Margherita Pizza

Preheat oven to 500 degrees F. You absolutely want to use a pizza brick/baking stone for this. Throw it into the oven and let it heat up with the oven. Let the oven preheat for a good 30 minutes to ensure it is hot enough

Prepare your favorite pizza dough in advance or just get out your ready made crust. (Note: if you are using fresh dough, place it on a cornmeal dusted pizza peel/cookie sheet. Cornmeal slides more easily than flour)

Add olive oil to a pan, heat to medium and saute garlic for 1 minute or so.

Add tomatoes, salt and oregano, bring to a boil for a minute and then lower heat and allow the sauce to simmer for 30 minutes.

Evenly spread tomato sauce onto dough/crust. Cover pizza with slices of delicious fresh mozzarella, and go ahead and snag a bite or two for yourself.

Gently jiggle pizza dough onto your super hot stone. (Or just slide the crust on, the dough requires more finesse).

Bake for 12 minutes, keep an eye on it. I like my cheese to be a little brown–use your judgement. Unless you use dough (as opposed to prepared crusts), you can’t really underbake it. If using fresh dough just make sure the edges are golden and crispy looking.

Remove from the oven and allow it to cool for a good 5 minutes or so to let the juices in the sauce settle, or it will leak everywhere making your crust soggy (unless you inhale your pizza in seconds, which is feasible.)

Toss some fresh torn basil on top and cut, enjoy!