Homemade Pizza Sauce (Perfect for Sourdough Pizza)

Best homemade pizza sauce recipe for sourdough pizza

Homemade Pizza Sauce (Perfect for Sourdough Pizza)

This rich and vibrant homemade tomato pizza sauce can be made with either fresh tomatoes or canned tomatoes. Use it on your homemade sourdough pizza bases for the best pizza you'll ever eat!

Course Condiments

Cuisine American, Italian

Keyword Condiment, Sourdough Bread

Prep Time 10

Cook Time 1 10

Total Time 1 20

Servings pizzas

Calories 478kcal

Equipment

Heavy Based Pot (like a Dutch Oven)
Immersion Blender or Food Processor (if you want your sauce smooth)

Ingredients

20 g Olive Oil
100 g Onion (1 medium onion finely diced)
1 kg Tomatoes (fresh tomatoes or 800g tinned tomatoes - see notes for differences)
4 Cloves of Garlic (finely chopped)
50 g Brown Sugar
10 g Salt (2 tsp)
5 g Black Pepper (1 teaspoon or to taste)
2 tablespoon Italian Herbs (dried Italian herbs or see notes for fresh conversion)
50 g Tomato Paste

Instructions

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).

Notes

Tomatoes - I've used 1kg of fresh Roma tomatoes from my garden for this sauce. I did not peel them because I blitz the sauce at the end and don't like fussing with unnecessary work. If you prefer to peel them because you like a chunkier sauce without blitzing it, you can immerse the fresh tomatoes in boiling water for a few minutes and then remove the skins.

Alternatively you can use an 800g tin of canned tomatoes. I like to use diced tomatoes for this. I often make this recipe with canned tomatoes when our garden isn't producing and it works perfectly well.

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.

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.

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