Saucy Solutions

The Most Important Things You Need to Know About Pizza Sauce

by Tom Boyles

There are three main components to a pizza; crust, sauce and cheese. Crust provides a foundation to support the pizza's other elements and cheese provides a pleasing mouth-feel and flavor. However, thinking back to the last great pizza you enjoyed, chances are you best remember the tomato sauce.

A study conducted by a sauce manufacturer revealed the following facts about the flavor profile of pizza. Believe it or not, the crust provides only 6 percent of the overall flavor, while cheese contributes 21 percent. Toppings account for 32 percent of the flavor and sauce accounts for 41 percent. If you want to get more flavors in your pizza, tweaking your sauce can give you the biggest bang for your buck. On the other hand, tomato sauce is a flavor bargain, accounting for 10 percent or less of the overall ingredient cost, while cheese is the most costly ingredient, followed by toppings and then crust.

Chef Dino Ciccone, owner of Famous Eastown Pizza, says, "While the crust is important, most of the flavor comes from the sauce. You get flavor from the toppings too, but an onion is an onion. You shouldn't skimp on your sauce ingredients and buy the best."

The History of the Tomato
While there have been several new variations to the sauce base, such as pesto, white sauces and others, the tomato-based sauce is the most popular. In order to better understand its popularity and usage, let's look at the origins of the tomato. Many may think that they originated in Europe, but in fact the tomato is indigenous to the Americas. Tomatoes were grown by the Aztecs and Incas and discovered and carried back to Europe by the Conquistadors and found favor in areas like Spain, Italy and the Mediterranean. As this fruit and its mystery migrated north, it acquired many names. The French called them Love Apples and Germans referred to them as The Apple of Paradise. Years before they were widely used in cooking, many Europeans refused to eat tomatoes because they were thought to be poisonous, and in fact, they do belong to the same family as nightshade, the tomatoes deadly cousin. This fear of tomatoes was also found in colonial America, but was soon overcome when the Creoles started using them in gumbos and jambalayas (Source: www.tomato.org). In the 1600s, to prove tomatoes were not poisonous, a farmer stood on the courthouse stairs in Philly and ate a dozen to show people there weren't dangerous. The rest is history.

Tomato Sauces
<߀Ƶꝸ춬甼﬐͍ᦐ͍>Nearly all pizzerias use a tomato-based sauce for pizza, so let's understand more about the production and divisions of sauce. There are four main divisions of sauce: concentrated crushed, sauce, paste and heavy puree. Concentrated crushed generally has some of the liquid drained and is typically more chunky and has high amounts of solids and salt. Sauce has flavors added and lacks chunks of tomatoes. Paste is usually heavily cooked and has a concentrated tomato flavor while a heavy tomato puree is thick and may contain salt. Puree also has the seeds and skin screened out while sauce has a trace of seeds and skin producing a natural feeling in the mouth.

When it comes to using sauce, most pizza makers would be insulted if you asked them to open a can of ready-to-use sauce and apply it directly to the pizza. After all, who wants their pizza to be ordinary? Most pizzerias start with a base and add their own secret ingredients.

To make your sauce, you can start with a concentrated crushed, prepared base or fully prepared base. Using the concentrated crushed, you can add your own seasonings and cut it with water. The concentrated crushed is best when you want a chunkier sauce and is typically what you see with traditional sauces. One that we will discuss later, and that is gaining much popularity, is a "grandma" sauce. The prepared base consists of the tomato base and has less solids than the crushed. A fully prepared sauce has spices and ingredients already added, but most operators still add their own blend of seasoning to it to enhance the flavor.

Packaging
The most common packaging for sauce is canned. It is still the most mainstream method tomato producers use to package sauce, but there are other ways of packaging that are becoming popular. One is bulk packed, where the sauce is packaged in three-gallon containers. One advantage to bulk packed is pricing, which is lower due to the higher volumes purchased. The newest form of packaging is a pouch. The advantages here are the buyer can actually see the product and there is less space needed for storage and less waste. Other benefits to pouches are: no cut fingers, which can result in workers' comp claims and better evacuation of usable product. In disposal terms, you can fit sixty #10 can equivalent pouches inside one #10 can.

A term used in tomato packaging that some might not fully understand is what is commonly referred to as Fresh Pack. What exactly does Fresh Pack mean? Fresh Pack tomatoes are only packaged during the tomato season. They are vine-ripened and usually packaged within a few hours from being picked in the field. This is in contrast to remanufactured tomatoes where they are picked, processed into a concentrate and packaged at a later date after being reconstituted with water.

Sauce can also be purchased in 55-gallon drums if you are a high volume restaurant. It comes in a plastic drum and should be stored in your walk-in cooler. A drum of sauce can be kept for about one month.

Flavor, Color and Acid Levels
When looking for just the right sauce, the first thing desired is flavor. A first indicator of flavor can be the color of the sauce. You want a nice red color, but not too dark. In many cases, the darker colors may indicate the tomatoes were overcooked. Also, when you cook your sauce, it becomes even darker. Cooking pulls from the flavor and the color.

"Salt is the most important ingredient in your sauce," Chef Dino says. "If you master the use of salt, you are half way to being a chef. The second most important ingredient in my opinion is garlic. I think powder is a good way to go because it is easily distributed throughout the sauce when you mix it. The next ingredients are basil and oregano."

These are your basic additives, but there are other things you can add to your sauce to enhance the flavor, one of which is olive oil. Extra virgin olive oil is best, but you can also use flavored olive oils. One thing you can do to flavor olive oil is to put the oil in a pot and add peeled garlic. Heat the oil, careful not to overcook it and burn the garlic, and let it sit for 20-30 minutes. This can be done with basil and other herbs, too.

To bring out the flavor in sauce, you can also use Romano cheese, black pepper and finely chopped white onion. Be careful in using oregano because when it is used in sauce, it can make it bitter and cause the sauce to go bad in just a few days. Another thing that oregano will do is give your customers heartburn.

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