Making Neapolitan pizzas at home is hard since you need time and skill to get it right. So this recipe on how to make authentic Neapolitan pizza sauce in under 5 minutes is easy and quick.
Neapolitan pizza is the standard of authentic pizzas. It is delicious with a thin and crispy crust and contains healthy toppings so you do not get too bloated when you eat them.
Just like the process of making the crust of the pizza, making your pizza sauce at home needs a lot of practice for you to perfect the consistency and flavor of the pizza sauce.
The great thing about authentic Neapolitan pizza sauce is that you do not need to buy hard-to-find ingredients. All the things you need are pretty common and are easy to find.
You do not need complicated ingredients as well. The sauce’s simplicity gives the pizza a fresh and tangy taste that is perfect for blending the other flavors on your pizza.
Since I recently started making fresh Mozzarella cheese at home, I thought why not make the authentic Neapolitan pizza sauce to get the best tasting Neapolitan pizza.
This recipe is very easy to make and you do not have to spend almost half a day cooking it. In just 5 minutes, your authentic Neapolitan pizza sauce will be ready for making the best pizza!
Authentic Neapolitan Pizza Sauce Recipe
Ingredients
- 400 grams of whole, skinless San Marzano tomatoes(check out what to do if you don’t have these tomatoes)
- 4 grams of sea salt
- 15 grams of extra virgin olive oil
- 4 leaves of fresh basil
Instructions
First, put the San Marzano tomatoes in a mixing bowl and then add the salt.
Get the basil leaves and then rip them with your hands to make smaller bits of the leaves to mix into the sauce.
Add the extra virgin olive oil into the mix and then mix all the ingredients.
The sauce should have a little runny consistency with bits of small and smooth tomatoes in it.
There is no need for you to puree the tomatoes and mixing them or squeezing them by hand will do.
Just press them further with a spoon or spatula when mixing to get them crushed into smaller bits.
Storing The Pizza Sauce
Place the pizza sauce in a jar with a sealable cover once you are done with the pizza sauce and have the right consistency. Use plastic wrap to seal the air inside the jar.
Close the jar and make sure that it is airtight. Place the jar in the refrigerator and then use it whenever you want to make pizzas or other ingredients that you can use the pizza sauce on.
This pizza sauce will last for almost a week if you put it in the refrigerator. I recommend using all of it before the 1-week mark so that you do not end up with a moldy sauce that has gone bad.
Where Can I Use The Pizza Sauce
You can use this pizza sauce on pizzas cooked on high heat. That means that wood-fired pizzas are the perfect companion for this pizza sauce to be cooked with.
I prefer using this pizza sauce on pizzas that I cook in the Ooni pizza ovens. However, you can also use the pizza sauce on homemade pizzas cooked in conventional ovens.
When you use the pizza sauce and cook it in a convection oven, make sure to use a pizza stone or pizza steel to generate more heat inside and cook the pizza properly.
Since you are using fresh pizza sauce, you need a lot of heat to cook it properly. The small chunks of tomatoes on the pizza sauce cooks almost instantly.
No San Marzano Tomatoes?
Perhaps the hardest ingredient to find is the San Marzano tomatoes. They are also expensive, which means that some cannot afford to spend too much money on tomatoes.
However, you must use San Marzano tomatoes for your authentic pizza sauce. It has a great consistency and can make the perfect pizza sauce with just enough juices in it.
If, however, you really cannot find or afford San Marzano tomatoes, then you have other options. You can use cherry tomatoes or sweet plum tomatoes for your pizza sauce.
They have the closest consistency to San Marzano tomatoes and they are also cheaper. They are easier to find but you will notice the slight difference in both consistency and flavor of the sauce.
Can I Use Canned San Marzano Tomatoes?
As much as possible, use only fresh ingredients when making any part of the Neapolitan pizza, especially the sauce. That way, you will get the best flavor and texture from the tomatoes.
If you do not find fresh tomatoes, then you can use canned San Marzano tomatoes. The canning process preserves the flavors of the tomatoes for a long time so they stay authentic.
San Marzano tomatoes are harvested between July and September. For the rest of the year, some of the best authentic pizzaiolos in Italy use canned tomatoes.
My preferred type of canned San Marzano tomatoes are the ones that come skinned in the can. These types of tomatoes give the sauce better consistency and they are also easier to process.
You do not need to mill or grind them by hand let alone skin them yourself. So to make the process a little easier, you will need to use skinned San Marzano tomatoes for your sauce.
However, using fresh tomatoes instead of canned ones is something I would recommend.
I have never been a fan of preservatives, so try and use cherry tomatoes instead if you cannot get your hands on fresh San Marzano tomatoes.
I know it kind of deviates from the whole point of making an authentic Neapolitan pizza sauce but fresh is ALWAYS better.
Just use juicy tomatoes and thin skin as they are perfect to cook the best pizza sauce.
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