An Easy Pizza Sauce and an Incredible Lab

Our first ever pizza lab was a great success. I will have to admit that I was a little leery of doing this lab. I even had a couple of sleepless nights thinking of everything that might go wrong and how I could plan ahead for it all to go smoothly. Thanks to Antoine and his boss from Stevie B’s Pizza in Douglasville this lab was an incredible experience for everyone. If you have never made homemade pizza you will be surprised at how easy it is, how great it taste, and how much money you save! Antoine brought in pizza dough ready to stretch out in pizza pans. We used pans with holes in them which makes for quicker cooking and a more crisp crust. You can find them a your local Wal-Mart. Here’s how we did it.

The dough was covered with cornmeal so there was no need to add any flour to keep it from sticking to everyone’s hands. Students threw the dough from hand to hand to warm it up and start the stretching process. Once it starting stretching the dough was stretched from the center out either by holding the dough upright or laying it on the counter. It took less than 5 minutes. We learned quickly that you should not fold the dough over as if you were kneading it. It would not work. The dough worked best to start the stretching directly out of the refrigerator. Most of my students chose to use an old standby pizza sauce recipe that came with this pan. I have used for years and it is easy and inexpensive. I do love this recipe , but the cooking time is 30 minutes which is hard to do in a 45 minute class. It would be hard even if we made it the day before.
Some other keys to successful pizza making are put the oven rack in the bottom third of the oven and cook at the oven’s hottest temperature which in our case was 550 degrees. Pizza will be ready in 7-8 minutes depending on the type of pan you have.
One of the best pizzas made to me was a hot wing pizza that I want to share with you later after I try it out on my family. It was fantastic!
Easy Pizza Sauce from REMA Bakeware