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Sabertooth Sauce – Zippy Vinaigrette Sauce Perfect for Thin Crust Pizza

lane — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 16:57:29 +0000

Rrrraw! I’ve posted and posted about my love of Agatucci’s Pizza and their famous Tiger Sauce. For the last year, I’ve been quietly creating my own version. Yep, I’m becoming that lady. Soon there will be legendary stories of me as the lady who rolls with a bottle of Sabertooth sauce in her purse, a la Susan Dell (According to rumor, Susan Dell carries a bottle of ranch dressing in her purse at all times. I have no idea if this is true, but I find it hysterical.) I love pizza, who doesn’t? But ever since growing up in Peoria and enjoying Agatucci’s with a dash of their secret tiger sauce, I can’t get the zippy flavor out of my brain in when I think about pizza.

When I moved to Austin, everyone was dipping their pizza in ranch. Which is just wrong. Well, maybe wrong is unfair since I’m not really a fan of ranch dressing. But I’m all for sauces and dipping, so I’ve been on the lookout for a suitable replacement. Thus far, I’ve yet to find any pizzerias in the Lone Star State serving a vinaigrette sauce. I’m pushing the trend. If my extra thin crust pizza recipe seems like too much work to you, please consider making a quick batch of my Sabertooth Sauce the next time you order Campisi’s or other takeout. It adds a zip and a twist enhancing your pizza experience and making takeout something truly worth writing home about. Or at least a status update on your facebook page. Plus, don’t you just feel more powerful by adding a little Sabertooth to your life? Whisk some up, and drizzle some spice into your life.

Happy Eating!

Sabertooth Sauce – Zippy Vinaigrette Sauce Perfect for Thin Crust Pizza

1 tbsp olive oil

1 tbsp apple cider vinager

1 tbsp white wine vinager

1 tbsp water

4 dash (shakes through the shaker top) ground mustard

1 tsp garlic salt

1 tsp onion powder

Whisk like crazy, then drizzle from a spoon over your favorite thin crust pizza.

8 turns fresh ground pepper

Extra Thin Crust Pizza Dough Recipe – No Yeast Required

lane — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 18:48:55 +0000

I may be perfecting the ultimate pizza crust recipe for the rest of my life. I feel it’s critical to document my experiments and successes so that hopefully, I will one day achieve the Agatucci’s glory at home. I highly recommend you read that article. It’s about my favorite pizza joint in the town where I grew up. And now I’m sniffling and totally teary. Food does that to me.

A bonus for this crust is that this is a no yeast recipe, so need to have yeast on hand, or wait for rising, etc. This recipe was very good – I’d serve it to guests with absolutely no qualms. But it’s just not exactly what I was aiming for. For one thing – I want a super duper thin crust. This was thin, but it wasn’t as thin as I was hoping. So for next time, more rolling – to the point of insanity. In addition, the bottom was crispy – but it could be crispier and be even better. I’m musing over this and my current thoughts are, perhaps a hot pizza stone would help. Perhaps an even hotter oven. Perhaps the aluminum foil I placed below the pizza somehow reflected the heat resulting in a less crisp crust and I should just let my oven get messy. That one is a question for Robert Shimmin. I’ll update when I have a chance to ask him and he sends me an answer.

For simplicity, the sauce I used on this pizza was Nona Caputo’s Homemade Spaghetti Sauce. Who is Nona Caputo? I have no idea. It may actually be homemade. I suspect it came from Jimmy’s Italian Market as it was a part of the gift basket SMIL bought for me at the Dallas Food and Wine Festival’s Silent Auction. I’d imagine you could use any high quality spaghetti sauce with similar results or just your regular grocery’s jarred pizza sauce.

Extra Thin Crust Pizza Recipe

1 3/4 c. bread flour

1/2 tsp salt

3/4 tsp baking powder

1 tbsp olive oil

1 1/2 tsp dark corn syrup

1/2 c. water

Preheat oven to 425. Mix all ingredients in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment until thoroughly combined. Add water by the teaspoon to make the dough pull away from the sides of the bowl. If dough becomes too wet, add more flour by the teaspoon. Shape into a ball and place on a floured cutting board. Pat into a disc, then roll out until paper thin. Trim edges as necessary to create a circle. Either slide dough onto a pizza disc, or if you can’t slide it, use your cutting board to invert then flip over (create a sandwich of cutting board, pizza dough, pizza disc.) Once on the disc, coat liberally with spaghetti or pizza sauce of your choice. Top with mozzarella, minced white onions, and pepperonis. Bake for 14 minutes, then use a spatula to check the edge of the pizza to ensure crust is done but not burning. Then I cook another 2 and a half minutes. Enjoy!

Super Thin Crust Pizza

lane — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 13:36:00 +0000

I grew up near the best pizza restaurant in the the free world. Agatucci’s is unlike any other pizza I’ve ever eaten and has such a place in my heart, I’ve regularly considered moving back to the midwest just so I could eat it more frequently. I periodically have bursts of intense homesickness and have to plan a trip all brought forth from just thinking about this pizza. I took seriously amateur dance and gymnastics across the street as a kid and my best friend’s grandmother lived in the neighborhood behind the restaurant. It is such a place of memories for me, it brings tears to my eyes.

If you clicked through to that link for Agatucci’s above, you no doubt read the restaurant has been handed down between four generations of sons. What lucky sons! I know restaurants can be all-consuming of your time, energy, and resources, but I envy anyone who has a “family business.” Let alone in food!

I’m going to try and go with a two picture method today to point out some unique characteristics of this style of pizza. Please try to ignore my 10 million year old oven in the background. One day, a gourmet kitchen and I will come together in bliss. And yes, I broke my oven thermometer in the pizza making process, hence its disheveled appearance in the background. My oven has a mind of its own and suddenly started heating 35-45 degrees hotter than the setting this year.

So key items to note include: toppings go nearly edge to edge, this crust is so thin, the pizza is cut in small rectangles instead of triangles, the tiger sauce in the first picture, and the baking apparatus. I used a yeastless dough recipe, cause in this style you really don’t want your crust rising at all. I’ve no idea if this is how Agatucci’s does it, it’s just my attempt at recreation of greatness. I was pleased with the consistency of the dough and the texture. I mentioned last week that I’d asked Agatucci’s how they baked their pizza and they’d told me no pan just direct in the oven. Well that wouldn’t work with my oven rack so I went in search of the pizza disc you see here. Those holes go all the way through, providing more direct heat to the crust. I’m not sure if I think it was better or not, so next time I am also going to try one on a pizza stone to compare textures. I had a hard time figuring out how to move my paper-thin rolled pizza onto the 16-inch disc, so I wound up doing some final rolling on the disc, which resulted in little hole dents in the bottom of my crust.

I tried rolling on wax paper, but the dang paper kept getting folded and torn. I wasn’t sure how to move it direct from the counter, so I didn’t go that route. What I think would actually work best would be a large silicone sheet the size of your disc that you could roll on, then pick up and flip your crust onto the surface. I guess maybe that’s the theory with the pizza peels, that you flip it and drop it, I had never used one though and was imagining trying to slide off the pizza and thinking that will never work! I would think a large cutting board would work as well.

My sauce could have been zippier, but wasn’t bad. I’m thinking definitely more garlic and possibly some kind of vinegar? I’ll update it next time I try this. The cheese was definitely not quite right. In my research, I came across a kind of cheese called provel, which is used in St. Louis style pizza, specifically Imo’s. It’s a blend of cheddar, swiss, and provolone. My sister thought it was Velveeta, and apparently, she’s not the only one. I’ve had Imo’s and I just don’t remember it making a big impression. But the cheese is consistently described as tangy, so I was wondering what a blend of mozzarella and swiss might do for my pizza? Something to try.

I meant to make my own sausage topping for this pizza but the process and research became all consuming and my husband over-ruled me and went out and bought pepperoni. So made the crust, topped to edge with sauce, topped to edge with mozzarella, then added pepperonis and a sprinkling of white onion. Serve topped with the Tiger Sauce, a garlic flavored vinaigrette purchased at Agatucci’s. You could probably call them and they’d mail it to you!

Crust:

1 3/4 c. all-purpose flour

1/2 tsp salt

3/4 tsp baking powder

1 1/2 tsp olive oil

1 1/2 tsp dark corn syrup

3/8 c. water

Mix all ingredients until thouroghly combined, shape into a ball and roll out until paper thin.

Sauce:

28 oz can puree tomatoes

14 oz drained petite diced tomatoes

1 tbsp green bell pepper, finely chopped

2 tbsp yellow onion, finely chopped

1 clove garlic, minced

1 tsp thyme

1 tsp oregano

salt and pepper

Put all ingredients for sauce in food processor and puree until smooth. Pour into saucepan and heat on lowest heat for 15 minutes. Cool before using.