It's Not Delivery, It's Homemade - Part II: The Sauce

And so begins Part II – The Sauce. I previously posted Part I – The Dough (see below) to explain how to make homemade pizza dough. Now the next step:

Pizza/Calzone Sauce

½ green pepper, chopped
½ onion, chopped
2 small cloves garlic, minced
1 28 ounce can crushed tomatoes, undrained
1 8 ounce can tomato sauce
2 tsp sugar
1 ½ tsp dried oregano
½ tsp salt
¼ tsp pepper

Combine all ingredients in a large pot and simmer at least ½ hour. Use as directed in the pizza/calzone recipe posted in Part I.

Yes it is that simple! This sauce keeps very well in the refrigerator and also freezes well. One sauce recipe will usually get me through TWO pizza dough recipes.

If you are making calzones to freeze individually, freeze the sauce in individual portions as well. Depending on how much sauce you like with your calzone, the smallest size of Gladware containers work really well. That way in the morning you can grab a calzone and grab a container of sauce for your lunch. It will be mostly thawed out by lunchtime. Just heat and eat.

You can also use leftover sauce to make baked pizza pasta. Cook pasta as directed on package. Drain and place in casserole dish. Top with sauce and toppings. Cover top with cheese. Bake in the oven at 350 degrees F until cheese is melted and pasta is warm throughout, probably about 20 minutes or so.

So is it worth it? If you have time I say yes. The sauce is simple and uses all natural ingredients so it is much healthier than pre-made sauce that could have a lot of unnecessary additives or preservatives. It also makes a large batch that can be used for several meals and can be easily frozen for later use.

Enjoy! Ciao!

It's Not Delivery, It's Homemade - Part I: The Dough

My friend Katie once told me that she makes homemade pizza or calzones for her husband and son (soon to be two sons!) every Friday night. At first I thought she was crazy to go to all that trouble every week. Then she passed her pizza dough recipe and pizza sauce recipe on to me and let me just say….wow. This is some of the best pizza I have ever tasted. Since I started making this recipe a few months ago I haven’t ordered a take-out pizza since! I will explain the dough recipe here in Part I and then the sauce recipe in Part II.

Makes enough for six calzones, two thick crust pizzas, three thin crust pizzas or one giant pizza in a jelly roll pan.

1 ½ cups warm water (105-115 degrees F)
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon salt
2 packages dry yeast (or 4 ½ teaspoons yeast)
4 ½ cups all purpose or bread flour

Combine water, oil, sugar and salt in a large mixing bowl. Sprinkle yeast over water mixture and stir until dissolved. Using paddle attachment or spoon, gradually add flour, mixing well after each addition.

Turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface (or switch to dough hook if using a stand mixer) and knead until smooth and elastic. When using a stand mixer this will take approximately 12-15 minutes and the dough will come together into a ball in the center of the bowl. If kneading by hand it will take longer. Shape the dough into a smooth ball and place in a large greased bowl, turning once to grease the top.

Cover the bowl with a towel and let the dough rise in a warm place for approximately one hour or until doubled in size. TIP: set the bowl on top of a smaller bowl filled with warm water. When the hour is almost up, preheat the oven to 450 degrees F. When you remove the dough from the bowl after it has risen it will deflate a bit. This is okay.

For pizza: If making two or three pizzas, cut dough apart into two or three sections. For the giant pizza, spread the entire dough ball out into a greased jelly roll pan. For two or three pizzas spread one section of dough into a greased pizza pan or pizza stone. Bake the dough alone in the pan for five minutes at 450 degrees F. This is called “dry baking”. Remove from oven, top with sauce and toppings of your choice and return to oven and bake for 12-15 more minutes.

For calzones: Separate dough into six sections. Roll or pat each section into a circle. Fill half of the circle with topping of your choice. Fold the other half of the circle over to cover the toppings and pinch the sides shut. Cut a few air slots in the top of each calzone. Bake for 12-15 minutes on a cookie sheet at 450 degrees F. Crust will be golden brown. Serve with sauce.

What I do to make the crust extra yummy is to brush the outside crust of the pizza or the entire top of the calzone with olive oil, then sprinkle with kosher salt and Italian seasoning.

These calzones freeze very well. On a Saturday you could make a batch of calzones and then individually wrap and freeze them and use them for lunches or dinners for the following week or two. When I make this recipe I usually make one thick crust pizza and 3 calzones. I eat the pizza immediately for dinner and freeze all the calzones and take them for lunch.

So is it worth it? It depends. If you view pizza as a convenience food then no, this recipe is not worth it for you. It takes a lot more time to make homemade pizza than to go pick up a pizza or wait for delivery. However if you have extra time and want to save money then homemade pizza is definitely worth it for you. One batch of dough maybe costs a dollar when you add up all the ingredients and depending on the size of your family you can get more than one meal out of it. When you add in the toppings and the sauce it might not be much cheaper than the $5 carry-out pizza from Little Caesars, but let me tell you the quality will be much greater!

The other part about homemade pizza that I really like is that I can customize the toppings for each person I’m serving. Same for calzones. I’ve served “build-your-own” calzones at several dinners for family and friends and people really enjoy getting to make their own personal, customized calzone.

Stay tuned for Part II – The SAUCE!

It's Like Butta-cream Frosting

I’ll be the first to admit to anyone that I have a MAJOR sweet tooth. I rarely meet a sweet that I do not like. Ice cream, cookies, brownies and cake of course. On top of cake is the best part of all in my opinion – the frosting! Once you make your own frosting, you’ll never go back to that stuff in the plastic can.

When I first moved into my own apartment back in college, I was given a big red Betty Crocker cookbook as a gift. Being a sweet lover, one of the first recipes I tried was peanut butter cake with fudge frosting. The cake part turned out okay – just a little over baked. But the frosting was horrible! It was a huge clumpy mess and I had to throw the whole thing out. I was devastated. After that I was scared to attempt frosting again for fear of failure.

Not too long ago I decided to give it a go again. Since that fateful day in college I have acquired one of the greatest tools you can have in your kitchen…..behold the Kitchen Aid Stand Mixer!

Let’s begin. To make basic buttercream frosting you need the following ingredients – butter, powdered sugar, vanilla and milk. I have seen recipes with varying proportions, but this is what works best for me (enough to generously frost 24 cupcakes):

1 stick butter at room temperature
4 cups powdered sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
2-3 tablespoons of milk

Begin by placing the stick of butter in the mixer bowl. Using the paddle attachment beat the butter at medium-high speed until it is very soft and creamy. If you are making white frosting this step is important as it makes the butter lighter in color and will make your frosting more white. Next beat in the powdered sugar one cup at a time on low to medium speed. The mixture will be creamy at first, but by the time you add in the last cup it will be dry and crumbly. That is ok. The next step will bring it all together.

Now add the vanilla and one tablespoon of milk. Beat on low first then increase the speed to medium. Check the consistency of the frosting. It should be starting to come together. Beat in another tablespoon of milk. Again watch the consistency. Add a third tablespoon of milk. Beat on medium then high speed for a minute or so to make the frosting extra creamy and spreadable. If the frosting still seems thick, add another tablespoon of milk.

What I’ve found with frosting is that you just have to watch it come together and check the taste and consistency as you go. If you are not sure about it, try to spread some on a cutting board to see if it is hard to spread. If it is then add more milk. If it’s too runny add more powdered sugar.

To frost a cake or cupcakes, the best tool to use is an offset spatula. These can be purchased just about anywhere, but you may need to look in the specialty cake section. If you do not have one or don’t want to purchase one, use a spoon instead of a knife for cupcakes. It gives you more control and is less messy.

Now that you know how to make basic buttercream, you can start making variations. Two that I have made are mint buttercream (very tasty on chocolate cupcakes) and maple buttercream (extremely good on butter pecan cupcakes). All you do is omit the vanilla from the above recipe and add in a different flavored extract. You will probably need to add more than just one teaspoon of flavoring. If that is the case, you will want to use less milk. For the maple buttercream I used pure maple syrup in place of the milk.

So is it worth it? Most definitely! Once you get the hang of it, a batch of homemade frosting can be whipped up fairly quickly, and the taste is far superior to store-bought frosting in a can. I’m not completely sure if there is cost savings, but I know it can’t cost any more than store-bought. And everyone is impressed by homemade frosting. :)

Who Says Granola Has To Be Expensive?

I’m going to start off this week with some of my favorite recipes. I’ve made homemade granola a few times now and it is fantastic and super easy to make. I started making it myself when I realized how much I was paying for granola at the store! I love it so much that I couldn’t give it up so I now make a less costly version at home. I slightly modified a recipe called Honey Peanut Granola from Allrecipes.com to make the following recipe:

Honey Almond Granola

3 cups quick cooking oats
½ cup sliced almonds
¼ cup wheat germ
½ cup sunflower seeds
1/3 cup honey
1/3 cup brown sugar
¼ cup vegetable oil
2 tablespoons warm water
½ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 250 degrees F (120 degrees C). Lightly grease a jelly roll pan. In a large bowl, combine oats, almonds, wheat germ and sunflower seeds. In a separate smaller bowl, combine honey, brown sugar, vegetable oil, water, salt and vanilla. Stir well, then pour into the oat mixture and stir. Spread out on the jelly roll pan. Bake for 1 hour, stirring every 15 minutes. Remove from oven and cool before serving.

The mixture may stick to your pan slightly, but that’s ok. Just get a sturdy spoon and kind of scrape at it until it is unstuck at each stirring interval. It will still taste fine. Also, make sure to allow the granola to cool all the way before storing so that it becomes crunchy. If you do not allow it to cool all the way, condensation could develop in the container and cause the granola to become soggy.

Wait a sec….you might be wondering, what is wheat germ anyway? According to Wikipedia, wheat germ is the embryo of the wheat seed or kernel and contains a ton of nutrients such as Vitamin E & folate. When flour is milled and refined to make white flour, the germ and also the bran are stripped away from the wheat kernel. The germ and the bran are the two most nutritious parts of the wheat kernel which is why whole grain wheat flour is much healthier for you as it contains both the germ and the bran.

So where can you buy wheat germ? I bought mine at my local grocery store. It comes in a glass jar and should be located in the baking aisle near the flour. I’ve also seen it in the bulk bins at all natural food stores such as Whole Foods. Wheat germ contains natural oils and should be kept in the refrigerator to stay fresh.

Ok back to the granola. There are tons of yummy things to make with homemade granola. For example:

Pour milk on it and eat it like cereal
Mix it up with yogurt and fruit
Layer it with yogurt and fruit in a parfait glass (really yummy for brunch!)
Sprinkle it on ice cream
Sprinkle it on top of banana muffins or bread before baking
Add raisins, dried fruit and M&Ms to make trail mix

So is it worth it? I say YES! The whole process only takes about 90 minutes including cooling time and you get a very large batch of granola in the end. It is very cost savvy as well. Those tiny boxes of granola at the grocery store are quite expensive! By making it yourself you not only save money, you also get to make it however you want. So if you don’t like sunflower seeds, take ‘em out! Trade in the almonds for some walnuts or add in some dried fruit. Throw in a teaspoon of cinnamon for a different flavor. Use molasses instead of honey. The possibilities are endless!

Here We Go!

Today marks the launch of my new blog entitled “Everything Is Homemade.” I decided to start this blog simply because I like to make stuff and I think it would be fun to write about. I also hope my posts will be informative and helpful to anyone who has asked themselves, “I wonder if I could make that…?”

A little bit about me: My name is Amy and I live in the Midwest in a suburb of Kansas City. I’ve been a crafty person ever since I was a kid, but I’ve especially increased my craftiness in the last 5 years. I find it fascinating that you can take pieces of nothing and put them together into something useful. Take knitting for example. A knit scarf starts out as nothing more than one long piece of yarn. Put that yarn together with two pointy sticks and voila! You have a warm, useful scarf. It’s amazing when you think about it!

When I think about making stuff, most of the time it is to save money. By day I am an accountant so I am a very financially minded person. However saving money is not always my motivation behind making stuff. For anyone who has ever knit a sweater from good quality yarn, you know that it would have been way cheaper to just buy a sweater at the store! And less time-consuming as well. Sometimes it is just fun to see if it can be done and if it is worthwhile for me to do so.

With this blog I plan to experiment with making “stuff” at home. Stuff can be anything – food, clothing, furniture, household items, you name it. I also plan to experiment with making my own “services”, ie. doing stuff myself that I might ordinarily pay someone to do instead. For “stuff” that I absolutely cannot make at my house (ie. milk, because there is no way I am going to put a dairy cow in my backyard) I plan to write about a local company that provides the “stuff”.

My first few blogs will likely be about making stuff in areas that I am already familiar with, such as cooking, knitting and baking. But I am going to stretch myself in areas I am not familiar with such as building furniture and changing my own oil (eeeep!). I also plan to undertake a long-term project a few times a year and post regular updates on how that is going, for example, making your own beer which I know takes several weeks to complete.

Know that I am just a regular person. I do not have any special MacGyver-esque training. As a regular person I will research and carry out the project and then report back on how it turned out and if it was worth it.

I hope I have peaked your interest! Check back for my first project!