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The tomato may be one of the main ingredients of pizza and the one you need to pay more attention to. We will start by saying that tomato sauce will depend on the type of pizza you want to make. In this sense, it is not the same to prepare salsa for a Neapolitan style pizza than for an Argentina or a New York style.

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Tips for preparing tomato sauce for pizza

The first thing is to know the difference between the tomato sauce you can use for some spaghetti and the tomato sauce for the pizzas. As a general rule we will always look for the tomato sauce to be as dense as possible, and therefore, have a lower water content, and in this way we do not moisten much the dough and get that crunchy touch that we like so much.

Thanks to use a more concentrated tomato sauce, we will get the base of the pizza toasted and crispy. This is usually one of the main failures that people make and is one of the tricks to make perfect pizzas. In Italy they usually use a type of tomato sauce called passata di pomodoro and it is just this, it is a more cooked tomato sauce that manages to eliminate water and you acquire much more consistency. This is the kind of sauce we have to try to get us.

Doubts and recommendations to prepare tomato sauce

What type of tomato do we use?

In theory, the tomato that is used to prepare Neapolitan style tomato sauce is the tomato of the San Marzano variety, which even has a Protected Designation of Origin.

If you’re not lucky enough to find these tomatoes, we recommend the typical tomato branch, or tomatoes as large and fleshy as possible. In the case that we do not have fresh tomatoes, we can opt for canned tomatoes. These, in turn, can be whole peeled tomatoes or directly in tomato juice.

Do we cook tomato sauce or do we use it raw?

In principle, as a general rule, we usually cook the tomato sauce that comes as puree since many times it usually has more water than we like. When cooking it, we obtain the necessary consistency so that the mass of our pizza does not get too wet.

As a rule we can apply this:

  • Peeled tomato in cans or fresh peeled scalded tomatoes: We can drain them in a colander or in a Chinese to remove most of the water.
  • Canned tomato sauce, other than pomodoro passata: cook it over low heat to remove most of the water.

What condiments and spices do we put in tomato sauce?

With the tomato sauce add a little salt and if we want a little pepper we would be worth it. To aromatise the sauce, the main ingredient would be the fresh basil and, in addition, if we want a little oregano to taste. You may add some sugar as well.

Tomato sauce for pizza

  • 2kg of tomatoes
  • 2 tablespoons of olive oil
  • 12 basil leaves
  • 3 g of salt (one teaspoon of plain coffee)
  • 1 onion (* optional)

This tomato sauce is the most traditional sauce and the one that we will always have on hand when we make pizzas. It is recommended that when we do it, we take advantage and make a large amount so that we do not have to be doing every day that we go to make pizza.

Step 1

First we clean the tomatoes, cut them in half and remove the seeds until only the meat is left. We keep the skin, which we will then remove with the masher.

Step 2

Second, in a pot put the tomatoes, a small onion finely cut, the basil leaves and salt, and let it simmer for 30-40 minutes. The fire does not have to be very strong so that it does not burn.

Step 3

We go through a mill to remove the skin of the tomato and then we cook again for 30-40 minutes until we have achieved a dense texture. Once we have it ready, we use what we need for that moment, and what we do not use we can keep it in a water bath, or we can freeze it in small tuppers for next pizzas.

Basic tomato sauce for “uncooked” pizza

  • 500-700g of fresh tomatoes or two cans of cooked and peeled tomatoes
  • 2 tablespoons of olive oil
  • 3 g of salt (one teaspoon of plain coffee)

can prepare the tomato sauce in less than 5 minutes and depending on how you want or want, you can leave the sauce more lumpy or less. We usually use it like this when we want to let the tomatoes maintain some of their texture.

Step 1

In the case that we use fresh tomatoes we must prepare the tomatoes first. If we use a pot of ripe tomatoes already cooked and peeled, we can skip this step. In a saucepan with boiling water, blanch the tomatoes for 5-10 seconds and remove them with a slotted spoon so that we can remove the skin easily.

Step 2

Now we remove the skin of the tomatoes, we open them in half and remove the seeds to make the sauce is as thin as possible. We like to leave the meat of the tomato in a colander so that it loses almost all the water and the sauce remains as thick as possible.

Step 3

Now we put a splash of oil and salt and we pass the sauce through a masher and we have the sauce ready to use. If we do not have a food mill, we can try to crush the tomatoes with our hands (you can see this example of margarita pizza). In the case that we over sauce, we can leave it for 2-3 days in the fridge or we can put it in a tupper and freeze it for another day.

Eat a delicious and healthy pizza here at Romeo’s Woodfired Pizza and enjoy an excellent meal any day of the week with gourmet specialised people prepared to cook delicious pizzas with an unmatched flavour. Contact us today for more information about our pizzas.