Like so many other things in the world of food, cooking and bread, there are a number of different schools on tomato sauce. To the traditionalist, the sauce, like the dough, mozzarella and olive oil should be simple and of the highest quality. The Neapolitans eat a vast number of Margherita pizzas with just cheese, tomato sauce and fresh basil -- simple and straightforward. To the more experimental among us, the sauce is an opportunity for expression and new tastes.
You should try the Italian San Marzano tomatoes. Imported from Campania, the home of pizza, these great tomatoes are hand pick when they are ripe, making the perfect pizza base.
Regardless of what you like, we would not recommend a mass produced tomato sauce. They tend to be loaded with sugar, salt and other non-essentials, which in addition to tasting bad, tend to burn in the heat of a brick oven.
Basic Tomato Sauce
Simply press a can a imported Italian tomatoes through a food mill. Your sauce with be light and fresh tasting, not cooked, sweet or spicy. Ladle enough sauce on your pizza base of cover lightly.
Dried Tomato Sauce
You can make your own dried tomato sauce from dried tomatoes in olive oil, herbs and garlic, or buy prepared one in a jar. The flavor of the dried tomatoes is more concentrated and sweeter than a fresh sauce, and can make a more intense tasting pizza.
Dried Tomato and Pesto Sauce
Again, you can make your own sauce either by making a dried tomato sauce and pesto and mixing them, or by mixing prepared tomato and pesto sauces. |
Try a Blind Tasting
Try a blind tasting with the more expensive imported tomatoes and various domestic canned tomatoes. Check if you can smell or taste the difference in the bowl, or on the pizza itself. See what you like, and if it's worth the hassle of finding the imported tomatoes.
White and Green Pizza
Tomato sauce isn't for everyone, and there is a wide range of pizzas without it.
Cover you pizza base with olive oil, and go from there; or cover you base with pesto.
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