3 recipes, 1 stone!

I decided I was in the mood for some WW pizza, so tonight, I made the Basic Cheese Pizza (pg 301). For my New York readers, I must remind you that while I grew up in New York,  home of the best pizza ever, I have been living in the South for almost 3 years. I am accustomed to eating sub-par pizza. So you either need to eat crappy pizza for a while before trying this recipe to lower your standards, or just accept the fact that this is NOT New York pizza. For those who don't know, New York pizza is characterized as wide, thin and foldable. Unlike the pizza I had at student teaching orientation, which cracked when I folded it, NY pizza would NEVER crack. There is also a thin amount of sauce and the crust is made from "high gluten" bread flour (thanks Wiki). The rumor is that the yummy flavor of the crust, which I have not found farther north in NY than Rockland County and anywhere outside of NY, is due to the minerals present in the water.  I am suspicious of this theory because Long Island draws its water from a different source than NYC and Rockland, although may have an equally high mineral content. Long Island gets its drinking water from groundwater aquifers, which was blamed for the breast cancer cluster that has appeared on Long Island. The salt used on the sidewalk and street ice gets into the groundwater......yea, I guess that would cause a high mineral content. FYI the investigation into the "environmental factors" and the rate of breast cancer was not conclusive. In case you were wondering.

But I digress. Basically, NYers and pizza snobs, lower your expectations if you are going to try this pizza. Moving on, in order to make this pizza I also made two other WW recipes, the Roasted Tomato Sauce (pg 7) and the Basic Pizza Dough (pg 300). The sauce was pretty good, although a little sweet on its own. If I am going to eat it with pasta it will need salt. Or, maybe a sprinkle of Parmesan or Romano to add some zing. It was easy to make too, just roast some tomatoes and onion with balsamic, garlic, salt and pepper and then throw it in the food processor. The crust was also pretty easy. The water needed to be a certain temperature, so I had to use a thermometer (like, the one I use when I'm sick). Don't worry, I cleaned it first. I am not a very good baker, so I get a special satisfaction when I am making something with yeast and it ACTUALLY rises. Instant gratification! I had issues with the stretching of the dough in the pizza pan though. Practice makes perfect I guess. I put the sauce on, and the amount seemed like a lot. Too much sauce, not enough cheese. But, I followed the recipe exactly. And you know what? It was pretty good! Sprinkle some chopped fresh oregano on top just before serving. The sauce and oregano make up for the lack of cheese because the flavor of the pizza is pretty good. The crust had a nice crunch even though I didn't bake it before putting the toppings on (which I wanted to, but NOT in the recipe) and the crust flavor was decent. I might like it better than the pizza around here. I wanted to drink Coke with it, but we have no soda so I mixed some lemonade with Firefly and peach schnapps, which was a decent replacement.

 I made a rectangle pizza since I don't have a round pan (or a stone) and divided the finished pizza into 6 pieces. 1 piece is 5 points, which is kind of a lot since you likely will eat more than 1 slice. However, restaurant pizza is probably a bazillion points so you will be ahead of the game. Ratings of these recipes- thumbs up! Except I now have a ton of roasted tomato sauce so I will be eating it for a while. Maybe I will make a lasagna or something. Oh, and the pizza dough recipe makes enough for two, so the other half is in my refrigerator. There are also multiple variations of the crust recipe, so there will be more home-made pizzas to come. AND the book suggests that you and I can use bread flour for a high-gluten pizza! Maybe we can see if the flour makes a difference in the flavor of the dough. And, I can bring in some water from NY. Who wants to come over for a taste test?

And lets not forget that, like I would any other pizza, I burned the top of my mouth on it.