Tomato sauce – three ingredients and no cooking
San Marzano, salt and oil. How to make the sauce the way Neapolitans do, how much to spread, and why a cooked sauce gives you a completely different pizza.
Quick answer: San Marzano or another quality tomato, salt, done. The Neapolitan base is never cooked – the raw tomato flavour is best preserved that way, and it avoids the pizza being cooked twice (once as sauce, once in the oven) into a mushy, watery texture.
How to make it
Crush whole peeled tomatoes by hand or give them a quick blitz in a blender – not too long, some texture should remain. Add salt to taste and stir. No cooking, no onion, no fried garlic needed for the classic Neapolitan version; the flavour should come from the tomatoes themselves.
Why not cook it
Cooking before baking drives off some of the tomato’s fresh acidity and sweetness – flavours that develop further anyway during the 60–90 seconds in the oven. A cooked sauce also loses some liquid through evaporation that would otherwise balance the texture naturally during baking.
How much and where
Spread a thin layer, roughly 70 g (2–3 tablespoons) per pizza, and leave a 1.5–2 cm free border so the rim can puff up unhindered. Read more about the tomatoes themselves in tomatoes for pizza.
Recipes with a simple tomato base: marinara and margherita. The order for the rest of the toppings: topping order.
