Homemade pizza has become a staple in our house. By homemade I mean that we buy the dough at Whole Foods and then we roll it out and put on our own toppings. I know, you're thinking, "big deal, we all do that." But what makes our pizza so spectacular is two things: the sauce and the stone.
In my hierarchy of the importance of pizza ingredients I put the sauce before the cheese. Maybe I'm crazy but I have a higher tolerance for cheap, greasy cheese than I do for cheap, corn-syrupy jarred sauce. Use the latter and the whole pie is ruined. So we went on a search for the perfect sauce. We found a few that were pretty close to what we wanted but not quite there. Then my friend Jenny from
dinneralovestory recommended Don Pepino Pizza Sauce. The search was over. That yellow can. That fat chef. Those sweet tomatoes. The balance of tomatoes and herbs is exactly what we've been striving for in our attempts at homemade pizza sauce but haven't been able to achieve. Although it isn't available everywhere, it's worth hunting for.
The other important part of making our pie is the pizza stone. For years I thought that a pizza stone was one of those kitchen gadgets that would be as useful as a mussel pot or asparagus steamer. You know, that thing you had to have and then used once and put away forever. But then I got one. And now I can't imagine living without it. It stays right in the oven, and we use it for everything from keeping pancakes warm to baking frozen french fries to, well, pizza. It gets the crust golden brown and crispy. And with a well-seasoned stone the pie easily slides off to rest on a big, old cutting board before slicing.
Now in terms of toppings, that is such a personal thing. In our house black olives, garlic, and mushrooms (not Vivi!) are always popular. Vivi has a way of eating a slice of pizza that I have never seen before. She takes the whole thing apart and then eats the olives, the cheese, the outer crust, and finally the sauce-laden bottom crust (torn into bite-size pieces). It takes about a half hour for her to eat one slice. By that time Fred and I have polished off the rest of the pie, sung our praises to Don Pepino, and cracked open a frosty beer.
