Pizzaioli making deep-dish and Detroit-style pizzas apply the sauce à la minute, just before it is served. Both of these pizzas take a long time to bake, and the sauce can significantly impact that process. That’s because sauce contains a lot of water, and when it covers a thick piece of pizza dough, the heat will radiate very poorly and very slowly toward the center of the crust. Taking the sauce out of the equation from the beginning significantly reduces baking time. For these types of pizzas, we keep the sauce hot and spoon or pipe it on top immediately after baking. You can make the sauce up to 4 days ahead of time and reheat it.
Want to customize your tomato sauce flavor profile even more? After trying out this recipe, take a look at our Improving Pizza Sauce blog post.
I’ve made this sauce recipe a few times, and while I enjoy the ease of production, the recipe yields a very loose sauce, better served for a thinner pizza with a long bake. It needs significant reduction on the stove for good results on a deep dish pizza without being too loose.
The sauce in the photo looks like it uses tomato paste instead of the tomato sauce I can find.
What brands of whole peeled and crushed tomatoes do you recommend? And is the tomato sauce generic, or a specific puree (as mentioned in the notes) ?