This month’s Daring Bakers challenge was another savory one — homemade pizza, using the dough recipe from The Bread Baker’s Apprentice by Peter Reinhart.  This was slightly different from the recipe I normally use, since it calls for leaving the dough in the refrigerator overnight. While that did help split up the work and made for a stronger yeasty flavor (which honestly I wasn’t a huge fan of), I felt like the dough didn’t really rise as much as it should have — though that could also have been my old yeast I split the original recipe, which was supposed to produce 6 9-12” pizzas, in half. Though I was hoping to make two pizzas with it (another part of the challenge) I ended up only being able to make one ~13-14″ pizza with a normal crust.

As part of the challenge, we also had to attempt tossing the dough in the air. I had never tried it before but was excited to go for it.  Here’s my best toss (thanks to my fiancé Greg for the great photo!):

[Yes, that's Anthony Bourdain on my t-shirt]

I was able to toss it a few times, but I ended up doing the final shaping on a cookie sheet. The sauce was homemade too, using this great recipe from Smitten Kitchen:

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Moderately Easy Tomato Sauce

4 roma tomatoes
1 to 2 tablespoons olive oil
2 cloves of garlic, minced
Pinch of red pepper flakes
Splash of white wine
1/2 teaspoon sugar
3/4 teaspoon salt

Bring medium pot of water to a boil. Poach the tomatoes for one minute only, and then drain them. As soon as they are cooled off enough that you can touch them, peel them. The peels should come right off. If they don’t, make a slit in the skins. This always does the trick.

Drain and dry the pot. Put it back on the burner over medium heat. Pour in olive oil and let it heat completely before adding the garlic and stirring it for a minute with a wooden spoon. Add the red pepper flakes and stir it for anther minute. You do not want the garlic to brown. Put the peeled tomatoes in the pot, along with the wine, sugar and salt. Break the tomatoes up with your spoon.

Let the sauce simmer for about 30 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the tomatoes break down. Carefully taste without burning your tongue and adjust seasonings, if necessary.

Makes enough for one small/medium pizza.

(Note: I substituted red wine for the white wine with no problems. SK also has a recipe for a sauce that calls for canned tomatoes, but I haven’t tried it yet).

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I topped the pizza with my old favorites: sun-dried tomatoes, feta cheese, onions, and fresh basil.

I think next time I would add the basil at the end of baking to keep it greener.

Although I have a pizza peel and a baking stone, I always get nervous about moving the pizza from one surface to another after topping the unbaked dough. Because I want to leave the stone in the oven, I just assemble and bake the pizza on a cookie sheet for about 5 minutes, then slide it directly onto the baking stone for the last few minutes of baking to help crisp the crust.

For the pizza dough recipe, check out the blog of this month’s host, Rosa.

And stay tuned — for dessert after the pizza, I made pumpkin crème brûlée