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The next is a few dashes of Mrs Dash to the sauce:


Now shifting gears a bit... we will go back to the dough.

When last we looked it was over here looking like this:



In order to make dough we will have to add the yeasty water to the flour and squeeze this around:



Here is where it gets tricky. I didn't make enough yeasty-water for the entire pizza. My hands were also way too messy to pick up any cameras. So I added about a 3/4 cup more of water straight to the doughy mess.

Eventually it looks like this:



Then take a paper towel and wet it -squeeze out excess water and drape it over your dough.




Henceforth we will allow this to "rise". Don't worry -it is as inevitable as a sunset. We can put it to the side and finish the sauce.

So we have the onions already in slices put them in a pan and drop in about two tablespoons of minced garlic. Note that this is normal garlic and not the Elephant garlic. We will be doing something very special with the elephant garlic -later.




Heat it up a bit:



While your onions are on low... I tasted the red sauce with the wooden spoon. It needed some of this:



I just spashed a little in there.



This is also a good time to reclean some of the tools that we will be using later.



Be careful cleaning the slicer. I always avoid taking slices of things when I am cleaning it. It could easily cut that sponge or a wooden spoon or my hand.

It was around this point that I thought I might try out the new Pizza pan -just to see how it looks in the oven:



You ever hear Homer Simpson say "Doh"? I made that noise about now.



So I am off to get another pizza pan. In the meanwhile lets check on the onions:



Okay I am not going to leave this on while I go to the store... So I put a lid on it... and I am off.

So I'm back from Walgreens near my apartment.

They didn't have any pizza pans so I grabbed a cookie sheet:



Now that that's done... lets get back to cooking.



Cooking with wine in red sauce can make the sauce somewhat clumpy. The wine in all of it's grapeseed goodness wants to float to the surface and leave the tomato-ish parts to brew in the bottom. Nevertheless, wine adds a really great flavor to the entire sauce but you don't want to overdo it. So I just add a cup and simmer the onions in it:





So boil off the alcohol and add the tomato sauce to it:



Stir this a bunch of times. Then throw two Bay Leaves into the mix. You will take these out later so when you are stiring the sauce around -keep a mental note of where each bay leaf is. (Once one disintegrated on me, but I was able to figure out where it last was and pull out the pieces).



So once you stir it up... you watch it a little bit.



But it won't boil as long as you are watching. So we've got to figure something else to do in the meanwhile.

How about putting some mushrooms in the sauce? We pull out our newly cleaned slicer and cut up some shrooms.




But the pot still isn't boiling (it's on medium AND we've been watching it too much).

So while we have our slicer out, why not slice up some elephant garlic.


This is going to be a topping on our pizza.

So finally after ignoring the pot for a while -the sauce is starting to boil. I dipped my tasting spoon in it and you know what?

It needs salt. So add some salt to taste. Also make a mental note that I probably should have put in more anchovies prior to this point. (Like around 6 total).



Now remember the dough?

Sure you do it's still there:



Here's where I stopped taking pictures. The dough doubled in size and I needed to spread it around the cookie sheet.

The reason that I stopped taking pictures is that the flour tends to go everywhere. Sift flour over the dough. Sift it all over your hands and do this over the sink (preferably). Carefully stretch the dough so that it covers the cookie sheet. This is not as easy as it sounds and quite frankly my "rye bread" pizza dough is a little hard to work with. If you are a "gluten" for punishment work with my recipe here. Otherwise, just come up with your own. Pizza dough recipes are not as hard to come up with as you may think.

So your pizza dough spread over the pan will look like thus:



If you followed the general recipe here -One can of peeled tomatos makes more than enough sauce. In fact you will have sauce left over. Remember how I said that when cooking with wine the sauce will be clumpy? Get a slotted spoon and spread the clumpiest bottom part onto the pizza.



Generally you want the thick sauce for pizza. The leftover "thin" sauce is better for spaghetti.

Now cover the whole pizza with Mozzarella and Parmesian cheese. The ratio is ultimately up to you but just remember that parmesian can be over powering. Also choose your toppings well. This is a simple elephant garlic and pepperoni pizza -but I could have really gone overboard and made six topping pizza. Basically what I am trying to say is that if you have a great sauce then keep the toppings simple.

So here is what our pre baked pizza looks like:






So bake at 350 for 40 minutes... but don't take my word on it. Check it every 20 minutes until it looks and smells done. My "350" is a generic "don't burn" temperature. They say to cook it until the cheese near the center is melted... but I never do that, I just cook it until it looks right.

So we pull it out of the oven:



Looks pretty good. I cut myself a slice:



Notice how the cheese stretches? That is the addition of parmesian to the pizza. Also notice how I don't need any fancy pizza cutters? The pizza dough here is almost breadlike.



The texture is still pizza though.



fin.