homemade pizza

For my birthday this year, my parents bought me a pizza making set - stone, peel, cutter and silver server for the stone. It's been a fun addition for baking bread and making some frozen pizzas, but it was time to break out all the stops and do fresh dough AND sauce for dinner.

We also always love breadsticks with pizza. I mean - this is a Josh thing that I have now become hooked on. So, I make a big batch of dough, separate it in half (I go a little heavy on the dough for the pizza) and bake it differently. The breadsticks were baked with a spread of garlic, rosemary, salt and pepper mixed with some butter and oil. Parmesan was dusted on the top after baking. Also, I scored the bread before baking, which made it a lot easier when it was done.

The pizza dough recipe is the staple recipe I always go to on foodnetwork.com. I haven't found any problems with it, so I haven't made any changes. I do think next time I'll incorporate the different spices within the dough for the breadsticks. They were good - but they needed to be kicked up a notch to really separate them from the pizza. I mean, the dough recipe is from Emeril, so, I should be kicking it up notches.

The pizza sauce is an Annie's Eats recipe found here. I made a few changes for us, here's my recipe below:

Recipe for pizza sauce:
 ~ingredients~
14.5 oz. can petite diced tomatoes, undrained
8 oz. can tomato sauce
1 tbsp. olive oil
1 tbsp. dried basil
1 tbsp. dried oregano
1 tbsp. dried marjoram (yeah, I used the same amount for all the spices...you should feel free to add or remove to your tastes!)
1 tsp. crushed red pepper flakes
S+P to taste
3-4 cloves of garlic, finely minced

~instructions~
Combine all ingredients in a small saucepan over medium-high heat.  Bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer.  Allow to cook for at least 15 minutes.  Once finished cooking, remove from the heat.  Feel free to mash with a potato masher or blender for a smoother sauce. Store in an air-tight container in the refrigerator.

This was enough for one about 12" pizza plus plenty left for dipping. And there is still some in the fridge...