Homemade Pizza Tomato Sauce

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When I finally figured out how to make pizza crust from fresh milled wheat, the next natural step was to improve the sauce. Homemade pizza tomato sauce takes a great pizza and makes it spectacular. Always choose the best quality toppings and you’ll love making pizza at home.

Before making pizza sauce I loved Rao’s Margherita Pizza Sauce. This sauce has a vibrant, fresh flavor profile and it’s a good second choice to a whole foods pizza sauce that’s made from scratch. This recipe creates a healthy pizza sauce but don’t mistake “healthy” for boring or flavorless, it’s quite the opposite.

Pizza Sauce Ingredients

Olive oil: If you want an Italian pizza sauce, make sure you’re using high quality olive oil. The kind I use comes from Crete and is in a tin. Real olive oil is a must in a from-scratch kitchen.

Garlic: You can’t make a pizza base sauce without garlic. I love it so much, it goes in my pizza crust AND in my sauce (and I may or may not also make a garlic butter to dip). Garlic doesn’t take long at all to cook so when it’s fragrant, you know it’s ready.

Tomatoes: Even though this isn’t a canned pizza sauce I do use canned tomatoes. I find the convenience of canned tomatoes hard to beat. I buy this brand in bulk from Azure Standard.

Sucanat: Sucanat is my go-to choice for sweeteners. It’s still a “sugar” but hasn’t been refined like white sugar or other common ones on the market. So even though it’s a sweetener, it doesn’t have the minerals removed and is therefore easier for your body to process. You only use a touch, so this is still a low sugar pizza sauce.

Seasonings: Thyme, oregano, and red pepper flakes mesh beautifully for this pizza sauce recipe. And don’t forget the salt! If you’re learning how to cook you’ll quickly understand that properly salting your food is half the battle when it comes to making delicious food.

Butter: Butter makes everything better. I’ve done this with butter and without and it’s only a subtle difference. So if you’re looking to make this a vegan pizza sauce, leave it out.

How to make the best pizza sauce

In a sauce pan over medium heat, warm the olive oil, garlic, and red pepper flakes together for about two minutes, stirring to coat everything and prevent browning. All the ingredient measurements are listed in the recipe below.

Once the garlic is fragrant, add the tomatoes, thyme, oregano, salt, and Sucanat. Stir together and warm throughout until bubbly.

Turn the heat down to medium low and simmer for 5-7 minutes to let the flavors mix.

Remove the pot from the heat and add in the butter. (You can also leave the butter out as mentioned above.) Stir the sauce until it’s melted and then use an immersion blender to purée the tomato sauce, breaking up all the chunks of tomatoes. (Alternatively, allow the sauce to cool slightly and then pour it into a food processor to purée.)

Use the sauce for two pizzas (roll out the dough, cover it with sauce and then toppings before baking) or store in the fridge for up to one week.

Leave a comment below letting me know if you tried this recipe and what you thought! What’s your favorite pizza toppings?

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