When it comes to pizza toppings, pizza sauce is a given for most pizzas. “Pizza sauce” can mean a few different things, but most people immediately think of tomato sauce. If you’re making homemade pizza sauce, there are plenty of ways to approach it. Some methods take more effort than others, and it’s completely up to you how much time and energy you want to put in. The most complicated recipe isn’t always the one that tastes best—sometimes the simplest one delivers the best result.
When creating your own pizza sauce recipe, the only way forward is to experiment.
Let’s dive into how it can be done and what factors really make a difference.
When you look at tomatoes through a botanical lens, a tomato is actually a fruit. That’s because it contains seeds. Does that have anything to do with pizza sauce? Not really—but it’s a little reminder that a tomato is not just a tomato. And that’s especially true when it comes to making your own recipe.
Like many other foods, tomatoes come in all kinds of varieties. There are many different types, and those types come in different levels of quality.
When you’re shopping for homemade pizza sauce, your local grocery store offers a wide range of options. You’ll often find passata, chopped tomatoes, chopped tomatoes with herbs, cherry tomatoes, and whole peeled tomatoes.
Here’s a helpful tip: different types of canned tomatoes are made from different quality tomatoes. For example, chopped tomatoes are usually made from second-grade tomatoes, where you might find harder bits, including green tomatoes. Whole peeled tomatoes, on the other hand, are made from top-quality tomatoes. That’s why we always recommend using peeled tomatoes if you want the best-tasting and easiest pizza sauce.
At Pico Pizza, when we make our pizza sauce for our sourdough base, we always use whole peeled tomatoes. You can read more about that below.
We treat our tomatoes with as much respect as possible. For us, it’s all about making sure the taste of tomato is pure and distinct—so the pizza sauce doesn’t just act as a background note to the other ingredients. It should stand as an ingredient in its own right.
There are many pizza sauce recipes out there that add various flavorings—like balsamic vinegar or different spices. Our recipe is much simpler. We use high-quality peeled tomatoes with a natural sweetness. In addition, we use sea salt with no additives. Peeled tomatoes and sea salt. That’s all it takes.
And because there are so few ingredients, it’s crucial that both the tomatoes and the salt are of the highest quality.
To get a bit nerdy about it—we add exactly 2% salt to our peeled tomatoes. We then blend the mixture as gently as possible to minimize oxidation.
We believe this is the most flavorful pizza sauce out there. The fact that it also happens to be the easiest? That’s just a bonus.
You can follow us on Instagram or Facebook to see our latest pizzas—we’d also love to hear your feedback on our menu.
Our menu includes vegan, vegetarian, and gluten-free options. If you’d like to try our pizza sauce recipe for yourself, you can book a table, order catering, or grab takeaway from one of our restaurants today.
We look forward to seeing you!
