Kal's Special Sauce

Yes, I called it that and No, you don't have to. :-)

I've had several people ask me if I make my own sauce or if I use store bought, so I thought that would be a good post. I used to buy pre-made sauce - Ragu Homemade Style Pizza Sauce - and then add some italian seasoning at the time of pizza assembly.  For all of you who make your pizza at home but don't make your own sauce: don't use spaghetti sauce. Do yourself and everyone eating your pizza a favor. It's not the same. Use the Ragu Homemade Style (usually on the top shelf above the spaghetti sauce). Or, check out the sauce I use.

Kal's Sauce

18oz can Tomato Paste
2 1/4 cups water
1 tsp dried oregano
1/2 tsp dried basil
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground black pepper
1/2 tsp sugar
1/4 tsp garlic powder
1/4 tsp onion powder

This is a variation of a reverse-engineered recipe for Little Caesar's sauce. You can find the "original" copycat recipe on PizzaMaking.com (link).

Instead of using the mentioned method of cooking the sauce, my sauce is cold-fused, with the flavor of the dried spices being helped along with what's called Microwave Assisted Extraction. Before mixing all of the ingredients together, I place the oregano, basil, pepper, garlic powder, and onion powder in a small pyrex cup, with just enough water so that everything is wet.  Then I stick it in the microwave for 2 minutes on 30% power.  When that's done, the kitchen smells magnificent.  Then I mix the spices in with the tomato paste, water, sugar, and salt.


For more on the idea of Microwave Assisted Extraction, check this link, again on PizzaMaking.com. This takes you right to one of the replies, but the whole post is pretty informative on the topic of cooked vs uncooked sauce. Warning: extreme pizza geekery lies ahead. Proceed with caution.


After it's mixed up, I pour it into a mason jar I picked up from Ikea. I actually scaled it up by one half as you'll notice from the original recipe, because it will fit perfectly into the jar. Stick it in the fridge and use it within a couple weeks. Try to make it a few days before you plan to use it, because it gets better with age. The first day or two after it's good, but give it 3-5 days and it's even better.


There it is, my special sauce. It's really easy to make and it tastes great! Give it a shot!


Kal

A Traveler's Guide to the Planets

National Geographic Channel is airing a miniseries on what it would be like to travel to each of the planets (and one dwarf planet) in our Solar System. Check your local listings, but here is the NGC site for the show: A Traveler's Guide to the Planets.

Six episodes span just a few days, starting Sunday night with Saturn and Jupiter at 9pm and 10pm, respectively. I find it very intriguing that they start with Saturn. I suspect it's because we have so many fascinating pictures from the Cassini mission, currently in orbit there. I cannot wait to see what they have for Saturn.

From the short show descriptions I'm very encouraged about the treatment of the planets, but also their moons.  They promise to touch on the Galilean moons in the Jupiter episode (the only moons you can see with a small telescope from your back yard, besides our own Luna, of course).

And for you Pluto-lovers, I'm especially looking forward to the "Pluto and Beyond" episode, where they'll talk more about Pluto's relationship with Charon. Pluto and Charon actually orbit each other, unlike any of the larger planets - the point on which they orbit is actually above Pluto's surface. I hope they address this in the show because it's not that well known -- and pretty unique (as far as we know, for now).

Kal

First Attempt at Chicago Style

One of the most controversial pizza styles is Chicago Style deep dish. Ask someone from New York and they'll tell you "Chicago style is not pizza."

I've been making homemade pizza for a while now and it's generally been your basic "American" pie. Now that we own a stand mixer I've been eagerly trying out new dough recipes.  This was my first real "branching out" of the American style. Boy was it different!

Rachel subscribes to Cook's Illustrated, and they just happened to have an article about Chicago style deep dish in their January/February 2010 issue (link). With a little prodding from Rachel I decided to try it. Good decision.

They have a recipe for both dough and sauce, but because I already had a jar of sauce I made, I decided to use that.  Next time, I'll try the sauce recipe they include. Mine is smoother, but for Chicago Style you really need something with at least some tomato chunks. With mine it was too runny, and the sauce flavor dominated the dish.

Basically, you make the dough in the mixer (Kam assisted - he's such a good little helper), then let it rise for an hour or so at room temperature. Then you roll it out flat, butter it, roll it up tight, flatten it, split it, fold it, and let it rise in the fridge for another 40-50 minutes.

It makes two 9-inch pies, I made one cheese and one pepperoni, though it's kinda hard to tell them apart once assembled (the one on the top is the pepperoni).  It was very good on the first try...never going to Uno Chicago Grill (for deep dish) again. :-)  But first, we have a bunch of leftovers to get through.

The Cook's Illustrated Recipe can be found here. Full set of pictures below.

Kal