Homemade Pizza Sauce is not the same as Pasta Sauce. The number one question I get asked is – what’s the difference? (And would you share your pizza sauce recipe already?)
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We make a lot of homemade pizza. We’ve been tossing homemade dough for ten years now. John likes to say longer, since he helped his dad make pizza when he was a kid.
So, when I started making tomato sauce (or spaghetti sauce as my Italian relatives call it), it only made sense to use that same sauce on our pizzas. Unfortunately, that was a disaster.
Why Pizza Sauce and Pasta Sauce are not interchangeable
As many of you likely already know, pasta sauce is usually too thin for spreading on a pizza. At least when making thin crust style pizza. The extra water moistens the dough and it doesn’t cook right. The pizza crust comes out on the soggy side even from the hottest oven. Also, pizza sauce has more spices. And I hate to admit it, but it took me longer than it should have to figure this out.
So I experimented for more than a couple years trying to get a good thick consistency and flavor. Something with more flavor to give it that NYC Pizzeria flavor. Something that cooks up well. But, something that when you cook it a long time doesn’t taste like burnt tomato. After all, we go through all that effort to make the dough, I don’t want to ruin it with just so-so pizza sauce.
No, I do not just cook the tomato sauce longer. The consistency isn’t right somehow. And the flavor becomes a bit … mushy. If that’s a thing. Yes, I do cook it longer in general, but the recipe is adjusted both to make it thicker to start out with, and also to accommodate the longer time in the pot.
For one thing, there’s puréed onion in this pizza sauce recipe to make it thicker right away. This means less time cooking. And there’s more olive oil to improve the consistency over the longer cook. I’ve had to adjust to make the acidification high enough for canning. And I’ve tweaked the spices to remind me of the New York style pizzas I grew up with. (If you’re from Chicago – my apologies. I love me some deep dish Lou Malnotti’s. But Chicago-style pizza sauce is actually much, much easier to make than thin crust pizza sauce)
So without further ado, here’s the pizza sauce recipe.
Ingredients
- 22 cups of tomatoes – paste style tomatoes are meatier and better for this sauce if you have them
- 1 large onion, chopped and puréed in the food processor
- 1 Tablespoon granulated garlic
- 1/4 cup (4 T) extra virgin olive oil
- 2 Tablespoons each of Brown Sugar and Basil
- 1 Tablespoon each: Kosher salt, Thyme, Black pepper
- Juice of 1 large lemon, or bottled lemon concentrate
How to Make the Pizza Sauce
Processing your tomatoes
Just like with tomato sauce, you must first process the tomatoes. Core / de stem your tomatoes and cut them into large chunks. Halves are fine for paste tomatoes. Fill up your measuring cups and remove any air gaps by smooshing the tomatoes down into the cup. Transfer the tomatoes to your cooking pot with a little olive oil on the bottom.
Cook the tomatoes down, stirring occasionally, until there are no more large chunks left. This can take between 45 – 90 minutes, depending upon how high the heat of your burner is, the type of tomato and size of your tomato chunks.
Once everything is mostly liquid and skins, run everything through a sieve. This removes the skins and the seeds. You’ll want to not only push through the tomato juice, but as much as you can of the flesh. (For much more detail on this process, refer back to my tomato sauce recipe).
Thickening the Pizza Sauce
After you have pushed all of the meaty tomato through the sieve and separated the skins and seeds from your yummy sauce, now we move on to the thickening process.
First, return the strained tomato juice and flesh to the pot. Roughly chop the onion. Purée the chopped onion in the food processor for only a short time – maybe 20 seconds or so. Any longer than this and you run the risk of turning your onion into juice. If there is some juice, just strain it out prior to spooning the thick onion puree into your sauce.
Add all of the remaining ingredients except the lemon juice. Let simmer for 30 minutes. Run an immersion blender to blend the ingredients for a minute or so. Continue to cook on low heat another hour or more, stirring occasionally. The trick here is to cook it long enough to get very thick, but not to overcook it so that the flavors stay crisp. The sauce should form peaks a little bit when you run your spoon through it.
Canning
If you wish to hot water bath can this pizza sauce, you’ll need approximately 5-6 pint canning jars, lids and bands. Start your hot water bath canner during the last 30 minutes of cooking the sauce. Once it is boiling, sterilize your jars, lids and bands.
Add 2 tablespoons of lemon juice to each jar. Fill each jar with the sauce. Wipe the rims & cover with the lids and bands.
Process in the canner for 30 minutes.
Using Your Sauce on Pizza
The sauce does not need to be reheated when you are ready to make your pizza. It will heat along with the pizza.
When you are ready to use the pizza sauce, gently spoon the sauce onto the dough with a tablespoon. I suggest using the back of the spoon to evenly distribute the sauce in a thin layer. Push the sauce from the center out to the edges of the pizza.
Cover with cheese and your favorite toppings. If using your stove, set it to the highest heat you can. This will get you a crispy crust on the outside. Using a grill or pizza oven to cook pizza allows you to get even higher heat to perfect your temperature and airflow.
I hope you enjoy this pizza sauce recipe! Let me know in the comments if you tried it and how it worked!
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