Posted on 04/21/2024 5:00:38 PM PDT by nickcarraway
While restaurant pizza seems to have the perfect ratio of gooey, salty cheese to hearty tomato sauce, getting that same balance with homemade pizza can often be tricky. Sometimes, you can wind up with a pie that's too tomato-y, while other times you might find you're lacking the acidic notes that the sauce adds.
So, how do you get the right sauce-to-pizza ratio? Marc Forgione (@marcforgione on Instagram), chef and restaurateur of Respect Hospitality Group, which consists of Trattoria One Fifth (@onefifthnyc), Peasant, and the soon-to-reopen Forgione, sat down in an exclusive interview with The Daily Meal and gave us some insights.
Forgione explains that you might not need as much pizza sauce as you think you do and says, "At Trattoria One Fifth, we use two ounces of sauce on a 12-inch pie." That's just around a ¼ cup, which sounds like very little, but its rich flavor goes a long way.
Finding the right balance of sauce and toppings
Although Marc Forgione explains that two ounces is right for a 12-inch pie, as you adjust the size of your dough, you may not know how much sauce to use. Luckily, he explains what to look for to determine whether you've got enough sauce: "That should be just enough to cover the bottom of the dough and hold the ingredients. In general, less is more when it comes to ingredients, and use the saying, 'high-quality versus high-quantity ingredients.'"
In fact, it's not just the sauce that you want to be wary of overloading your pizza with. You may also want to limit the number of toppings you use. Adding up to five toppings at a time can be a great way to get a burst of flavor without affecting how long the pizza needs to cook. If you use more than that, you may find your toppings and dough don't cook at the same rate, leading to a crust and fixings that are either burnt or undercooked and soggy.
What goes into the sauce matters, too
Besides getting the right amount of sauce on your pizza, it's also important to get the ratios of ingredients in it balanced as well. Marc Forgione explains that one of the biggest missteps someone can make with pizza sauce at home is "making it too sweet." Some people add a bit of granulated (or even brown) sugar to their sauce to help level out the acidity of the tomatoes and make the topping more balanced. However, if you go overboard, that flavor can become cloying. If you're going to add it, you don't need as much as you might think. Try starting with about ½ teaspoon per serving of sauce. You can always add a bit more if you need to.
You can also skip the sugar altogether and focus on other add-ins to bring a boost of flavor to your pizza. For instance, add some balsamic vinegar to homemade pizza sauce to brighten up the flavor and add a dash of sweetness. Another choice could be to upgrade it with a dash of red wine. This enhances the tomatoes' flavor and can add hints of things like chocolate, cherry, and oak. Or, stir a bit of parmesan cheese into your pizza sauce to give your sauce an umami kick that ups the savory flavor of your pie. Whichever way you go, there are plenty of options for upgrading your sauce's flavor while heeding Forgione's advice to avoid using too much.
How about a more practical approach: Too much sauce causes the toppings to slide off, use as little as possible?
...”making it too sweet.”
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That’s the downfall of those cheap frozen pizzas.
I have a related question for us hopeless non-cooks. Perhaps someone can help.
When I order spaghetti at an Italian restaurant, the sauce is always thick and rich. But every store-bought jar brand I’ve tried is weak and a bit watery.
Can anyone recommend a thick and rich spaghetti sauce that comes in a jar? I don’t mind spending a bit more for a really good product.
Yes, cook the spaghetti sauce on low heat to evaporate the water.
Or you could add tomato paste to create more volume without adding water.
Only if it’s a traditional WD-40 sauce.
How are you adding the sauce to the pasta?
My wife adds ground beef and some salami, and some tomato paste, along with cooking the sauce till the best consistency. And we make our own pizza dough in the bread machine. To die for.
A decent practice to enhance a bland tomato sauce is to add sugar just to the point you taste it, then add red wine vinegar to balance it out.
Won’t that be oily?
A bit of anchovy can make a big difference. No one will know it’s there, but it adds a lot of umami.
I make keto pizzas and if anyone has any recipe secrets or suggestions I’d be more than obliged if they shared them.
“you may find your toppings and dough don’t cook at the same rate, leading to a crust and fixings that are either burnt or undercooked and soggy”
I have an aluminum pizza pan and a ‘pizza stone’.
The ‘pizza stone’ allow the pizza to be pulled out of the oven so the the toppings don’t get burnt and the dough to continue to get cooked.
I am experimenting with canned chicken as the crust. It seems to work well, but most of the recipes call for more parmesan cheese than I like, so I am trying to figure out whether to reduce the salt, or the parm, or maybe try ground chicken as a crust.
Once you get it out of your head that there has to be bread, or pasta (like Lasagna) to have it taste great, and be so satisfying, you can try all sorts of things. I have tried sliced deli chicken or turkey in place of the noodles in Lasagna with great success.
Next on my list is trying a “cast-iron skillet” pizza, with only sausage as a crust. Look on the internet for ideas, sort them through, then play kitchen scientist, enjoying all the experiments, even the “failures”! You are inventing a new cuisine!
the recipe I am “messing”with to reduce the salt...
https://hangryfork.com/recipes/keto-canned-chicken-pizza-crust/
I add to that store bought sauce, a 1/2c sautéed onions, 2 tsp minced garlic,1-2 stalks of celery, 1/2# of gr beef, basil, oregano, 1tbsp sugar, salt, pepper. My hubby is always saying, when I take the time to doctor the sauce, that he can’t believe it is so thick. I do this in a cast iron skillet. The acid in the tomatoes will draw some iron into your sauce.
“we use two ounces of sauce on a 12-inch pie.” That’s just around a ¼ cup, which sounds like very little”
that’s because that’s WAY too little ... ridiculously little, actually ...
What ever floats yer pie.
I mean, if you want heavy sauce, great! Light, wonderful!
I’d personally love some deep dish ... not pan with delusions of adequate toppings....
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