Canned tomatoes and tomato sauce are cooked (or at least "heat processed), so I’m not sure what you’re advocating. Tomato paste is just concentrated cooked tomato without seeds or skin. Raw tomatoes with the seeds and pulp are going to be watery regardless of what you do to them. I suppose one could seed them, then toss them into a food processor, but I think you’ll end up with a watery mess again. If the sauce is going to cook on the pizza anyway, what difference does it make?
So how do you avoid the water problem with fresh tomatoes? And how do you make a thick sauce without cooking off the liquid?
The floor of a gas oven can get to about 600-700 during heating. That can let you do a really nice approximation of a wood fired oven. Complete with the compressed cooking times you mentioned.
Also if you put your stone on the oven base be prepared for it to crack.
Well, when you make sauce from fresh tomatoes, you use a fleshy variety (like Romas) and, yes, you do seed them exactly for that reason. Canned tomatoes do not really taste “cooked.” They may be heat treated to kill off any nasties, but they don’t have the same taste as tomatoes that have been simmered down for a half hour or more into a sauce.
It’s just a matter of preference. I like the “fresh” flavor of uncooked tomatoes to the more concentrated cooked down flavor of something that’s been simmered for a long time. At least in pizza sauce and most (but not all) of my pasta sauces. I do enjoy a good Sunday gravy or bolognese, too, and those are long-simmered sauces.
And for pizza sauce which I make from canned tomatoes (which is the vast majority of the time), I always strain the tomatoes to get as much liquid out as possible, and whiz the flesh with a stick blender.
Let me reiterate–absolutely nothing wrong with cooking your pizza sauce. I wouldn’t go over 30 minutes, though, and never bring it to a boil, and cool down before using. I just prefer uncooked tomatoes pureed with just a dash of this and that.
Anyone who wants to delve into sauces, both cooked and uncooked, knock yourself out right here on this board. If you can find 6-in-1 brand tomatoes where you’re at, I highly recommend picking them up. They are the perfect consistency for pizza sauce, and awesome fresh tomato flavor. And not expensive. A 28-oz can around here is usually $2.50, but I’ve found them on sale for as cheap as $1.50.
The trick here is, though, unlike a wood-fired oven, the whole pizza isn’t surrounded with incendiary heat, so you have to cook it in two stages. You don’t quite get the same spring and top-side browning as in a wood fired oven, and the times are longer. While the crust will cook in 2-4 minutes, the top will take another 5-10, depending on whether you put it under the broiler or not. Putting it under the broiler gives you some nice top-side charring, but you have to pay a bit more attention to it and rotate and move the pizza to cook it evenly. I’ve gotten a bit lazy and just let it finish normally on the top rack in the 450 degree oven, so that takes closer to 10 minutes (I’m estimating here–I just look at the state of the cheese to determine doneness) to finish.
Still, I’m surprised with all the “imitate woodfired pizza at home” threads on the net, I haven’t come across anyone doing the parchment paper-oven floor method I stumbled upon.
The pan instead of a stone, the temp, and too much sauce could all be reasons for having a doughy crust.
I make pizza every couple of weeks once it gets cold, and I use a stone, not too much sauce, and 500 degrees. My crust is crunchy on the bottom but it’s still a little doughy for me.
I was watching an ep of America’s Test Kitchen, and the difference was:
I mix the yeast with a little warm (110 or so) water and sugar, let it bloom, and then add it to the flour, mix, knead it, then let the dough rise twice in a warm setting. Which I think is the standard way.
They used ice water (40 degrees) and just dumped it into the flour with rapid rise yeast, mixed, then refrigerated it for 24 hours. Supposedly that makes a difference. I’m going to try it.
Yes, canned tomatoes are cooked, however, they are only cooked as much as needed to preserve them in the can and decent brands are canned within a few hours of picking. Take a taste of some canned tomatoes and some tomato paste straight from the can and I’m sure you’ll detect the long-cooked flavor of the paste.
As for the sauce cooking on the pizza, we’re talking about somewhere around six or seven minutes, not the 45 minutes you might simmer a pasta sauce. If the flavor didn’t change during the long cooking, we wouldn’t be doing it.
My feeling is that good canned tomatoes are generally better than fresh grocery store tomatoes – unless the store has in-season local produce – so I don’t use fresh tomatoes for sauces. Like I said, there is room for debate, but the places where I like their pizza all use uncooked sauce and so do I.
My pizza sauce is just about the same as pulykamell’s. Drain a can of tomatoes (I tend to buy Redpack), put in some salt, oregano and garlic, and hit it with the stick blender. I sometimes add some pepper, basil, or marjoram, and sometimes some good olive oil. I usually make the sauce a day ahead and keep it in the fridge to give the flavors time to blend, then let the sauce and dough come to room temperature before using.
Thanks for the information. I’m going to give the fresh sauce a try, and also fiddle with the dough/crust. Additional refrigeration usually helps a raised dough, so if I have advanced notice, I’ll give it a shot. I’ve got a bunch of cans of San Marzano tomatoes that really need to be used up, so they’re the likely choice. Since it’s likely to be soupy, I’ll cut back on the amount used. I need to make pizza more often, so I’m not constantly reinventing the bloody things.