The simplest and at the same time the most popular pizza in the whole world consists only of flour base, sauce and cheese. With such a modest composition, the taste of each component plays a crucial role. Italians are very serious about choosing and preparing sauce for their open cake. Most often they prefer liquid seasoning from tomatoes. Tomato sauce for pizza is always prepared on purpose, replacing it with regular ketchup sold in stores is considered unacceptable. If you started to bake an Italian pie at home, you should learn how to prepare the seasoning yourself to lubricate its base.
Cooking Features
Cooking a tomato sauce for an Italian open pie is not a difficult task, and even an aspiring cook will be able to handle it. However, to obtain the best result, he will need to know a few important points.
- To make a tomato sauce, it is best to take fresh ripe tomatoes. In the cold season liquid seasoning can be made from canned tomatoes or from tomato paste, mashed potatoes.
- If you are preparing a fresh tomato sauce, you must clean them of the skin and remove the bags of seeds from them. Only then the sauce will acquire a delicate and smooth texture. Peeling is required and canned tomatoes, although the seeds are usually not extracted from them.
- It will be easy to peel the tomatoes if you cross-cut the fruit on the side opposite the stem, then dip it in boiling water and cook for 2 minutes. After that, the tomatoes should be caught with a slotted spoon and placed in a container filled with cold water to cool them. Then it remains only to pull the exfoliated tips of the skins and pull it off.
- To remove the seeds, cut the tomatoes in half and remove the bags of seeds with a small spoon. If you are going to wipe the tomato pulp through a sieve, you do not need to remove the seeds beforehand, as they will not pass through the cells anyway.
- To prepare the sauce, the tomatoes are either ground to a state of mashed potatoes, rubbing through a sieve or interrupting their flesh with a blender, or cut into slices and stewed in this form. The nature of chopping tomatoes and other vegetables that make up the Italian Italian pie seasoning depends on the specific recipe.
- Almost always garlic is added to tomato pizza sauce or fried before frying the tomatoes, to give the seasoning a light garlic flavor. Also onion, pepper and some other components can be a part of tomato seasoning.
- Pizza sauce is often cooked in olive oil, but it can be replaced with any other vegetable oil, which is necessarily refined.
- Salt seasoning, focusing on your taste. Sugar is also often added to pizza sauce, which enhances the tomato flavor and makes it more balanced. Sometimes ground pepper and spicy herbs are put in the sauce, which also imprint on its organoleptic qualities.
Knowing the basic principles of cooking tomato sauce for pizza, you will certainly be able to cook a delicious and flavorful Italian pie. It remains only to choose the version of liquid seasoning that best suits your gastronomic preferences.
A simple recipe for tomato sauce for pizza
Composition:
- tomato paste - 50 ml;
- garlic - 2 cloves;
- olive oil - 20 ml;
- salt, sugar, black pepper, Provencal herbs - to taste.
Method of preparation:
- Put the tomato paste in a small bowl. Add to it spicy dried herbs, salt, sugar and pepper.
- Garlic cloves pass through a special press, put to tomato paste, mix.
- Rub the paste with a wooden spoon until the salt and sugar are completely dissolved in it.
- Add a spoonful of olive oil to the tomato paste, mix the products well, so that the resulting mass is homogeneous.
This variant of tomato pizza sauce is considered the simplest. To make it does not even have to heat the products. However, the cake with this liquid seasoning turns out to be much more tasty and fragrant than cooked using purchased ketchup.
Fresh Tomato Pizza Sauce
Composition:
- fresh ripe tomatoes - 0.5 kg;
- garlic - 2 cloves;
- olive oil - 10 ml;
- salt - 2-3 g;
- dried basil - 3-4 g;
- sugar - 2-3 g;
- black pepper or a mixture of peppers - 1-2 g.
Method of preparation:
- Wash the tomatoes, cut them in the “spout” area. Prepare two pots by filling them with water. In one pot, leave the water cold, in another, bring to a boil.
- Dip the tomatoes in a pot of boiling water, blanch them for 1-2 minutes, then transfer them to the pot of cold water with a skimmer. Peel off the fruit.
- Cut the fruit in half and remove the seed bags from them.
- Cut the remaining pulp into small pieces of arbitrary shape.
- Garlic cloves clean. Crush them with the flat side of the knife, then chop finely.
- Heat the oil in a skillet, put chopped tomatoes in it and fry them, stirring with a spatula, for 5 minutes.
- Add salt, pepper, basil and garlic, mix.
- Stew the sauce for a couple more minutes and remove from heat.
Before applying to a base of raw dough, tomato sauce needs to be cooled, otherwise it will evaporate the dough, making the future cake less attractive in appearance and at the same time less tasty.
Canned Pizza Tomato Sauce
Composition:
- tomatoes in own juice - 0, 3 kg;
- refined vegetable oil - 40 ml;
- garlic - 2 cloves;
- dried basil and oregano - to taste.
Method of preparation:
- Canned tomatoes, if they are not peeled, peel. Place them in a blender container and chop to form a homogeneous tomato mass.
- Garlic cloves, peeling, cut in half.
- Heat the oil in a skillet, fry the garlic in it, then remove the darkened garlic pieces.
- Place tomato paste in a saucepan, add dried herbs to it. Salt and sweeten it is not necessary, since salt and sugar have already been used for conservation.
- Stew tomato paste until it has the consistency of the sauce.
It remains to cool the sauce to room temperature and use for its intended purpose. When it cools down, it will become thicker, and it will be easier to put it on the pizza base.
Tomato sauce with onions for pizza
Composition:
- onions - 150 g;
- tomatoes - 0, 3 kg;
- refined vegetable oil - 40 ml;
- sugar - 5 g;
- salt, pepper, dried herbs - to taste.
Method of preparation:
- Free the onions from the husk, finely chop.
- Heat a spoonful of butter in a saucepan. Put the onion in it and simmer on low heat until it becomes soft and transparent. Wipe it through a sieve.
- Dip the tomatoes with boiling water, peel off the skins and cut into small cubes.
- In a skillet, heat the remaining butter, put the tomato pieces into it, salt and pepper, sprinkle with sugar and then 5 minutes. Allow the tomato mass to cool slightly and wipe it through a sieve.
- Mix tomato paste with onion, add spicy herbs to this mixture. Mix the sauce well and let it stand.
Tomato sauce prepared according to this recipe is suitable not only for pizza, but also for pasta.
The sauce plays a big role in cooking pizza. Most often Italians use liquid seasoning from tomatoes for an open cake. You can make it according to several recipes of different degrees of complexity.
