas Nozzle Wine 
RECIPE: PIZZA DOUGH
Servings: Makes 2 pizza crusts. (I made two batches of the dough recipe on Friday night, made three pizzas and froze the last ball of dough).

Ingredients for Dough:
• 1 1/2 cups warm water
•3/4 tbsp. yeast (a standard yeast packet is 3/4 tbsp.)
• ¼ tsp. sugar
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
• OPTIONAL: 2 tbsp Italian Seasoning (Recommended for white pizzas)
• 3 tbsp. olive oil
• 4 cups BREAD Flour
Ingredients for Pizza:
• ~ ¼ cup Cornmeal per pizza
• 2 cups shredded mozzarella and provolone cheese per pizza (or just mozzarella or provolone)
• Red Sauce or White Sauce (see recipes below)
• Whatever toppings you want.

Directions for Dough:
1. Grease a large bowl with oil or butter.

Nice bubbly and foamy yeast

2. Dissolve sugar and yeast in warm water in a different large bowl; allow yeast to foam (about 10 minutes).
3. Stir in salt and olive oil (and Italian seasoning, if desired)
4. Stir in 3 cups of bread flour.
5. Transfer to floured surface.
6. Knead, adding bread flour as needed (you can stop adding flour when no dough is sticky). Knead until smooth and elastic, about 10 minutes.
7. Place in greased bowl and let rise until double (~1 hour).
8. Punch down and let rise again until double. Punch down and divide in half. You can make, refrigerate or freeze at this point.
Directions for Pizza:
9. Sprinkle a paddle or large cutting board with cornmeal.
10. Roll out pizza dough into the best circle you can. You may need to add a little flour of sticking to your rolling pin. Make sure the crust is not bigger than pizza stone. Test that you crust easily slides on paddle or cutting board. If it doesn’t add more cornmeal. (This will allow you to slide pizza into oven with nothing more than a push from a spatula).
11. Top with pizza sauce, cheese & toppings. Leave about an inch rim empty for the crust.
12. Transfer to stone and bake at 500° degrees for 7-10 minutes. Check at 7 minutes. It is done when cheese is beginning to brown. (Remember pizza stone should have been in hot oven for 30 minutes prior to baking.)
13. Let pizza rest for 5 minutes before cutting. You can cut on and serve from pizza stone. The pizza stone also will keep pizza slices warm.

RECIPE: RED PIZZA SAUCE
Servings: Sauce for 3-4 pizzas.

Ingredients:
• 28 oz can San Marzano tomatoes, Puree or Crushed (I think a nice brand of tomatoes makes a difference)
• 9 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 1/2 tsp salt
• 3 tsp Italian seasoning

Directions:

1. Mix all of the above together.
2. Spread desired amount onto crust. Caution: too much sauce can make crust soggy.
3. Divide any remaining sauce into portions for individual pizzas and freeze.

RECIPE: WHITE PIZZA SAUCE
Serving: Individual Pizza

Ingredients (depends on preference and how big your roll your crust):
• Olive oil
• 3-6 garlic cloves, minced
• OPTIONAL: ½- 1 cup chopped fresh basil

Directions:
1. Drizzle crust with olive oil until it is covered.
2. Spread minced garlic over olive oil.
3. If you want basil, sprinkle over crust. I like putting the basil under the cheese. The basil doesn’t brown and adds a nice flavor to the sauce.