The traditional tomato sauce for pizza...get it right and they will be coming back for more !!

The Mother Sauce...

Tomato sauce is one of the 5 “mother sauces” in French cooking, and the mother sauce for pizza. Also called Grand Sauces, they are the foundation for an infinite variation of sauces. Starting with a basic tomato sauce, there is an unlimited number of variations possible to create a great pizza sauce.

The first pizza’s made in Naples, Italy…sold by vendors on street corners used tomatoes. See further explanation of the origin of pizza in Pizza History. There are as many variations to this sauce as there are variations to pizza.

Part of the excitement and fun of making pizza at home is that the final product does not need to taste the same EVERY time. While the national chains go out of their way to develop rigorous controls to ensure each pizza is just like the last one…we “home chefs” have the freedom to experiment and have fun trying new methods and using new ingredients.

Canned or Fresh?

We have 3 primary choices when it comes to tomato sauce…we can purchase a commercially prepared sauce from a grocery store, we can make a Homemade Pizza Sauce using canned tomatoes, or we can make a homemade sauce using fresh tomatoes.

I use all 3 methods depending on how much time I have, and how much work I feel like putting into making pizza sauce. I always keep commercial pizza sauce stocked in our pantry, this is a convenience if our schedules are busy and the time is not available to make homemade sauce.

Most often, I will use canned tomatoes. I do this for 2 reasons…the first, using canned tomatoes saves considerable time and results in a great homemade pizza sauce. Second, most produce in the grocery stores these days is travelling hundreds if not thousands of miles. This requires that the produce is picked before it is ripe, in the case of tomatoes; this leaves them bitter because they have not had the chance to develop their natural sugars. In many cases the canned product is BETTER than fresh tomatoes.

I will usually make at least 1 batch of homemade pizza sauce during the summer months using fresh tomatoes. The local farmers markets are a great source for “vine ripened”, delicious, fresh tomatoes. I have included our Best Pizza Sauce Recipe that uses fresh ingredients. You can certainly taste the difference and I would encourage you to at least try this recipe at least once, when you have the time and have fresh, ripe ingredients available…not to be missed.

Try some of these tomato based sauces with your next pizza:

Other Sauces...

There are a variety of other sauces besides tomato that are great on pizzas.

We have included a number of unique sauces in the Other Pizza Sauces section. Give these a try for something different…and let us know what you think of them.

Homemade Pizza Sauce: Try it a quick and easy homemade sauce made with ingredients already found in the pantry.

Best Pizza Sauce: This is a simple pizza sauce recipe that uses fresh ingredients.

Super Sauce: This recipe has loads of flavor and spice.

Fresh Tomato Sauce: Combine this sauce with homemade dough and fresh toppings for a great meal.

Articles

How to create your own pizza sauce recipes

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