Pizza Sauce

[Magictofu]

I used to make sauce but now I simply bake tomatoes when my oven is warming up (a good 30 minutes) and lightly crush them with a bit of salt and sometimes herbs, chili peppers or garlic.

Since tomatoes loose water in the process, you need one can of tomatoes per pizza or about 10 small fresh one per pizza. The flavour is more concentrated and the natural sugars of the tomatoes caramelize slightly which adds a very nice aroma.

[tejon]

I use good canned tomatoes, drained, add some salt and some minced garlic, then whiz the whole thing with my stick blender. The garlic really gives the sauce something extra.

[Okbrewer]

I use canned crushed tomatos, mix in a bowl with some salt, sugar, garlic and Italian seasoning, and do not cook it, just thinly spread on the crust right before baking. It's easy, takes less time and the sauce is brighter, both visually and in flavor than if it had cooked in a sauce pot.

Bob R in OKC

[deltadoc]

Just "Google" "encyclopizza" without the quotation marks. I think he has about 8 sauce recipes, and about anything else you'd ever want to know about everythng pizza.

I particularly like his "sweet and saucy" pizza sauce with fennel in it.

A homemade pizza without a good solid heat capacity pizza stone and a 550 F oven isn't worth the effort.

doc

[Lisa1349]

Never trust a round pizza.

Words to live by. I prefer cooked sauce, it tastes like a NY slice to me. I use a 15 oz can crushed tomatoes, saute onions garlic and a little chile. Add tomatoes, salt pepper, cook 10 minutes until the tomatoes don't smell raw, add fresh oregano and basil off heat. My favorite toppings are caramelized onions and prosciutto.

[steverino]

Harry- you should check out:

http://www.pizzamaking.com

It's a website that has very much the same type of give and take, and benevolent advice that our very own egullet has.

Steve

Edited July 3, 2007 by steverino (log)

[fliplap]

Never trust a round pizza.

Words to live by. I prefer cooked sauce, it tastes like a NY slice to me. I use a 15 oz can crushed tomatoes, saute onions garlic and a little chile. Add tomatoes, salt pepper, cook 10 minutes until the tomatoes don't smell raw, add fresh oregano and basil off heat. My favorite toppings are caramelized onions and prosciutto.

←

Hey! I spent a long time learning to quickly toss a round pie!

I agree about cooked sauce though. Unless I'm dealing with really good tomatoes, I'm probably cooking the sauce. I think it gives the pie on a whole a richer, deeper flavor. And with toppings like caramelized onions and prosciutto it just about has to be cooked to be able to taste it :-) Those are 2 of my favorite toppings as well.

On the other hand, for a margherita or lightly topped pie (fresh mozzarella, basil, ricotta, arugula, etc) an uncooked sauce is the way to go. If you want the flavor of crust to shine, a cooked sauce will do nothing but over power it.

My usual uncooked sauce is a can of San Marzanos, italian seasoning, salt, some chile flake and some fresh garlic all pulsed in the food processor. I let it all sit together for an hour then apply. Gotta get that pie in the oven quick though. The uncooked sauce, even with drained tomatoes has a lot more water in it and will soak through the crust pretty quick on a thin pizza.

EDIT: And I second the pizzamaking.com suggestion. That place rocks. My dough is so much better thanks to that site. Not to mention the motivation I got from seeing all those great looking pizzas!

Edited July 4, 2007 by fliplap (log)

[Daddy-A]

9 times out of 10 we're doing pizzas on our grill. Very thin crust ... nice and crispy.

For sauce we use the Roasted Tomatos recipe from the Cranks cookbook, but we reduce it to get the correct consitency. Great flavours with bug chunks of tomato. Perfect for the thin crust.

A.

[Katie Meadow]

For a cooked sauce I have found Mario Batali's sauce recipe to be extremely versatile. I originally found it in a magazine featuring his recipe for meatballs and spaghetti. The sauce uses onion, garlic, several sprigs worth of fresh thyme, a half a finely grated carrot and canned San Marz. tomatoes, cut up or squeezed, and all the juices that come with. That's it. He doesn't use dry oregano. This sauce is so basic you could add whatever flavors you wanted, I guess. I make a big batch--usually with three or four 28 oz cans. The pasta sauce cooks in half an hour. I add salt and remove however much of the sauce I want to save out for various pasta dishes or lasagne. Then I add a bit of hot red pepper flakes to the remainder in the pot and continue to cook it down til pretty thick. That's my pizza sauce. Thick is good: the flavor gets concentrated and all you need is a very modest coating. If the sauce is too thin (watery) it will prevent the crust from being nice and crispy.

I agree with some poster below who likes to see the layers and doesn't pile on the ingredients too thick. I don't like pizza that has a solid thick barge of cheese, just a good scattering. I think of this style of pizza, with tomato sauce, in the New York mode too. Of course the modifications since those days are legion, given that it's hard to imagine a pizza without sauteed radicchio, carmelized onions, etc.

[kellytree]

I use canned crushed tomatos, mix in a bowl with some salt, sugar, garlic and Italian seasoning, and do not cook it, just thinly spread on the crust right before baking.  It's easy, takes less time and the sauce is brighter, both visually and in flavor than if it had cooked in a sauce pot. 

Bob R in OKC

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That is exactly how I make my sauce. It is simple and tastes just like pizza sauce should taste.

[gperls]

There's a brand of crushed tomatoes, 6 in 1, that makes excellent pizza sauce straight out of the can. It's the de rigor choice on pizzamaking.com. Give them a try and see what you think. You can always add some oregano, sugar, and red peppers if you want more flavors to it, but its quite good straight.

[JEL]

i like the 6 in one, but will use almost any tomato sauce in a pinch......

my thoughts are : fresh basil, cracked fennel seed, garlic, olive oil and butter......

s&p to taste...maybe some sugar or wine.......

i cook mine until it becomes pretty rich, so that a minimum amt of sauce can impact the rest of the pizza.....

to me the perfect thin pizza is when all the flavors come together with the heat to give that done/burned thing........like a steak

[maui420]

hi,

i now starting venturing off into pizza. id like to use this marinara recipe that i really like. the marinara sauce, when cooking, requires a 45 min simmer before i use it for pasta.

if i am making pizza, do i cook the marinara sauce or do i use uncooked marinara sauce on the pizza before the bake?

also, can i freeze left over uncooked marinara sauce? and roughly how long is freezer life?

thanks

[cmsoulbrother]

I think the best pizza sauces are pretty much uncooked. Just blanched and peeled tomatoes peeled and blended with a bit of olive oil and salt.

Depends on the kind of pizza you're making though...For a deep dish heavily loaded style pizza, a simmered and herbed sauce does well, but for a thin crust Italian style, the simpler the better.

Always a very hot oven though!!!

[Kouign Aman]

Pizza doesnt cook long, so the sauce will not taste the same if you use it pre-cooked vs uncooked. Which flavor do you prefer? I find long cooking makes marinara sauces sweeter and richer.

Either way, it should freeze well and be good for months as long as you seal it well.

[monavano]

I use Marcella Hazan's recipe (is that the one you're referring to?) that calls for tomatoes, canned or fresh, to be cooked gently and uncovered with a couple pats of butter and an onion

[Vicious Wadd]

I use Marcella Hazan's recipe (is that the one you're referring to?) that calls for tomatoes, canned or fresh, to be cooked gently and uncovered with a couple pats of butter and an onion

←

Similarly, Mario Batali has a pretty serviceable and simple marinara from his book "Simple Italian Food: Recipes from My Two Villages." It uses canned tomatoes and fresh basil. I don't recall that it cooks that long, so it's quick and easy to whip up a batch.

With the exception of the butter, it sounds like they follow a similar approach.

Edited September 17, 2007 by Vicious Wadd (log)

[Paul Stanley]

Here's how I learned it when I shared a flat with two Italians. It sounds very like the Hazan and Batali recipes ...

Slice a clove or two of garlic in half. Put a little olive oil (couple of T) in a pan, add garlic and gently heat. When garlic goes golden, remove it (don't whatever you do let it burn). Add a large can of decent crushed tomatoes, or crush down some whole ones. Pop in a small peeled onion, whole, and a stem of basil if you have one, and a pinch of salt.

Bring it to a gentle simmer, then turn it right down. Put a lid on, but leaving it just ajar, so that you are evaporating only a little water. Let it cook very gently for at least an hour, preferably longer, checking it from time to time. If it gets thick and dry, add some water. You're aiming for a sauce that is not too thick--not pasty at all. It might seem that nothing can happen to a can of tomatoes in the course of an hour, but it really affects both flavor and texture.

When it's done, remove the now sloppy onion and basil and discard it. If you need to keep it for a day or two, put it in jars in the fridge and put a little olive oil on top. (Is that a botulism risk? Well, we used to do it anyway and we lived!)

Heresy as it may sound, you may find that if your tomatoes are very acid they need a tiny pinch of sugar. But the aim is not to produce any strong flavors beyond the tomato. Don't add too much garlic, or loads of pepper, or any chili or what have you.

This is sufficiently interesting to eat on its own if you want to (we used to eat it at least once a day) though it's nice then to add a little olive oil or butter (your choice) just as you are about to serve. You will taste either of them much better if they are added that way rather than cooked into the sauce. It's also, however, mild/non-assertive enough to use on pizza or as the base for other sauces.

[eskay]

Here's how I learned it when I shared a flat with two Italians. It sounds very like the Hazan and Batali recipes ...

Slice a clove or two of garlic in half. Put a little olive oil (couple of T) in a pan, add garlic and gently heat. When garlic goes golden, remove it (don't whatever you do let it burn). Add a large can of decent crushed tomatoes, or crush down some whole ones. Pop in a small peeled onion, whole, and a stem of basil if you have one, and a pinch of salt.

Bring it to a gentle simmer, then turn it right down. Put a lid on, but leaving it just ajar, so that you are evaporating only a little water. Let it cook very gently for at least an hour, preferably longer, checking it from time to time. If it gets thick and dry, add some water. You're aiming for a sauce that is not too thick--not pasty at all. It might seem that nothing can happen to a can of tomatoes in the course of an hour, but it really affects both flavor and texture.

When it's done, remove the now sloppy onion and basil and discard it. If you need to keep it for a day or two, put it in jars in the fridge and put a little olive oil on top. (Is that a botulism risk? Well, we used to do it anyway and we lived!)

Heresy as it may sound, you may find that if your tomatoes are very acid they need a tiny pinch of sugar. But the aim is not to produce any strong flavors beyond the tomato. Don't add too much garlic, or loads of pepper, or any chili or what have you.

This is sufficiently interesting to eat on its own if you want to (we used to eat it at least once a day) though it's nice then to add a little olive oil or butter (your choice) just as you are about to serve. You will taste either of them much better if they are added that way rather than cooked into the sauce. It's also, however, mild/non-assertive enough to use on pizza or as the base for other sauces.

←

I'm going to try this the next time I make tomato sauce...the simplicity of the ingredients appeals to me. And if I want something chunkier I can always add some peppers or something when I use it.

[BenT]

Found this thread and decided to excavate. The variety and thought that goes into a good sauce is an interesting topic.

Made a sauce last night that's basically a sofrito - 3 onions, 3 heads of garlic, 7 or 8 tomatoes - cooked into a paste. Add a little salt, about 2tbsp of sweet vermouth (Madeira might work better) and some fresh herbs.

Upside is: It tastes amazing - downside is - it takes about 4-5 hours to prepare.

[paulraphael]

I'm a big believer in uncooked sauce with minimal ingredients and good canned tomatoes. Cooked sauces cook twice, and can get gummy or pasty and lose a lot more of their fresh flavor.

The catch is that canned tomatoes, even a high end brand, vary quite a bit from can to can and month to month. The basic recipe of tomatoes and salt sometimes needs to be adjusted, either with a bit of added sugar or acid, or with rinsing to get rid of the metalic, bitter flavor that sometimes accompanies them.

Here's a method I've been using, adapted from Jeff Varasano's endless scroll on pizza making:

- pass tomatoes through a food mill using the fine disk. this should remove any stray skins and most of the seeds.

- pour into a very fine strainer or chinois that's set over a bowl. do not force through the strainer. allow liquid to drip through for 10 minutes or so. Pour this strained liquid back into the strainer, and allow to drip for another 10 or 15 minutes. The liquid that drips through the strainer this time should be mostly clear.

-taste the liquid that has dripped through. if it's not bitter, you're done. If it IS bitter, discard. add a few ounces of water to the puree in the strainer, and wait 10 or 15 minutes for liquid to drip through. Repeat until liquid that drips through has lost its bitterness.

-pour puree from strainer into a bowl. Taste and carefully season (salt, possibly pepper, possibly a touch of sugar, possibly a touch of vinegar. and if you insist, other stuff).