Artisan pizza from the semi-comfort of my home

Artisan pizza! It comes to me on my way home today. The little wheels of mozzarella. The fresh basil. The homemade pizza sauce. There's a store on the way home. I don't exactly know what you need to make a pizza sauce, but I do know I'm determined to do it. This is not my first attempt. But it will be my first success. Not having a recipe with me will be liberating; I'm sure I know what I'm doing.

Two stops at two separate stores later and I'm home. I've got pizza dough, roma tomatoes, fresh basil and two giant mozzarella cheese balls. Just like the artisans. Now all I need to do is find a recipe that matches my ingredients. Incredulously enough, epicurious.com does not pull up any results when I type in "artisan pizza." Google is equally unhelpful. Luckily, I am very smart and can figure this out on my own. I gather sauce making ideas from a few recipes and dive in.

Preheat the oven to 500 degrees, why not? Dump my dough from its plastic bag onto our pizza pan, boil some water and throw three tomatoes in. Supposedly this will help me peel them. Miraculously, it does. In fact, it peels them for me! I chop up the tomatoes into small tomato bits and end up with a watery mess. So, I drain them. That's what sieves are for. I roll out my dough with surprising ease and cut up my basil. I am an artisan pizza hero.

But, what kind of adventure would this be if there wasn't smoke? Smoke, pouring out of a hole in my stove top that I didn't even know existed. I turn on the oven light to discover a circle of goo surrounded by some large black pieces of something. Further investigation lets a huge burnt apple pie cloud of smoke into my apartment setting off my smoke detector- the loudest one in the whole world- and filling my apartment with smoke. I turn off the stove, open the door, set up the box fan in the window and decide to wait it out (and yes, it's freezing outside since it is December 3rd- Happy Birthday Dad- and I live in Seattle). Five smoke detector incidents later and I've cooled and cleaned my oven. I re-pre-heat it and decide to finish the job.

My tomato bits seem sufficiently dry, but a quick taste reminds me that I hate tomatoes. I add some salt, pepper and a sprinkle of oregano and give it a stir. It's still chunks of tomatoes. I move on. I chop up my giant cheese balls into giant cheese wheels. Just like the picture perfect artisan pizza but bigger. Go big or go home. I put some olive oil on my dough, throw a bit in my sauce for good measure and line up my toppings.

Here is where I start to worry. (Not when my apartment fills with smoke?, you may wonder. But no, it's not there. It's here). My tomato sauce is, well, just smallish pieces of whole tomatoes. With some black specks. I can't use the "back of the spoon" method to spread it out. I have to put each individual piece on the pizza one at a time to ensure that it is properly spread out. Next, the basil and finally the cheese. It looks weird, but OK.

After about five minutes I get curious and turn on my oven light. The cheese wheels are no longer. They have spread out into a giant web of melty cheese. Not as I had planned. And the basil that was on top of the pizza- it was black. Burned. Crispy. Maybe it's just time for the pizza to come out? Nope, not even close. Time basically stops at this point. I empty the dishwasher. I fill the dishwasher. I think about how gross my burnt basil, raw tomato, non-wheely pizza will be. When the crust is finally golden the cheese has spread out to cover the whole pizza, not exactly what I was going for. The good news is the raw tomato bits are covered. And the burnt bits of basil seemed to have disintegrated.

Thankful that no one is home to see my disaster, I slice up the pizza and give it a shot. The result? Well, wonderful. The basil that had remained hidden under the protective veil of perfectly melted cheese was wonderful. The crust was deliciously thin. And the sauce! Oh, the sauce. It was subtle and wondrous. Tomato chunks and all.

And that my friends, is how you make an artisan pizza.

Want to try it yourself?

Ingredients:

Sauce:
6 tomatoes
3 Tbsp olive oil (divided)
Salt and pepper to taste
1 tsp oregano

½ cup fresh basil

Dough:
Just buy it pre-made. For reals.

Cheese:
Two big cheese balls (kiwi size or a little bigger) (fresh mozzarella)

Preheat oven to 500 degrees. Boil enough water to cover the tomatoes. Add the tomatoes (whole) and boil for one minute. Remove from water, peel and chop. Put the chopped tomatoes into a sieve and drain the juice. In the meantime roll out the dough (the thinner the better), slice the cheese (the thinner the better), and slice basil. Shake out the excess juice from your tomatoes, put them in a bowl, add oregano, salt and pepper to taste, and 1.5 Tbsp olive oil. Drizzle remaining olive oil on dough, and add sauce. I only used half the sauce, but just use as much as you like. Add the basil, then the cheese slices. Bake it for 10 minutes or until crust is golden and cheese is melted.