Go Terk Yourself

I did most of the mixing of the dough while it was still wet, using the paddle attachment to the stand mixer instead of the dough hook. I didn’t add as much flour as I normally would in the end, resulting in a wetter dough than usual. These changes resulted in a dough that required no work to stretch it to the desired size, which makes me very happy.

I used the tomato rinsing method for the sauce. It removed the acidity and bitterness quite well, but took a while. Sadly the sauce was under seasoned and the pie could have used a bit more of it.

I’m a big fan of pizza and I like to make it at home. Something I’ve noticed the past couple times I’ve made a sauce though is that it ends up bitter and acidic. Jeff Varasano has what is probably the most comprehensive review of making pizza at home and on his site he talks about something he calls “Tomato Rinsing”:

Tomato Rinsing: All cans have some bitterness. To lessen this I have developed a process that I call Tomato Rinsing. Strain the tomatoes in a fine mesh strainer.. If the mesh is fine, the water will be mostly clear with very little tomato escaping. If the water is very red, pour it back on top of the tomatoes and continue straining. Eventually the water will run almost completely clear. Here’s the key. The water that comes out is completely bitter. Taste it. What I do is pour fresh water on top of the strained tomatoes and strain them again. Taste this second batch of water. It’s also bitter. You are removing bitterness and acid without losing a drop of red tomato. You can repeat this several times if you like, but once or twice is usually fine. The net result is that what is left over, which is all the red tomato solids, is sooooo sweet and yummy.

I can’t wait to try the technique and see if it works.