Pizza Sauce

I love making homemade pizza, but mine always was a bit flawed, or watery I should say. After doing some research I tried a few new techniques. Here they are:

1. Do not cook the sauce. I was skeptical of this. I always made a big pot of sauce, let it cook on the stove and then put it on the pizza and cook it again in the oven. Well, it's already cooking in the oven, so there is no need to double cook it. That's why it may turn a bit brown sometimes.

2. Use whole peeled tomatoes. When at the store, shake the can. If it sounds watery, then the tomatoes are too bitter, look for cans that when you shake them, do not have too much sound.

3. Rinse the tomatoes. Use a small colander and wash the tomatoes. This will help take some of the bitterness out of the tomatoes.

Now here is the process of making the sauce:

Once the tomatoes have been rinsed, take off the top yellowy part of the tomato and if you so choose squeeze out the seeds, the extra water is not necessary, and could make your pizza watery in the end. Once all the tomatoes have been seeded, place in a bowl and mash them. I used an immersion blender. I think this worked really well. If you don't have an immersion blender on hand, a potato masher would work too. Then add salt, a tad of sugar, oregano, and grated romano (all to taste). I could not find grated romano at the store so I substituted with grated parmesan and added a bit more salt. If you do use romano, be careful as to how much salt you add because this already is a salty cheese. Mix together, add more spices/cheese after a taste if need be. You can store this sauce in the fridge. But when you are ready to use the sauce, get it to room temperature first. This sauce was delicious and will be the only way I make pizza sauce from now on.


I learned one other technique to help pizza not turn out too watery. Dry out your fresh mozzarella. A lot of times, fresh mozzarella comes in containers stored with water. I would usually slice it up and put it on the pizza, well this could be the problem too as why homemade pizza can turn out to be too watery. I took the mozzarella balls out of the water and wrapped them in paper towels for awhile so that the moisture would be taken out of them.


Our pizza turned out wonderful, not watery at all, the crust was nice and crispy, not soggy. Hope you enjoyed these pizza making tips.

Charcoal Grilled Pizza with Goat Cheese and Shallots

We have fun experimenting with different pizza combinations at home.  We’ve done the pizza stone in the oven which produces really good results, but the closest to authentic east coast, brick oven style, in my opinion, is pizza from the grill. This works really well and is pretty easy.

Your best bet is to work on a large charcoal grill. Move all the coals to one side so you’re flaming hot for direct grilling and you’re also set up for indirect baking on the other side. See Steve Rachlan’s “How To Grill” for more detailed instructions. Our copy has a broken spine and pages falling out we’ve used it so often.

You can make your own dough if so inclined or frozen pizza dough works just fine. Roll it out thin and at the last minute brush some olive oil over your grates. Lay the pizza dough on the grates and stay put. This won’t take long and its easy to burn (a little char is good for the New Haven pizza quality). Watch for bubbles and then flip.

Once your crust is grilled on both sides add your toppings and bake on the other side of the grill. If you’re grill is not large enough, we’ve done this step under the broiler. You’re really just trying to melt cheese and warm toppings.

We’ve had a lot of fun with seasonal toppings and we’ve had success with everything from cheddar cheese to apples to grilled corn.

We topped this pizza with a little mozzarella, goat cheese, sautéed shallots and garlic and then fresh thyme at the end. The standout ingredient among all these bold flavors was the thyme. This was delicious and definitely a keeper.