Lately, I have been trying to build my cooking skills. I recently found a YouTube channel run by a home cooking chef named Ethan Chlebowski that features approachable and very tasty recipes. It’s also nice that Ethan makes cooking feel less intimidating, much like J. Kenji Lopéz-Alt. Recently I decided to follow his weekly pan pizza recipe and make a Detroit-style ‘za with homemade tomato sauce and mozzarella.

Bottom line: I think it turned out great! Especially since I have never made dough nor tomato sauce from scratch.

The Final Result

Agh! Where’s the circle?! Yes, I too was a bit skeptical of Detroit-style rectangular pizza, but it was worth it. It took about 90 minutes, and I learned a ton about dough and sauce making. The specifics of the process are in Ethan’s video and are easy to follow. I wanted to give my thoughts about specific parts and how I troubleshot problems that arose and what specific nuggets I learned.

The Dough

I had never made dough before. I was intimidated. I have seen many people mention making doughs and it seemed like there are endless possibilities for error. However, I went in confident, and actually it was quite easy. I even put in a bit more water than was suggested, which I worried would ruin it, but seemed to not matter.

Ethan’s measurements are all by weight in this recipe, and that is the way to go for me. Many fewer things to clean at the end (since I just weight everything in one bowl) and less likely to screw up. The dough was extremely sticky at the beginning but seemed to come together a bit easier after some kneading. Wow, kneading is hard work. I know that seems obvious but my forearm was actually sore after only like 10 minutes worth of kneading. How do cats do it all the time?

Taste-wise, the dough was delicious. A bit chewier than I usually go for but the crisped edges and fluffy core were divine.

The Sauwce

I had never made tomato sauce from scratch. I used San-Marzano canned whole tomatoes and let them get to know some olive oil (ran out of butter!), a quarter of an onion, some basil, salt, and smashed garlic cloves. I had never really used an immersion blender before, but blending all of that was super fast.

This stuff is so good. I have already had it on pasta, and it is 10x better than store-bought sauce. I am beginning to see where, for me, it makes sense to make certain staples regularly to have on hand for multiple meals. This is probably “doy” for most people, but I kind of have to experience something first-hand to understand it fully.

An interesting little problem I ran into was my stainless steel sauce pot. I stupidly had boiled some salted water in it a little while ago, before I knew that you were supposed to add salt to boiling water instead of dump it in before it boils. So, I had some pitting on the bottom of my pot and I wasn’t sure if it was safe to cook with still (maybe it would leech aluminum or nickel? I wasn’t sure.). Turns out, as per my cookware manufacturer’s site, it is totally safe (though irreversible).

Closing Thoughts

A few closing thoughts. First, the biggest problem for me was the lack of topping cohesion. I wanted those toppings to be at the very edge of the crust all over the pizza, and I had thought when I put them on that they would melt and spread out to cover more area than they actually did. This is a small critique but I think it would have improved the pizza. I also think some more mozzarella cheese and a little more sauce would have improved the taste.

Second, this was a big confidence booster for me. As someone who never grew up with thorough cooking instruction, this was a relatively big step for me. I am very proud of myself that I was able to successfully follow a recipe yet modify it for my tastes without disaster.