Edit 23/10/2015 – Over the years I’ve got to this stage now – crush your peeled plum tomatoes in a food mill and add salt to taste. That’s it – it’s better. You need to crush them too rather than whiz them up because the seeds are fine being left in the mix until you break them up and then it turns the sauce bitter. You can cheat and combat this with sugar but why disguise the true tomato flavour, huh? Food mills look a bit like this one (it’s a propellor that grinds into a sieve – use the large-holed version for speed).
Edit 23/03/2012 – New improved tomato sauce recipe and method…
I’ll start by saying that I’ve not yet perfected my pizza tomato sauce but friends tell me I have. Ignore them, they’re wrong. It’s good, but it’s not perfect. The thing is, I’ve been to a few restaurants where I’ve enjoyed their tomato garlic bread and struggled to work out what it is that I like and there you have it – it’s all down to personal taste. Herein lies my recipe and any additions or tweaks and rest assured I’ll update this page. Feel free to use the comments box below to share your recipes – I’ll try anything!
This then, is my home-made tomato sauce recipe for pizza bases. It makes enough sauce for one batch (500g flour / 300g water) of pizzas with a bit leftover in case you decide to use it as a salsa or save it for something else.
- 1 tin of peeled plum tomatoes. I’m not going to argue with chefs but generally they all reckon San Marzano tomatoes are the best to make sauces with. Sainsbury’s sell them and yes, they’re good. 99% as good are the Valfrutta ones from Costco. I’ve used Napolina and a few supermarket-branded ones but I reckon the Valfrutta ones give me the best taste. Napolina’s absolutely fine if not. You might be thinking about short-cutting on me here and using chopped tomatoes or even a jar of passata. Stop. Don’t do it. Trust me, it’s a doddle making your own sauce – I don’t always make it in bulk – it’s that easy to do.
- 1 medium-sized clove of finely-chopped garlic. Someone will argue you shouldn’t have the garlic in the sauce. Fair enough, but we all like it in our house and at one clove it’s not an in-your-face taste which doesn’t upset the balance of flavour in other toppings. Incidentally, when I come to the garlic bread with tomato recipe, there’s plenty of garlic butter going on there so if you like garlic as much as we do (ie: melt work colleagues’ faces the next day) you’ll want for nothing. Chop it and then squash it down with the flat of the blade so it becomes a paste. If you use a garlic crusher, just be sure it’s nice and fine. I’ve not used lazy garlic from a jar, but you’ve got the chopping board out, the knife’s just over there – go on, treat yourself to some fresh garlic!
- 1 teaspoon of sugar. Takes the bitter edge off the tomatoes – you can add a touch more to taste but shove 1 teaspoon in as a baseline – personally I go with just the one.
- Half a teaspoon of salt. Scrimping on salt would be wrong. You’re sharing that amount over 3 or 4 pizzas and even then you’ll have some sauce left over so it’s not as much as it might look if you’re a salt-dodger.
- A good slug of olive oil. Since it’s going to get cooked, no need for the good stuff here, save that for later. What’s a good slug? Oh…to taste and to consistency but one tablespoon, two if you’re feeling lucky.
- A teaspoon of dried oregano. Yes, a teaspoon of the stuff, don’t mess about and heap it up a bit too. This is the flavour of the classic pizza sauce. Save dosh by buying it in the big containers from Costco, it’s 11 times the size of the standard glass Schwartz containers you see in the supermarkets but at something like twice the price (ie: over 5 times cheaper). It’s pronounced origaahno not oreeegunno.
- 6 leaves of fresh basil, finely-chopped. This one’s optional, I wasn’t even going to put it in but if we’ve got fresh basil in the house it will find its way either into the sauce or on the top of the pizza.
Mixing
If you were to just mix that lot above, with an electric hand mixer or by hand with a masher, you’d get a pretty good result (if using electric, keep reading for a top tip). If you’re brave and you’re not reducing it then you can in fact mix it in the tin with the electric hand mixer. Caution: you’re on your own here, I’ve done it but it’s fraught with danger. It will be on the runny side though and because of that, I’m going to tell you to pop it into a pan (the size of which should allow the electric mixer to plunge below the surface of the sauce so choose your pan wisely pizza-padawan) and reduce it a little – 10 minutes on a low heat will do it. If I’m doing this properly and I’m not pushed for time then I’ll put the olive oil in first on a VERY low heat. That’s written in capitals for a reason as you don’t want to burn olive oil. You really don’t want to burn the garlic with it being so finely-chopped so put the garlic in straight away with the oil and get it so it’s only just starting to sizzle (30 seconds or so) and then put the tomatoes in… that will arrest the garlic cooking. If you lose concentration and overcook the garlic so it goes brown, don’t put the tomatoes in, just throw it away and get some more garlic in there or you’ll ruin the taste. Burnt garlic is a horrible taste – don’t even think about carrying on! Now put in the rest of the ingredients. A pedantic person would leave the basil until it’s cooled. Yes…. yes that’s what a pedantic person does… I mean would do. Ah, just shove it in.
So, the mixture is bubbling away but it’s looking a bit like a pan of peeled plum tomatoes – time to mix. As I mentioned in the paragraph above, you can just use a masher… a potato masher I mean, nothing fancy. It’s a bit more effort but it can come out quite smooth – just keep going, moving around the pan. However, if you have an electric hand mixer then you’re in for an easy ride. And tomato-splattered worktop / wall / clothes / children / dog etc. if you try to do this in a lage-based pan where the mixer doesn’t descend into the sauce. Aaaah, been there, done that. Tip: Pulse the electric mixer, don’t keep it running. If you don’t do this, you’ll end up with pink sauce because it will get tiny air bubbles in it. Quick blips, that’s all… move it around, blip, move, blip – you get the idea. I’m sure it’s not good for the motor… but I bought a not-so-expensive Marks & Spencer mixer in the sales for about £7 and it’s still going strong a few years on. Anyway, if your tomatoes started out red and have gone pink you know your blips weren’t quick enough.
Once it’s reduced to the consistency of a salsa or thick soup, take it off the heat and leave it to cool. If you’re in a rush you might want to fill the sink and let it sit to cool as you don’t want to be putting hot tomato sauce onto your pizza bases. It doesn’t have to be really cold (room temp is fine) but it can’t be warm, it will eat into the base very quickly and you’ll be fighting it all the way onto the peel and into the oven. If by some quirk you overdid it and it’s looking a bit thick, add a bit more olive oil. If you’ve done a batch then get those decent quality seal-up freezer bags and ladle in enough into each bag for a pizza session then you can work out how many bags you need to defrost beforehand.
That’s it, you’ve got yourself a great tomato pizza sauce.