Pizza Sauces

For years we've made our Friday night pizzas with a dough ball and container of pizza sauce from the market at Cossetta's. Their pizza sauce is divine- over the years Andy has tried to beg the recipe out of different staff there, but they always reply that only two people know how to make the sauce, and it's made in their offsite kitchen a block away. I've done a thorough search for "copycat" recipes online with no luck. As Andy's job and schedule have changed, it's harder to stop at Cossetta's, so we've had to work with other sauces. Most of the commercial/jarred sauces are pretty bad- sweet and bland. For supermarket sauces, the best we've found at the local store is Pastorelli, but recently it's gotten harder to find with prolonged stock-outs.

 We like that it comes in an 8 oz can, which is about the amount we want at a time. I decided to try making homemade sauce, and freezing it in 8 oz servings for pizza nights.

I recently made a batch of Detroit-style pizza sauce from a recipe by Meredith Deeds, and it was very good.

This recipe is good enough in a pinch, as it uses ingredients we tend to have on hand:

Ultimate Pizza Sauce

2 tablespoons olive oil 

1 tablespoon butter 

1/2 cup onions, chopped 

1/4 cup celery, chopped 

1 garlic clove, minced 

1 (8 ounce) can tomato sauce 

1 (6 ounce) can tomato paste 

2 tablespoons grated parmesan cheese 

1 teaspoon dried basil 

1 teaspoon dried oregano 

1/2 teaspoon salt 

1/2 teaspoon sugar 

1/4 teaspoon black pepper 

1 small bay leaf 

1 teaspoon fennel seeds

In a large skillet, melt butter with the oil. Add the onion, celery and garlic and saute until soft. 

Add tomato sauce and tomato paste and stir until smooth. 

Add remaining ingredients and bring to slow simmer. 

Simmer for 30-60 minutes (or not at all depending on your taste and time frame). 

Remove the bay leaf and spread the sauce on your prepared pizza dough.

I also made sauce from fresh tomatoes in our garden, using this recipe:

Homemade Pizza Sauce with Fresh Tomatoes

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

3 minced garlic cloves

5 cups of fresh tomatoes, seeded and cubed (we don't seed or peel ours)

1/2 teaspoon salt

5 fresh basil leaves

1/2 teaspoon dried oregano

pinch of sugar

Heat the olive oil to medium low in a medium pot.

Saute garlic gently for 3 or 4 minutes.

Add fresh tomatoes, salt, basil and oregano to pan and simmer slowly for 30 minutes.

Add sugar halfway through cooking, to taste.

I packaged this sauce in 1 cup batches and froze them. I've found that as a frozen sauce thaws, it may separate a bit, but stirring it incorporates it again, and hasn't seemed to affect the taste.