Pizza sauce is simpler than pasta sauce because the oven does the cooking. Most of the work is choosing a good can and not overdoing it: too long in the blender, too long on the stove or too much on the dough.
The basic sauce
This is Ken Forkish’s Basic Tomato Sauce from The Elements of Pizza, the sauce he says he now uses “almost exclusively.” The salt works out to 1% of the tomato weight.
Makes: about 800 g by ingredient weight (802 g, calculated from a 794 g can plus 8 g of salt), or roughly eight 100 g portions, the amount many of Forkish’s 12-inch recipes use. Forkish gives the yield as about 750 g (3 cups), enough for seven 12-inch pizzas. Time: 5 minutes, all of it active.
- 1 can (28 oz, 794 g) whole peeled tomatoes, with their juice
- 8 g (1½ teaspoons) fine sea salt
- Pour the whole can, juice and all, into a blender and add the salt.
- Pulse on the lowest speed for a few seconds, just until the tomatoes are broken up. Stop while the sauce still looks slightly coarse.
- Use it raw. Refrigerate what you don’t use in a covered container for up to 1 week.
Don’t drain the can. Forkish used to drain his tomatoes in a colander to thicken the sauce. He stopped after the importer Fred Mortati explained that the packing juice is cooked down early in production, so it carries more tomato solids than the fruit itself.
Don’t overblend. A watery sauce usually comes from the blender, not the can. Long blending releases water from the tomato flesh, and Forkish notes that sauce can go “from perfectly thick to overly watery” very quickly.
No blender? Use a food mill fitted with the large-hole disk. Crank half the can through at a time, scrape any mash left in the mill into the bowl, then stir in the salt. The result is slightly chunkier. Or squeeze the tomatoes through your fingers for a rough, rustic sauce.
Raw or cooked?
Raw is the default. Canned tomatoes have already been heated in processing: they’re steamed to loosen the skins, and the packing juice is cooked down. The sauce then cooks again on the pizza. Forkish’s view is that cooking the sauce to thicken it “removes the freshness of flavor,” and he notes it’s rarely done in Italy, though it’s not uncommon in New York pizzerias.
Cook it when the style wants it. Forkish’s own New York Pizza Sauce is cooked and lightly sweetened, “similar to what a number of New York pizzerias use.” It isn’t how he usually likes his sauce, but he includes it because it’s characteristic of the style. To make it, take a batch of his seasoned smooth sauce (the first recipe in three no-cook pizza sauces), add 15 g (1 tablespoon) of sugar, and simmer for 15 to 20 minutes, stirring now and then. Stop while it’s only moderately reduced and still easy to spread. Let it cool before using it.
Some sauces go on after the bake. A Detroit pizza gets its sauce spooned over the top after baking. Modernist Pizza explains that this keeps the crust from turning gummy.
How each style uses sauce
| Style | Sauce | When it goes on | Per pizza |
|---|---|---|---|
| Neapolitan-style, 12 in | Tomatoes and salt, raw | Before baking, spread in a spiral from the center | 60–90 g |
| New York, 14 in | Cooked and lightly sweetened, in Forkish’s version | Before baking, under the cheese | 95–130 g |
| Detroit, 10 × 14 in pan | Thick | After baking, spooned over the cheese | 290–360 g |
| Sicilian-style, 13 × 18 in pan | Ground tomatoes and paste with hand-crushed tomatoes, raw, in Gemignani’s version | Before baking | 210–300 g |
| Tomato pie, half-sheet pan | The basic sauce works | On top of the cheese, before baking | 225 g in Forkish’s recipe |
The per-pizza amounts are the site’s Pizza Calculator starting ranges, rounded. They’re calculated from published recipes by Forkish, Ooni and King Arthur Baking. Tony Gemignani’s Sicilian sauce is in three no-cook pizza sauces. His own Sicilian pizza uses 370 g of it on a 12 × 18-inch pan, more than the calculator’s range, so follow his amount when you make his pizza.
How much sauce, and where
Less than you think. The EU specification for Pizza Napoletana sets 60 to 80 g of crushed peeled tomatoes for a pizza with mozzarella and 70 to 100 g for one without, spread from the center outward in a spiral. That sits inside the Pizza Calculator’s 60 to 90 g for a 12-inch Neapolitan-style pizza. Forkish uses 60 to 80 g on his 12-inch margherita and about 100 g on many of his other 12-inch pizzas.
Leave a border. Forkish spreads sauce to within ½ inch (1.3 cm) of the edge with the back of a spoon or ladle, leaving the rim bare.
Wet sauce and the gummy layer. Modernist Pizza traces the pale, gummy line between crust and sauce, which it calls the gel layer, to steam rising through the dough and condensing under the cool, wet sauce. That top layer of dough is the last part of the pizza to cook. Forkish’s warning is blunter: too much sauce with too much cheese “will turn the top of your pizza into soup.” Since the problem is cool, wet sauce sitting on the dough, a thin, even layer is the practical defense; Modernist Pizza found that only prebaking the crust eliminates the gel layer completely.
Choosing the tomatoes
Start with whole peeled tomatoes that you like the taste of straight from the can. Forkish notes that processors reserve their best tomatoes for canning whole; the rest go into juice and other products such as paste. Check the label for calcium chloride, a firming agent that stops pieces breaking down; you don’t want it in a sauce you blend or crush by hand.
You don’t need DOP San Marzanos, though they’re excellent. San Marzano vs. crushed tomatoes explains what the labels mean, and canned tomatoes for pizza compares specific brands.
Seasoning and texture
The basic sauce is only tomatoes and salt, which is how Neapolitan pizzerias make it. Forkish notes that in Naples olive oil doesn’t go into the sauce: it’s drizzled over the pizza after the sauce and cheese, and oregano is sprinkled on top rather than stirred in. If you want garlic, oregano and chile in the sauce itself, use his seasoned smooth sauce.
Texture is a matter of taste. A brief pulse in the blender gives a smooth, even sauce; a food mill or your hands give a chunkier one. Forkish often prefers the carefully pulsed blender sauce and sees no loss of quality from it.
Sources
- Ken Forkish, The Elements of Pizza (2016): chapter 4, “Tomatoes” and “Tomato Sauce” (Fred Mortati on packing juice and overblending, cooking sauce in Italy and New York, Naples practice); chapter 7, Basic Tomato Sauce, FWSY Sauce, New York Pizza Sauce, Pizza Margherita, Simple Tomato Pie and the sauce amounts in his 12-inch recipes.
- Nathan Myhrvold and Francisco Migoya, Modernist Pizza (2021), volume 1: page 104 (tomato pie, sauce on top), page 142 (Detroit sauce after baking) and page 370 (the gel layer).
- European Commission, Regulation (EU) No 97/2010, Annex II: the Pizza Napoletana specification, topping quantities and the spiral spreading method.
- Tony Gemignani, The Pizza Bible (Ten Speed Press, 2014): Sicilian Tomato Sauce and “The Brooklyn” Sicilian-style pizza, reprinted with permission at Andrew Zimmern’s site. Checked October 14, 2026.
- Per-pizza sauce ranges: jayarr.pizza Pizza Calculator, based on Forkish, Ooni’s New York-style pizza recipe and King Arthur Baking’s Detroit and Sicilian pizza recipes.