Make delicious, slightly sweet pizza sauce at home with some tomato sauce and a few spices. It takes about 20 minutes and will be WAY better than any canned sauce you've ever tried.
If you want to learn how to make pizza this delicious looking at home (it rivals wood oven pizza - and I can say that because I built my own wood fired pizza oven) then check out this step-by-step guide to making pizza at home.
I'm about to say something very, very controversial and I want you to prepare yourselves for it. By prepare yourselves, I mean get ready to gasp and slap the person sitting closest to you. It's entirely possible someone is about to take legal action against me for what I'm about to say. Someone might indeed sue me. I would like to officially declare that ...
Lebanese people make the best pizza in the world.
There. I've said it. And that's "Lebanese", not "Lesbians", although I'm sure there are a few fantastic pizza making lesbians out there. If they happen to be Lebanese ... all the better. Have I just made a generalization based on race? Yup. Yes I have. I have done some racial profiling on my blog here. I also think Asian babies are the cutest of all babies. Except for cat babies. There's nothing cuter than a kitten.
When my friend Anj and I were super-cool and young and hip and actually left our houses and saw each other, we were always on the hunt for the perfect pizza. We found that perfect pizza one night in a small Lebanese restaurant that didn't know enough about pizza to slice the olives they put on top of it. But they had the best pizza sauce I've ever tasted. It was the sauce that made the pizza.
What distinguished it was a slight sweetness. Just a bit. It's not like we were eating caramelized pizza sauce, it was just ... a tad sweet. If you weren't a pizza professional like Anj and I you might not even notice it. Our quest then continued into the grocery stores to find a similar canned pizza sauce. And believe it or not we did find something fairly similar to the delicious Lebanese pizza sauce, but the company who made the canned sauce quickly went out of business and has never been heard from again.
When I asked a different friend of mine what the best pizza he'd ever eaten was he cited a place in Ottawa, Canada called The Colonnade. An establishment run by ... wait for it ... a Lebanese family. I know.
I've been making my own pizza since I was a kid, and I spent decades trying to find the perfect canned sauce. God help me, for some reason it never occurred to me to just make my own sauce. It's like I had a pizza sauce mental block. When I finally grabbed a pan, some tomato sauce and a few spices I was stunned at the incredible results.
I came up with a pizza sauce recipe that would make any Lebanese proud. An Italian too, I think. And an Asian baby. And of course all lesbians.
Just sautee the garlic in some olive oil for a little bit, then shove in everything else and simmer until reduced to pizza sauce thickness. Takes about a half an hour or so. If you don't happen to have 4 cups of home pressed tomatoes around you can use crushed tomatoes or even tomato juice with a couple of tablespoons of tomato paste added in. (the tomato juice and tomato paste concoction will take longer to reduce)
Homemade Pizza Sauce
Ingredients
- 1 litre tomato sauce
- 1 tablespoon brown sugar
- ¼ teaspoon oregano dried
- ¼ teaspoon basil dried
- ¼ teaspoon dried pepper flakes
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- 1 pinch garlic powder
- 1 pinch onion powder
- 1 pinch thyme
- 1 clove garlic
Instructions
- Sauté garlic in olive oil over low heat until it starts to smell good.
- Add the remaining ingredients and simmer until thickened. - about ½ an hour.
Notes
Now, as happy as I am with the pizza sauce, if you're interested in a more classic Italian pizza sauce recipe, that's in the step-by-step guide to pizza post I mentioned earlier.
Gettinby
This is crazy. [i]I[/i] did a post on pizza dough today. Let me know what you think!
http://gettinby.wordpress.com/2012/01/17/heres-pie-in-your-eye/
Scouty
Colonnade Pizza use to be the best in Ottawa, not so sure it still is....
The neighbourhood pizza place run by the ladies (and yes that would be Lebanese ladies) is pretty darn good.
Annie
Yum, Colonnade Pizza. It was a Friday night tradition for us for years. Thanks for reminding me. What about New York pizza is there a Lebanese link there? My favourite is from John's on Bleeker Street. Just sauce, cheese and slivered garlic. Heaven.
Debbie Neal
Can you post this so we can copy and paste into our recipe files? I can not copt it!
Thanks!
sauceangeles
As a lesbian (who is not Lebanese, not that there's anything wrong with that), I will have to try this sauce!
Karen
LOL! Heh. I like it. ~ karen
V.
@Marti Neapolitian? would that be napolitan pizza? or made by a new polititian? :) I agree napolitan pizza is the best! I get to visit Napoli around 8 or 9 times a year, but I prefer pizza alla romana, that is tomato sauce, mozzarella and cooked prosciutto.
Emily
I was just thinking last night, I bet I could make this myself! And voila! Recipe for exactly that!
Barbie
Perhaps I should go into the pizza business...and perhaps this is why my sister "has"....we are Lebanese.....well....part Lebanese.....my grandfather on my fathers side is from Lebanon....full Lebanese. However I never learned any Lebanese dishes and so this gives me great hope that perhaps I can now make a great pizza sauce! My sister's Italian husband may want to take the credit for the sauce so I am going to have to correct him on that! This could get ugly.
PS: I couldn't agree with you more about the asian babies!
Beverly
I dated a Lebanese guy way back when and his mom was the best cook I have ever met hands down. She didn't make pizza, but she did make this "pasta" (not to be confused with Italian pasta) that had noodles and tomato sauce and the sauce was sweet! Oh, I miss his mom.
Nicole2
Hmmm, my first boss was a Lebanese lesbian. No lies. Now I wonder if she made good pizza.
And come to think of it, the little hole in the wall where we buy our pizza is definitely not run by Italians. Now I'm wondering if they're Lebanese. Because they make the best darn pizza pie in town.
Jen
I tried to cobble together some sort of pizza sauce just like week. I'll bookmark this one, and try it! FYI: One day I read your new post....and then also read the comments, on your last post. Alost as good as the original....but there's no one like you Karen. :) (Just finished reading all the comments on throwing away 50 things.....Rick Mercer=National Treasure...pretty obvious over how many of us were concerned over that bookmark...LOL!
Alissa S
I made your "best pesto sauce in the world" recipe.... stuck it in the freezer and later used that on homemade whole wheat pizza crust.... amazing! By the way, I'm in Madagascar and there's no Lebanese here but all the other nationalities in this country... well that can't make a good pizza to save their lives.
Colin Wheeler
Just a point though, the Lebanese people are not a separate race. They are just a different nationality. Let's not get confused about race and nationality.
my honest answer
Karen, what consistency are we after? My pizza sauce always seems to be too runny or too dry!
Karen
You want it the consistencey of say ... a canned spaghetti sauce. A bit thicker maybe. ~ karen
arlene
I beg to differ. Try this...buy 3 pints grape tomatoes. Throw them in a heavy frying pan with a couple glugs of olive oil, start the fire under it and cook on lowish till they are popping the skins. Add a few cloves of peeled, rough chopped garlic and a pinch of good salt. Cook on. When it's all soft, whir it with the immersion blender and get it smooth. Throw in some fresh chopped basil. You will think Lebanon is an imaginary land of childhood fantasy. With no colour. Or lesbians.
Robyn
When I au-paired in Paris many many many years ago, it was for a Lebanese family. And she really did make the best pizza. I might ask her for her recipe and see how that compares to yours ;-)
Micol
What!!! Excuse me!!!! You must be kidding!!
Karen, I really love you... But you can't say that. You must get here in italy and taste pizza in Naples and in Rome.
That's all... Now I'm gonna go on and pretend this post doesn't exist.
Christian Marie
Add a vanilla bean and a star anise to this sauce, strain the water out instead of cooking it down, put it on the pizza raw, and you have the best Italian pizza sauce in the world. Assuming that you don't use crap tomatoes, of course.
missnicoleo
I had pizza a few times when I was in Rome, and meh. perhaps my expectations were too high.
JD
No - the Italians really don't put any spices in their pizza sauce. None. They take pure tomato puree and chuck it on. Oregano & garlic are separate toppings - seriously. You have to request them if you want them. They sure as heck wouldn't be using vanilla beans and star anise. Which is fine by me and I would not care for those things in a tomato sauce. They also don't cover the pizza in cheese but dot it around which means it will never really be 'dripping' w/ cheese. The best pizza I've had is in New York, but that's just me. I have yet to try Lebanese pizza.
Leslie Zuroski
Hmmm, interesting, but I already have the very best pizza sauce ever.
Marti
I'm gonna call "Canookian" on you. Which isn't a problem. Different is good... as long as I can have the Neapolitian-Style Pizza (chunkier tomatos, better cheese, thin crust, cooked at very high temperature) and you eat your Lebanese-Lesbian style.
Not that there's anything wrong with that. I just eat with the Other Team.