Tomato Paste Pizza Sauce on a No-Knead Dough, Easiest Margherita!

I was gifted a case of tomato paste (6oz cans). It had me hooked on pizza for a month (and ongoing). I will probably never bother to cook down tomato sauce again for pizza sauce. This almost-instant tomato paste pizza sauce is so delightful it's unfair (given how little work went into it). It's good for margherita, tomato pie, and good old classic cheese pizza. It is embarrassingly addicting, such that I had to roll up the edge of the pizza to accommodate the extra sauce too often requested. Happy accident - this yields an extra crispy edge, like a crusty Stromboli, so good that my dog no longer gets pizza crust from the table.

I'm cooking mine at a lower temperature than recommended by conventional recipes. Traditional Neapolitan pizza are cooked in 900 degree ovens, such that the dough is completely cooked before everything else is dried out. To mimic this effect, pizza recipes often call for heating the oven as high as it would go, and using a pizza stone for thermal mass. I've lived with sensitive smoke alarm everywhere I go, so I try to avoid cranking up the oven to 500F whenever possible. By lowering the oven temperature just 80~100F degrees, you can avoid reaching the smoking temperature of most oil (which is usually in the mid 400s Fahrenheit). The yeast dough will still rise fine at 400~420F, just save the fresh cheese for the final 5 minutes.

Ingredients:

for the sauce:
1tbsp extra virgin olive oil
4 cloves of garlic, crushed
2 tsp Italian herbs (or just oregano)
1/4 tsp fresh ground black pepper
1/4 red pepper flakes
1 tsp onion salt
1 tsp sugar
1 can tomato paste (6oz)
8~10 oz water

for the dough:
1 1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup warm water
1 tsp sugar
1/2 tsp yeast
1/4 tsp salt
2 tbsp olive oil

for the topping:
fresh mozzarella slices, fresh basil leaves

Instruction:

For the sauce: heat up olive oil & fry minced garlic until fragrant. Grind in pepper, add red pepper flakes, fry for 10~15 seconds. add in herbs and tomato paste. Fry tomato paste until oil is absorbed. fill up the can with water; add to fried tomato paste.Stir until you have a thick even sauce. Fill the can half way up with water again, add water a little at a time to thin out the sauce, until you reach desired thickness.

For the dough: combine sugar, yeast, salt with warm water. Add in flour. Mix with a fork until you have a shaggy dough.  Form a dough ball, add oil, and rest the dough in a warm water bath until doubled in volume (about 30 minutes). On a well floured cookie sheet, roll out the dough into a 12 inch sheet. For a fluffier pizza, cover with cling wrap and let it rest & rise for 10~15 minutes (optional).  Add sauce & roll up the edge of the dough. Bake at 420F for 8 minutes. Use a spatula to lift the pizza from the baking sheet. Add the fresh mozzarella. Bake the pizza on oven rack without the baking sheet, for 5 minutes. Garnish the pizza with fresh basil leaves just before serving.

Enjoy!

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