Best Homemade Pizza Sauce Recipe for Sourdough Pizza

If you want to up your sourdough pizza game, then you have to try this homemade pizza sauce recipe! You can use fresh or canned tomatoes for this homemade pizza sauce recipe for sourdough pizza.

Whether you're cooking pizza in your home oven or in an outdoor pizza oven, this incredible homemade pizza sauce recipe will stand out among your favorite toppings. 

I highly recommend using this homemade pizza sauce on this tried and tested sourdough pizza dough. It's the sourdough pizza crust recipe I use to make pizza for my whole family each and every week! It makes the most amazingly simple Margarita style pizza with fresh mozzarella cheese and fresh basil leaves. You might also like to try this white pizza sauce made with sourdough starter.

Why You'll Love This Recipe!

Uses Simple Ingredients - Whether you choose to use fresh Roma tomatoes from your summer vegetable patch or a trusty tin of canned tomatoes, this homemade pizza sauce uses a few pantry ingredients to create something truly special!

Freezes Really Well - This homemade pizza sauce will last in the fridge for around a week (I just keep it in one of my sourdough starter jars). But it also freezes incredibly well! I either store it in glass jars or plastic take out tubs and then just allow it to defrost at room temp when I need it.

Perfect for Sourdough Pizza - The rich, intense flavor of this homemade pizza sauce pairs incredibly well with flavorful sourdough pizza dough. This will take your sourdough pizza game to the next level!

What Tomatoes Should You Use To Make Pizza Sauce?

​This homemade pizza sauce recipe will work with either canned tomatoes or fresh tomatoes. During the summer months, I use Roma tomatoes fresh from our garden. During the winter months, I use canned tomatoes. We are a "pizza all year round" family so I just use what's on hand. 

​The best thing about this recipe when using fresh tomatoes is that you don't have to go through the pain of peeling them. Some might call me lazy, I'll go with efficient (or maybe smart). But since I use a food processor to smooth the sauce out at the end, peeling the tomatoes seems pointless, since they get blitzed up at the end.

If you don't want to blend your sauce and prefer cooking it out a bit more, you may consider peeling fresh tomatoes, but even then, I don't think I'd worry. The skin is very minimal and gives the sauce flavor and texture. And believe me, my kids need every extra bit of good food I can squeeze into them.

How To make the Best Homemade Pizza Sauce for Sourdough Pizza

Making homemade pizza sauce for your sourdough pizzas could not be easier! I love using my heavy based Dutch Oven on the stove to create this hearty and delicious pizza sauce!

If you're using fresh tomatoes, wash them and roughly chop them into a dice (it doesn't have to be small, just a rough dice is fine). You don't need to peel the tomatoes. If using canned tomatoes you don't have to prepare them at all.

Heat a heavy based pan (a Dutch Oven is perfect) and add olive oil and diced onions to the bottom of the pan. Fry at medium heat until the onion start to brown and soften (around 5 to 10 minutes).

Add the fresh or canned tomatoes (whichever you use) and the finely chopped garlic and stir through to fully combine with the olive oil and onions. Allow to cook for around 5 minutes on medium heat, stirring through once or twice.

Now add the sugar, herbs, pepper and salt and stir really well to ensure the sugar is well dissolved. Then add the tomato paste and stir again.

Simmer the sauce on a low heat for around 1 hour. Leave the lid off to help the sauce thicken. Stir occasionally to ensure the bottom doesn't catch.

Once the sauce has thickened and cooked for around an hour, take it off the heat.

Use an immersion blender or place into a food processor and blitz the sauce until it's thick and smooth (you can make it as chunky or smooth as you like). I generally do this in my Thermomix (a type of food processor).

Place the finished sauce into a bowl or jar and into the fridge to chill before you use it on a pizza (hot sauce will make the base soggy).

How To Use Homemade Sourdough Pizza Sauce

While this homemade pizza sauce is of course for topping delicious sourdough pizzas, it can also be used in so many other ways! Here are a few of the ways that we use this delicious homemade pizza sauce recipe in our home:

• As a Marinara style dipping sauce (perfect for dipping sourdough pretzels or serving next to this sourdough cheese and garlic pull apart loaf). It also pairs super well with these sourdough sausage balls.
  
• To top these sourdough pizza rolls or sourdough pizza pockets (and to dip them in as well).
  
• Use it as a dipping sauce for the best sourdough grilled cheese sandwich you'll ever eat!
  
• We use it as topping for chicken parmigiana along with fresh mozzarella.
  
• I've been known to use this as meatball sauce in a pinch! There's always a jar of this in my fridge for emergency pizza ... and meatballs!

Ingredient Notes

Sugar - Brown sugar is used for color and flavor. You can leave it out if you prefer but you may find the sauce too acidic if you don't use any sugar at all.

Herbs - you can use fresh herbs rather than dried if you prefer. I often use fresh basil and parsley, but all my herbs had gone to seed when I was making this recipe for the blog so I used dried. We eat pizza year round so I will often make this sauce with canned tomatoes and dried herbs in the winter months. If you are using fresh herbs, I add two handfuls of fresh herbs as opposed to 2 tablespoon of dried. Obviously you can adjust this to your own tastes and what you have on hand.

If you don't have an Italian herb mix, just blend together some dried Italian herbs like oregano, rosemary, parsley and marjoram. Dried red pepper flakes or chili flakes are delicious too if you like a bit of heat.

Tomato Paste - I use a basic tomato paste with no additives. I use 50g just to add extra tomato flavor to the sauce. Try to use a tomato paste with the least amount of ingredients as you want a really clean sauce.

How To Store and Freeze

This freshly cooked pizza sauce can be stored in a glass jar in the fridge for up to a week.

It also freezes really well. You can freeze in glass jars (just don't fill them all the way to the top) or in plastic take out containers. Defrost the pizza sauce at room temp (it's ok if it's still a little frozen when you add it to your pizza bases).

You can also freeze this homemade pizza sauce in ice cube molds and then pop the frozen sauce cubes in a zip loc baggie. This means you can just defrost enough sauce for one or two pizzas at a time, without wasting a whole jar.

Share the sourdough love!