Sauce for a thick Pizza

When I was a grad student I lived in the only house in Urbana that was on California Street near the university(house is no longer there). 10 of us lived in the house and we called it Hotel California. What was so ironic is that you could not have found a group of straighter grad students if you tried. None of us did drugs and only 2 or 3 had tried marijuana at sometime in their life. Almost all of us enjoyed cooking (that and Sci-Fi were our common interests). When we left Hotel California we made a cookbook, here is a sauce from that book.


Pizza Sauce for thick pizza:

The nice thing about this sauce is that you can double, triple, etc. and store it in the freezer for later use (a lot later).

1 6oz can of tomato paste (try Italian for extra flavor)
16 oz of in season local tomatoes (or a 16 oz can out of season)
2 tsp of olive oil
1 clove garlic minced or to taste
salt to taste
black pepper to taste
red pepper (optional, I don’t use this) to taste

Thyme
Oregano

Chop up the tomatoes, mix with the tomato paste and place in covered pot on low heat. About ½ hour in the process add the garlic, salt, black pepper, and red pepper to taste. Once that is done start adding thyme and oregano (in a three parts oregano to one part thyme) until it just barely becomes too bitter to taste. Don’t worry, when you put it on the pizza the flavor will be diluted. Then let it heat for another couple of hours, stir occasionally (at least 2 hours). You may need to add water, but keep the sauce somewhat thick. Pack in two cup portions for freezing (2 cups/pizza).

Hint on thick pizzas: The art in fixing a good thick pizza is the order of ingredients. On the dough put ½” of cheese (yes, cheese first). Then add your veggies (sauté mushrooms) and your pepperoni. Then you lay down the sauce in thick cross-strips. Cover about ½ the pizza with the strips (baking will spread the sauce out).

Put the rest of your meats on top. You may want to fry your meats beforehand and add to the pizza for the last 10 minutes of baking. Letting your meats cook with the pizza may dry them out if the crust is particularly thick (like mine). Don’t go wild with you toppings, it eventually becomes to hard to bake, I usually have no more than 4 different toppings on any part of the pizza.

Finally you need to brush olive oil on all the exposed dough or it will burn. You might want to guess what the exposed dough will be and do this first, I usually get a weird mess when I do this last.