Published: 2026-04-17 | 5
Pizza sauce is not marinara. Let me say that louder. PIZZA SAUCE IS NOT MARINARA. It's not cooked. Not blended. Not simmered with 12 herbs. It's four ingredients, hand-crushed, assembled in five minutes flat. If your pizza sauce has garlic and basil simmering in a pot, you're making pasta sauce. Here's the real thing.
That's it. Makes enough sauce for 4-5 12-inch pizzas. Keeps in the fridge 5 days.
1. Hand-crush the tomatoes. Pour the can into a mixing bowl and squeeze each tomato between your fingers until it breaks into irregular chunks. The texture matters, blended sauce turns into orange liquid and loses the rustic, chunky character that makes it taste like pizza. Takes 60 seconds.
2. Add the salt, oil, and garlic (if using). Stir with a spoon.
3. Taste. Adjust salt. That's the whole recipe.
This is the biggest mistake beginners make. Cooked tomato sauce is marinara, it's for pasta. When you cook tomato sauce, the fresh brightness dulls into a stewed, jammy flavor. Pizza sauce stays raw so that when it bakes on the pizza for 6-8 minutes at 550°F, it cooks just enough to release its aroma without losing freshness.
The pizza IS the cooking. The sauce goes on raw.
Detroit, Sicilian, and grandma pizzas do use cooked sauce, typically simmered briefly with garlic, olive oil, and red pepper flakes. Why? Pan pizzas bake longer at slightly lower temperatures, and the thicker dough base can handle (and needs) the deeper cooked-tomato flavor. A raw sauce on a Detroit pie just tastes flat.
For NY, Neapolitan, bar pie, grandma (top-sauce style): raw. For Detroit, Sicilian, vodka pizza: cooked. Simple rule.
San Marzano DOP is the famous name, grown in the Sarno Valley near Naples. Most Americans buying "San Marzano" tomatoes at the grocery store are actually buying California-grown tomatoes labeled in a confusing way that implies they're Italian.
Bianco DiNapoli is a California tomato grown specifically for pizza by Chris Bianco (of Pizzeria Bianco) and Rob DiNapoli. They're picked at peak ripeness, packed in the tomato's own juice (no paste, no citric acid), and have the perfect sweetness-to-acidity ratio for pizza. They cost 2-3x what grocery store tomatoes cost. They're worth it.
If Bianco isn't available: real San Marzano DOP (look for the DOP seal on the can) is the next best thing. Avoid "Italian-style" tomatoes, which are marketing fiction.
Every pizza sauce recipe online wants you to add dried oregano, dried basil, garlic powder, onion powder, red pepper flakes, sugar, and "Italian seasoning."
Skip all of it. Great tomatoes + salt + olive oil is the best pizza sauce in the world. If you want garlic, grate one fresh clove. If you want heat, drizzle hot honey or hot sauce on the finished pizza. Loading the sauce with spices masks the tomato, which is the whole point.
The test: if your pizza sauce tastes good by the spoon, it's over-seasoned. A good pizza sauce tastes like salted tomato and olive oil. It comes alive on the pizza.
3 tablespoons per 12-inch pizza. Max. Spread thin with the back of a ladle or spoon, in a spiral from center to edge, leaving 1 inch of border. You should see patches of dough through the sauce, if you can't, you've used too much.
Yes, it actually tastes better after sitting in the fridge for a few hours as the flavors meld. Makes up to 5 days ahead, kept in a sealed container in the fridge.
Yes. Freeze in single-pizza portions (about 3 tablespoons each) in silicone muffin cups, then pop out and store in a freezer bag. Thaws in 10 minutes on the counter.
Yes, and seed them too. But honestly, high-quality canned tomatoes (Bianco DiNapoli, San Marzano DOP) beat fresh for pizza unless it's peak August. Canned tomatoes are picked at peak ripeness and preserved instantly, fresh grocery store tomatoes are picked green and shipped.
Neither. Both have been processed. Buy whole peeled tomatoes and hand-crush them yourself. That's the key to the right texture.