Brick

The prob­lem with home baked piz­zas is crispi­ness, because who has a oven that goes to 700 degrees? I’ve fig­ured out a solu­tion: Make the tomato sauce on the pizza while it’s bak­ing. (If you are fine with thick crusts or pan piz­zas, best if you move along now, as you have it easy.)

The issue for thin, crispy pizza is sog­gi­ness. The best my research has come up with to pre­vent mush is to watch the amounts: For a large (about 12 inches) home pie, then a max­i­mum of 1 cup of top­pings, 1/2 cup of cheese (or a lit­tle more) and a half-cup of sauce. No more than that. It will end up look­ing like an arti­sanal pizza — topped with dol­lops, not the usual even lay­ers of goo.

I used to love lay­ers of goo, but at home that’s a fail.

Even with my way, you still might see a pool of liq­uid in the mid­dle when you pull the pizza from the oven. Just dab at the pud­dle with a balled-up paper towel.

A big prob­lem was the sauce. Store-bought pasta sauce is OK; jarred pizza sauce is awful. My go-to home­made sauce comes from 101Cookbooks.com, and it remains my favorite tomato sauce. But here its slight run­ni­ness is a fault. Also, the recipe makes more than needed for the pizza.

But Heidi Swanson’s 101 Cook­books post — her not­ing the dif­fer­ences between a quick and sim­mered sauce — led me to the con­cept below. I’m using a food proces­sor here, but any way you can make very thin, con­sis­tent slices will do. Also, any dough is fine, I guess, but I do have a rec­om­mended recipe.

I would’ve posted a photo but we ate the subject!

Toma­toey Pizza

• 1/2 recipe Bittman Pizza Dough (can use whole wheat flour)
• 3 medium or 2 large fresh toma­toes, cored
• 1 Table­spoon good olive oil
• 1 clove gar­lic, finely minced
• 2 tea­spoons dried Ital­ian herb mix
• 1 tea­spoon salt
• 1/2 tea­spoon pepper
• 1/4 cup tex­tur­ized veg­etable pro­tein (TVP) — optional
• 1 cup top­pings, such as a vari­ety of diced or thin-sliced veg­eta­bles, bits of sausage etc.
• 1/2 cup, heap­ing, grated cheese (such as moz­zarella) OR another half cup of toppings

Make the dough accord­ing to its recipe, reserv­ing half for later use, OR halve all ingre­di­ents. Let rise an hour. Pizza dough needs nei­ther vig­or­ous knead­ing nor lengthy rising.

Pre­heat oven to 475 degrees.

In a food proces­sor, halve or quar­ter toma­toes so they will fit in the chute. Slice using the thinnest blade. Put the slices in a small bowl and the juice from the proces­sor into another small bowl. Press the toma­toes with your fin­gers or the back of a spoon over the bowl of juice to extract more juice — it will end up about 1/2 cup.

Stir in oil, gar­lic, herbs, salt and pep­per into the bowl of juice; herbs will need at least 5 min­utes to fla­vor the liq­uid. If using TVP (it’s a ground beef sub­sti­tute), add to the juice; the TVP needs no less than 15 min­utes to soften.

Grease a 12-inch round pizza pan or sim­i­larly sized cookie sheet. OR cut a piece of parch­ment paper to that size and place on the pan. Press and stretch the dough onto it. If dough is resilient, let it rest 5 min­utes and resume flat­ten­ing. It’s OK to sprin­kle a table­spoon or two of flour to cut stick­i­ness as you work the dough.

Press out more juice from the tomato slices into the bowl of sea­soned juice. When plac­ing the var­i­ous top­pings below, leave open a quarter-size round hole in the mid­dle — bare — to reduce liq­uid pooling.

Evenly spread the tomato slices across the pizza; the pie should be well cov­ered, though the slices will shrink dur­ing bak­ing. If using, sprin­kle grated cheese evenly. Dot with the var­i­ous top­pings. Restir the sea­soned juice and drib­ble it over the pizza (the soaked TVP should be evenly spread). Push top­pings away from the small hole you’ve left in the middle.

Place pizza in oven. If using a bak­ing stone slide the pie from the pan onto it, includ­ing the parch­ment paper if using. Bake 10 min­utes, until tips of veg­eta­bles are dry or a lit­tle browned, and dough along the edge is well-browned. Let rest 3 to 5 min­utes before slicing.

Serves 3–4 peo­ple as part of a meal.