Cooked vs. Uncooked Pizza Sauce

Cooked vs. Uncooked Pizza Sauce

Whether to use a cooked pizza souce or an uncooked pizza souce is a matter of personal preference. A cooked sauce has been reduced and if used hot may make the cheese melt before the base pizza dough is cooked. Both options have their benefits. One of the clear advantages of a cooked sauce is if it is winter and you have no fresh herbs, the cooked sauce absorbs the taste of dried herbs.

You can save your cooked pizza sauce in ice trays and then bag them up in a plastic bag, so you'll have a homemade pizza sauce ready in a portion that you are going to use.

If you don't have enough time to make a homemade pizza sauce then use an uncooked pizza sauce: buy concentrated tomato paste or liquidized tomato usually sold Italian style as passatta. All you need to do is spread it on the pizza dough.

Modern chefs are adapting pizza to combine the raw and the cooked sauces. See this recipe for Prosciutto, Herb & Rocket Pizza.

Oil, Herbs & Spices

Herbs and spices are used to enhance the flavor of your sauce. The most common herbs used in pizza sauce are oregano, basil, thyme, sage, marjoram, savory and mint. Oregano is the most popular spice in pizza sauce.

An easy way to spice your sauce is by adding infused olive oil. The bottle will keep for ages in the fridge and it can be put directly on the pizza base of either the raw dough or the precooked pizza.

South Western sauce is olive oil with garlic, oregano, cummin and black pepper.


Californian oil sauce: olive oil infused with garlic, pepper, oregano, parsley, basil, marjoram and chili
flakes.


Garlic oil is also very useful and can be made by infusing olive oil with garlic.

An oil infusion that is good with chicken pizza is tarragon oil.