5 Tips For Better Homemade Pizza Sauce

If someone told you that making pizza from scratch at home could be as fast as ordering in, it would either be a lie or some very creative accounting. While active pizza-making time might only amount to minutes, the dough always needs more than a couple of hours to rest. So, if your preparation can beat the local restaurant's delivery times, you might need to find another shop. Still, DIY pies can be pretty easy, at least once you know what you're doing. Depending on where you are in the world, a homemade pie will probably be much more delicious, too — and the secret's in the sauce.

Although making pizza might seem like an aspirational endeavor, conjuring images of pizzaiolos tossing dough into the air with balletic flair, it is actually one of the more achievable dishes that one can create at home. The dough, for example, requires only four ingredients and one of them is tap water, for goodness' sake. The toppings are easily store-bought. And for a better homemade pizza sauce, you need little more than a can of tomatoes to make an unforgettable signature topping.

It is very tempting, when making a sauce, to load up on alliums, spices, herbs, and even sweeteners. Something about a big pot and a wooden spoon just makes a person want to cosplay as a cartoon chef, replete with a toque and a heavy seasoning hand. But the best pizza sauce is a simple pizza sauce. You will want to zhuzh it up a bit, but this is not the stage for loud, abundant flavors; that comes later via other toppings. Fresh herbs only wilt in a sauce anyway, so they're best added toward the end of cooking. And a sauce absent any unwanted added sugar will play up the tomatoes' pleasant acidity.

Leave the crushed tomatoes for your various pasta sauces and gravies. Pizza sauce, instead, requires a specifically labeled can of tomato sauce, which has been totally blended for a silken finish. This is another service to simplicity, as you want your texture to come from the spring of the crust and the dynamic combinations of endless possible toppings like cheese, meat, and vegetables rather than chunks of tomato. If you picked up another type of canned tomatoes by mistake, you can purée them into the proper form, but make sure they don't have any unwanted or unexpected added flavors (like basil) first.

On its own, that can of sauce will be about as plain as can be, tasting of little more than pulverized tomatoes. So, you do want some seasonings to help it sing. Salt is a given, black pepper isn't exactly traditional, but it couldn't hurt, and a few shakes of dried oregano is all you need for a dash of fragrant herbaceousness. You can also (sparingly) use soy sauce or miso to take your pizza sauce to the next level thanks to the condiments' salty, umami-rich kick. Avowed heat seekers can sprinkle some red pepper flakes right into the simmering pot, but they'll get the same effect by adding it to the finished pizza without spicing up everyone else's slice.

To "cook" or not to cook pizza sauce is the not infrequent subject of a debate spanning both regional and personal preferences. Camp no-cook will claim that heating the sauce turns it into a more of a pasta accompaniment. But this should not be a problem if you keep sauce accoutrements to a minimum and only keep it over the flame for so long. Warm it over medium-low just long enough to properly incorporate the salt, pepper, and oregano before immediately removing to cool before correctly saucing your pizza from the center outwards. There are also ways to adjust pasta sauce for pizza and vice versa, should you find you've gone too far.

Pizza sauce freezes fantastically, and you can safely keep it frozen in an airtight container indefinitely. But most folks will prefer the taste before it hits about the six-month mark. You will, of course, need extra to even have something to freeze. This is one case when simply doubling the recipe works without any added mathematics. Make some extra dough to freeze, too, and, once it's thawed and proofed again, you might actually get closer to those pizza delivery times.