Vegan with a Vengeance

but it doesn’t have to be that precise) in the bowl, and put your dough ball in it and swirl it around a little, then flip it over. The idea here is to get both the bowl and your ball of dough covered with a thin film of oil. Cover the bowl with a clean, damp towel or plastic wrap and set it in a warm place. Go away for about an hour.
    When you come back your dough ball should’ve doubled in size, more or less. Here’s the fun part: uncover your dough and give it a firm, solid punch so it deflates. Sprinkle some more flour onto your countertop and dump the dough out onto it and start kneading. It should be stretchier and more pliable than it was before. Knead it for only about a minute, or until it’s less like a sponge and more like dough again. Put it back in the bowl and cover it so it can rest.
    How long? It’s up to you. You can freeze the dough now if you want and then defrost it and continue later. If you’re impatient you can wait as little as ten minutes, but your dough won’t be very stretchy. An hour or two would be good. Either way, when you’ve waited long enough (and when your oven is hot enough; preheat to 500°F or as hot as you dare), sprinkle your countertop with flour (again), take your dough ball out of the bowl, and cut it in two. Put one portion of dough back into the bowl.
    Now it’s time to stretch. Like kneading, stretching is an art and you’ll get better with practice, so don’t be discouraged if your first couple of pizzas are uneven or small. Don’t expect to be throwing it up in the air and catching it like they do in the pizzeria; those guys are seasoned pros. Again, there’s no right way; whatever works is good, but here’s what I do: with my hands I flatten out the dough a little, and then I roll it out with a rolling pin until it’s about a foot in diameter. Then I pick it up on one side and let gravity help me stretch it out; I work my way around it, trying to stretch it into an even circle, until I start to worry that it will tear. Then I sprinkle my pizza tray with a little cornmeal and set down the crust on it, pat it out a little bit more, and then apply the toppings. If the dough is just right and your stretching technique works, you should be able to get two 14-inch thin-crust pizzas from this recipe; but like I said, it takes practice, so if your pizzas are parallelogram-shaped or lumpy, just say they’re “rustic” and don’t sweat it.
    Now we’re ready to make some pizzas!

Pizza Sauce
    MAKES ENUGH SAUCE FOR 4 PIZZAS
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    Pizza sauce is a simple thing, a little tomato sauce, a little garlic, a few herbs. It doesn’t take much to create Brooklyn’s most beloved sauce. The mistake some home cooks make is overseasoning it with all kinds of Italian spice mixes and whatnot—all it really needs is a subtle hint of the herbs.
    2 teaspoons olive oil
    2 cloves garlic, minced
    1 teaspoon dried oregano
    Â½ teaspoon dried thyme
    1 teaspoon salt
    A few dashes fresh black pepper
    1 (22-ounce) can tomatoes in juice (plum tomatoes if you can find them)
    2 tablespoons tomato paste
    In a saucepan over medium-low heat sauté the garlic in the olive oil for about 2 minutes, being careful not to burn the garlic. Add the herbs, salt, and pepper. Stir in the tomatoes, crushing them in your hand as you add them. Add about half the juice from the canned tomatoes, and the tomato paste. Increase the heat a bit and cook for about 10 minutes, stirring and crushing the tomatoes as you go. If the sauce looks too chunky, you can puree half of it in a blender (see Punk Points) and add it back to the rest of the sauce. Let cool to room temperature before using on pizzas. You can store whatever you don’t use in the fridge for 3 or 4 days, or you can freeze it for up to 3 months.
    PUNK POINTS
    If you are using a blender to puree the sauce, let the sauce cool a bit so that the steam doesn’t cause the blender lid to pop off and hot sauce to splatter everywhere. Once the sauce has cooled, give it a few pulses in the blender, lift the lid to let steam escape, and repeat.

Isa Pizza
    MAKES TWO 14-INCH PIZZAS
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    Maybe you’ve noticed that my name sorta rhymes with pizza? I know someone else who realized that—everyone I’ve ever met EVER—from my kindergarten class on up. Well, it’s finally come in handy! I can name a pizza after myself. Of course this pizza is awesome or it