Our sauce recipe is tinned San Marzano tomatoes, crushed by hand, with salt. That is the entire method. No cooking, no garlic, no oregano, no sugar, no simmering it down for an hour.
People assume we are leaving something out. We are not — this is the whole thing, and every item we have tried adding has made it worse.
Why the sauce is not cooked
The pizza spends 90 seconds in a 450°C oven. That is more than enough heat to cook a thin layer of tomato. Cooking the sauce beforehand means cooking it twice: the fresh, bright acidity goes, and what is left is jammy and dull. It tastes like pasta sauce, because that is what it has become.
Raw sauce also holds less water once it hits the stone, which matters more than it sounds. A pre-cooked sauce has already broken down and releases liquid into the dough. Hand-crushed tomato sits on top and reduces in place.
Why San Marzano specifically
San Marzano is a plum tomato grown in volcanic soil south-east of Naples. Two things make it worth the premium: fewer seeds and less gel in the cavity, so there is less water to drive off; and a naturally lower acidity, which is why the sauce does not need the pinch of sugar that most recipes quietly include.
The flesh is also firmer, which is what makes hand-crushing work. Squeeze one and it breaks into rough pieces. A softer tomato collapses into purée, and purée is not the texture we want.
Reading the tin
“San Marzano style” and “San Marzano variety” on a label mean the grower is using the seed somewhere else. That is not fraud and it is not always worse, but it is not the same thing. The protected designation — Pomodoro S. Marzano dell’Agro Sarnese-Nocerino DOP — is the one that is grown in the right place, and it carries a consortium number on the tin.
Two further habits worth picking up:
- Buy whole peeled, not pre-crushed. Crushed tins are often a lesser tomato, and you lose control of the texture.
- Drain off the packing liquid before crushing. It is thin and watery, and it is the fastest route to a soggy middle.
Salt, and when
Salt the tomatoes when you crush them, not when you top the pizza. Given twenty minutes the salt draws out moisture and seasons the whole batch evenly. Salt scattered on at the last moment sits on the surface and tastes like exactly that.
Then stop. The tomato is the sauce.