Ever looked at the pizza on supermarket frozen shelves and wondered why your pizza doesn’t look like that? Or maybe it does look like that, but the taste bores your family stiff. Now the pizza genie comes to your rescue. Secrets to a better tasting homemade pizza are below.
1. The secret’s in the sauce.
Go to the grocery store and look at the variety of tomato sauce. Then look at the variety of pasta sauce. Italian tastes can go “high” or “low”, ranging from kid’s-lunch quality to company dinner level flavor. Sneaky pizza chefs dress up the sauce.
Don’t skimp on sauce unless you have a real balanced savory adventure happening on top of the pie. Pizza tops are made up of sweet and sour. Peppers can be sweet and cured Italian meats can bring sourness. The sauce can bring up whatever else is on top of the pie, even plain mushrooms.
Keeping tomato paste on the shelf is fine, but cut in some fresh tomatoes or peppers when using it on pizza at home. Heating up pizza sauce and adding in spices can really enrich the taste of the pizza. Think about the last pizza you had. Do you remember the meat, the cheese, the sauce, or the crust??
2. It’s not about more dough
Budget frozen pizzas in the market have a secret built in. They just provide more dough. Pound for pound more bread is a simple starch that overbalances flavor and is very heavy to eat. It makes shoppers think they are getting more value than they are. Thin crusts have a much finer finish and toast properly.
Many home pizza chefs go mad trying to make a pizza that cooks the dough properly while not burning the top ingredients. Fatty cheese if the only thing a chef can apply on top to stop the overcooking. Unless you are making a super pizza with no stops, skip the self rising or extra deep dish crust. it’s just bread.
3. Experiment with cheesiness
Work with your ingredients and sauce to get the most from the tomato layer. Milder sauce goes with tangier cheese. Put more garlic based tomato sauce on a “thinner” pizza top. Most frozen pizzas skimp on this step and rely on spiced meats and additives to hoist the flavor. This sets up the cheese.
If you have American or cheddar, think about a cheeseburger pizza. Even a few shakes of parmesan gets the job done in a hurry. If you have a good quality mozzarella, don’t bury it under 5 other ingredients. Make a country style pie with tomatoes and sauce and concentrated blobs of cheeses to really wow the diners.
4. Make courses of pizza, not all the same kind
Not every topping is best represented by every crust. Thin crispy crusts show off highly spiced combinations like chicken with red onions and barbeque sauce, or pecorino romano cheese sprinkled with fresh tomatoes sitting in blobs of cheese. Five cheese pizza should have a heftier crust to support the goo.
5. Use lower salt, less sugar ingredients
Grocery stores offer all kinds of less salt, lower sugar products. If you and yours love family pizza night from the takeout place, work on making the same result with healthier ingredients. Half and half cheese, no salt tomato sauce, and natural Italian sausage cuts down on additives.
6. Fresh trumps frozen any time of day or night.
Getting in the hang of home pizza making means being comfortable with the steps. Having tomato sauce, mozzarella cheese, sausage or pepperoni, and tomatoes and mushrooms is just a start. Invest the same time in preparing pizza you would a gourmet salad.
7. Cut with scissors
Cutting pizza with a bad knife can ruin the toppings and disappoint diners. Weird or unattractive slice shapes make recipients either very happy or depressed because of too-denuded pizza slices. Cut very soon after pizza comes out of the oven with clean sharp scissors. The crust will be the toughest part to cut through as the pie cools off.
Cutting with scissors means all the cheese stays where it’s supposed to. Make smaller pieces for smaller appetites and snackers. Some people like more crust, some only want the middle. Serving up can happen in the kitchen when table room won’t accommodate a huge pie pan.
8. The magic phrase is “bite-size”
Pizza can be easy to overeat because human teeth can’t puncture two inch round pepperoni slices, knuckle-duster broccoli florets, and gummy cheese mesas. Use scissors to cut tomatoes smaller and pepperoni into flavor dots. When’s the last time you saw someone snacking on a huge slice of pepperoni in one gulp?
Make an edible pie. Cut chicken and green onions small when using them. Chop mushrooms and onions as if for a salad. Keep cheese layers somewhat even across the entire pie. Press down crust overages. Distribute the ingredients all over the pie, so it won’t sink or slide to the middle while cooking.
9. Steal ideas from frozen pizzas
Shop for gourmet home pizza ideas by reading the ingredients on the back of frozen pizza boxes. See what you have and what you need. Home pizza making has more leverage over frozen in that you can sprinkle more cheese or anchovies or whatever on one of the pie, so everyone is happy. Or start with a budget frozen pizza and add the things your family like, with less of a cooking burden.
10. Serve with complimentary drinks & sides
Ah, the secret to a really successful pizza meal at home is what’s served on the side. Smart chefs will not serve cola or kid’s fizz to distract from the taste of the pizzas. Overly sweetened coffee drinks and sugary punch will rob your meal of the impact and reduce the payoff for your effort.
Think about what Italians drink while dining. Limoncello is a smart lemon liqueur whose citric power refreshes and emphasizes strong garlic and spices. Even beer is good with some Italian dishes.
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