This past Saturday, we made our tomato sauce for the year. We used to be able to make all our tomato sauce from tomatoes we grew in our own garden but times are changing and the garden isn’t as big as it used to be. Not a Problem! Do you think we would buy it at the grocery store? NEVER! It’s still doable. This years tomato crop here in New England took a serious hit from all the rain and finding Roma/Plum tomatoes has been difficult and expensive. The local farm we usually buy them from didn’t have any but after a little research, I found a great website called pickyourown.org that lists farms by state where you can…. you guessed it, pick your own fruits and vegetables. After about 10 phone calls with no success and venturing further and further from home, I came across a farm in Avon, CT that had Plum tomatoes and we were off to pick em! We picked 5 bushels and got together to make sauce. Interested in giving it a try??

What You’ll Need:
-Tomatoes: Cost – $15-20 per bushel ($10 last year!) if you pick your own, more if you get them pre-picked. I’m sure the cost varies from farm to farm and certainly from year to year, so shop around if you can.
-Tomato Sauce Machine
-Large pots, buckets, containers
-Large wooden spoon
-Sharp knives
-Jars, jar tops
-Basil (optional)
-Stove or propane burner

We like to pick our own tomatoes, so that we can select the ripest and best ones. Why leave it up to someone else? Our family has always used Plum or Roma tomatoes to make our tomato sauce because they have less water content. Less water = thicker sauce. As I mentioned, this year we picked 5 bushels (give or take) of tomatoes and they yielded about 80 quart size jars of tomato sauce.

Here’s a brief step by step of how to make your own homemade tomato sauce.

1- Select the ripest tomatoes: We recommend Plum/Roma tomatoes. They can usually be found at a local farm in your area. In our experience one bushel of plum tomatoes will make 15-ish quart size jars of tomato sauce.

2- If your tomatoes need to ripen a little, lay them out for a few days. We usually lay them flat on a tarp or a blanket in the garage or shed.
3- Call the family over, friends… whoever likes to show up when you’re making pasta on Sundays. Use the, “no work, no eat” phrase that my dad likes to use whenever one of these occasions presents itself.

4- Wash the tomatoes in a large container to get rid of any dirt, etc. Basically fill the container with water and dump in your tomatoes for a quick bath.
5- Once you’ve washed the tomatoes, cut the top piece off… not too much, just the little round dot on the top of the tomato (not sure what it’s called in English but codicino in Calabrese) and slice the tomato down the center the long way. You don’t need to cut them in half, just slice them so that they open up. Some people like to squeeze some juice out of the tomatoes after they slice them but we don’t do that anymore. It all depends on the type of tomatoes you’re using. The round tomatoes like Beefsteak, Jet Stars, etc. have higher water content, so it might be a good idea to give them a squeeze if that’s the variety you’re using.

6- Place your washed, sliced tomatoes in a large pot (see below) and cook them for approx 20-30 minutes at high heat, stirring occasionally. You’ll know they’re ready when they start getting soupy and you can pinch the skin off the tomatoes (don’t burn yourself trying). We find that it’s easier and quicker to cook the tomatoes on a propane burner. It speeds up cooking time, you can use larger pots and you can do it outside or in the garage/shed, which makes cleaning up easier.

7- Now that you’ve cooked the tomatoes, you’re ready to put them through your sauce maker. You can buy a sauce maker online or at a local kitchenware store. There are manual and automatic ones depending on your preference and price point. They can run from $40 for a manual one to $200+ for an electric one. We use a manual one…. My dad says the sauce tastes better when you work harder. Which is code for, “I’m not paying for an electric one, so shut up and turn the handle.”
8- Scoop the stewed tomatoes into the machine and crank the handle. We usually scoop some of the water out so that the sauce is thicker. The sauce will come out one end and the skins out the other. Make sure you have containers to collect both. Once you have processed the tomatoes, put the skins through for a second time. The sauce from the second round is thicker because there’s less water. We usually put the skins through a third time as well but you don’t have to.

9- Now that you have your sauce you need to fill your jars. The sauce machine usually comes with a funnel that fits standard jars to make things easier, otherwise you should buy a funnel… or you’ll make a mess. We grow a lot of basil, so we like to place a few leaves in each jar for taste but it’s not necessary. Scoop your sauce with a cup or mug and fill your jars a few inches from the top. Don’t fill the jars too high, we’ve found that when we fill the jars too high some of them go bad (not sure why.)

10- Once you’ve filled your jars, cap them with jar tops (you can finds jars and tops at any hardware store.)

11- When you’ve finished jarring, you’ll need to boil your jars of sauce to seal them. Place the jars in a large pot and fill the pot with water so that all the jars are submerged. Bring the water to a boil and boil the jars for about 20-30 minutes. Again, we like to use the propane burner (seen below) because it’s faster and we can use a larger pot. The pot below holds about 20 jars.

12- After boiling the jars, remove them and cover them with a blanket. We lay one blanket down and cover the jars with another blanket so that the jars don’t cool too quickly and crack. You can leave them overnight.

This sauce has no preservatives or additives. You can’t find this quality of tomato sauce in a grocery store. You’ll still have to cook it, add spices, meat, etc. but you’ll have fresh, homemade tomato sauce made from local ripe tomatoes for the entire year. Open a jar, make it the way you like it and Buon appetito!!

Once a month Italyville.com will post “Homemade” – authentic homemade Italian recipes. Since this is the first homemade post, well….. we’re going to have to start at the beginning; one of the foundations of the Italian culinary experience, something Italians simply CAN NOT eat without. Pane = Bread. If I had a lira for every time my father asked “where’s the bread?” when I was growing up, I would have a whole lot of worthless lire… but if they were Euros, I’d be a rich man! and half as rich if they were dollars…. damn the dollar!! sorry.

We were very lucky that my mother made homemade bread once a week when we were growing up… and still does. I can remember talking about “American bread” which was pretty much every other variety but mostly sliced sandwich bread. It was comical to us when we saw our friends bring sandwiches to school and their bread had the crust cut off. You cut off the crust? Isn’t that the best part? It is to Italians! We still fight over the end piece of bread….. even if you’re successful at securing it, take your eyes off it for a second and it might disappear!

So here it is, the recipe for the bread we grew up on.

Pane di casa

What you’ll need – (all these amounts are guestimated):

• 3-4 ounces of fresh yeast
• 5 lb bag of bread flour
• 1/4 cup of salt
• 1/8 of a cup of canola oil
• water

We start by cutting about a 1/2 inch slice from a block of fresh yeast. Fresh yeast is becoming more difficult to find at grocery stores but you should have better luck at a local bakery (we have a local baker in the family…. so it helps.) Place your yeast in a bowl with 1.5 cups of warm water and mix the yeast and water with your hands until it feels like the yeast has completely dissolved.

Take a small amount of bread flour (a few handfuls) and put it aside, then take the rest of the bread flower and put it in an extra large bowl. Make a hole in the middle of the flour and pour your yeast water in. Add the canola oil, 2 cups of warm water and salt (sprinkle it over the flour.) and mix the ingredients with your hands. Once you start mixing, check the dough consistency and add small amounts of flour or water as needed. Make sure to knead the dough well so that all the ingredients are mixed together properly.

Once your dough is ready, place it on a flat surface and cut it in half, then in half again so that you have 4 pieces of dough that are approximately the same size. It sounds funny to explain it like that but if you try to cut off 1/4 at a time…… well, the last piece probably won’t be the same as the first piece. get it? got it? good.

Now that you have your four equal size pieces, knead them individually again and then form each piece of dough into a small ball. We like to make a few small slices in the dough with a knife for decoration but you don’t have to. Place 2 pieces of dough side by side on a cookie sheet or baking tray that has been lined with tin foil and sprinkled with flour. Set your 2 trays aside and let the the dough rise. We put the trays on a table or bed and cover them with 2-3 blankets so that the dough rises quicker. It usually takes about 1.5-2 hours for the dough to rise when we do this…. it should rise to about double the size once it’s ready.

When the dough has risen, place it in the oven preheated at 350 degrees and cook until golden brown. It should take about 1 hour and 20 minutes, depending on your oven. Make sure to turn your trays around and switch them from the top/bottom rack after 40 minutes so that each bread is evenly cooked.

This bread is great for sandwiches, toast, bruschetta and much more.

To think, we used to feel embarrassed pulling out a sandwich like this at the lunch table at school when everyone else had white sandwich bread! Thanks Mom!