Homemade Pizza Sauce
Once referred to as "Pizza Sauce For Heretics," this is a version of the sauce recipe that appears in the blog post for "Cheap The Pizza Part II: How To Make An Amazing Pizza In Your Home Oven For Under Three Bucks."
This is also the sauce that appears in my award-winning, bestselling book, Free The Pizza: A Simple System For Making Great Pizza Whenever You Want With The Oven You Already Have.
Making The Sauce
NOTE: You can make the sauce ahead of time if you like. But if you do that, be sure to remove it from the fridge at the same time as the pizza dough. It, too must come to room temp. Cold sauce is not your friend.
Good tomatoes are key here. I recommend using the best tomatoes you can justify buying. I typically use an imported Italian tomato, or any good domestic product that I know. (The high price of good tomatoes is part of my under-three-bucks pizza paradigm.)
You can use whole tomatoes, diced tomatoes or crushed tomatoes. Whole and diced you can break up with your hands, or you can pulse them gingerly with an immersion blender. A potato masher also works. Crushed tomatoes are faster and easier.
I’ve been asked why powdered garlic and onion instead of fresh. The reason is they deliver a stronger punch. Also, this exercise is in part about simplicity. (see also: crushed tomatoes.)
The dried basil is also about simplicity and budget. Fresh basil tastes great, but its benefits in this sauce are negligible.
Pizza Sauce Recipe
Time: about 6 minutes active, 15 minutes inactive
Yield: enough sauce for about 6 x 12-inch pizzas
Ingredients
28-ounce can of good crushed tomatoes
1 tbsp olive oil
1/2 tsp onion powder
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp dried basil
1/4 tsp black pepper (optional)
Pinch of two of cayenne pepper (optional)
Dash of white pepper (optional)
1/2 tsp salt or to taste
Instructions
Open the can and empty the tomatoes into a saucepan. If the tomatoes are not already crushed, crush them using your hand, a potato masher, or by gently pulsing an immersion blender. (A food mill works, too. But I doubt any of us own one.)
Turn on heat to low.
Add the olive oil, onion powder, garlic powder, basil, the peppers and salt.
Stir and allow to simmer over low heat for 15 minutes. (Simmering longer will result in a thicker, bolder sauce.)
Taste and adjust seasonings as necessary. The sauce should taste good enough that you would enjoy sitting in a corner alone and eating a bowl of it.
Let cool.
Depending on how much you reduce the tomatoes and how heavily you sauce a 12-inch pizza, this recipe makes enough sauce for about six pizzas this size. If I’m making only two 12-inch pizzas, I portion the remaining sauce and keep it in the freezer for the next pizzas.
