Pizza Sauce

We are some makers of homemade pizza around here.  I love some delivery from time to time and nothing beats a Mellow Mushroom pizza in my opinion, they are THE best.  But to save on some money, we try and make a lot our pizza.  I thought I'd help curb the cost by going a bit further and whipping up some canned pizza sauce.  (ahem)

Whip it up...what was I thinking?!  It took ALL DAY LONG!

Luckily, I had a handsome helper to chop tomatoes and lovely babysitter to watch the littlest one.

time saver!  teach your kids knife skills young!

At first it was easy.  Just cut your tomatoes up, pop them through the blender, as well as some sautéed onions, green peppers and garlic.  Find your biggest pot in the house to simmer the tomatoes in, as well as all our spices you would normally put in for pizza sauce.  Seems simple right?

The problem is that it took SO STINKIN' LONG to simmer down to a thick pizza sauce.  Even after four hours it was still to watery!!  After that, I added like 3 cans of tomato paste and let it simmer another 2 hours before it was worthy of being called pizza sauce.  SIX hours!  I started early, but it wasn't until after the kids were all in bed before I could can them!!!  Even then, I gave up and just put a bunch of cans in the freezer.

But it's done and we have enough pizza sauce to last us until next spring probably and the box of tomatoes only cost us $10.

there's more towards the back and in the freezer

My favorite crust:
1 3/4 c flour ( I mix white and wheat)
2 1/4 tsp yeast
Italian Seasoning to taste
1 1/2 tsp sugar
3/4 tsp salt
6T warm milk
6T warm water

Combine all ingredients and knead about 8-10 minutes.  Rise until doubled in bulk, about an hour.  Bake @375.
I use my bread machine to make this in which is a time saver.  This is enough for one large pizza, I usually double it for my crowd.  Except don't double the yeast, I just increase it to 1 T.

The best part of a good pizza, spread a dollop of pesto onto the crust before adding your sauce.  But that's just my little secret between you and me!