BY
Who the heck doesn’t love pizza? There must be some of you out there, but I’m pretty sure that pizza is one of the most versatile, universally-loved food out there. You can get the down-home, crowd-pleasing Chicago deep dish supreme or a fancy-schmancy thin-crusted Italian Margherita.
About a year ago, I finally got it right. The sauce, too. This week, we’ll be doing the first of two homemade pizza cooking classes. Think of this as Pizza 101–the basics; versatile sauce, versatile crust, baked in an oven. In a few weeks, we’ll follow up with something a little more advanced.
There are lots of recipes for pizza sauce out there, but most of them are pretty work intensive. Quite honestly, if I’m going through the trouble to make homemade pizza, I don’t want to have to cook the sauce, too. Also, a lot of them are chunky and I don’t like chunky pizza sauce. And a lot of them are cooked with quite a bit of oil, so when you add the cheese, the pizza is all heavy and greasy.
I like this recipe because in addition to being super-yummy, it comes together in just a few minutes and uses ingredients you’ll probably have in your cupboard, anyway. Also, it’s a great dipping sauce for breadsticks! Ready, Freddy?
Pizza Sauce
Recipe by Our Best Bites
Ingredients:
1 6-oz. can tomato paste
6 oz. water (just use the empty tomato paste can)
3 Tbsp. garlic bread seasoning
1 Tbsp. sugar or honey (I usually use sugar because it’s easier and hey, I think we’ve established here that if there’s an easy road or a hard road, I usually take the easy road…)
3/4 tsp. onion powder
1/4 tsp. red pepper flakes (optional)
Instructions:
Empty tomato paste into a bowl and add water a few tablespoons at a time, stirring constantly until combined. Add remaining ingredients, stir to combine, and allow to stand until ready to use. Covers two average-sized pizza; freezes extremely well.
Try it on BBQ Grilled Pizza or a classic Oven Baked one.
mmm…pizza.
That’s all I wanted to say 🙂
I think I’ll try the recipe, but I have a question. Why use tomato paste instead of tomato sauce? Here, I’ve been using sauce this whole time….
Jen, you can use tomato sauce, you just need 12 ounces, which is a weird measurement for tomato sauce. Also, with the tomato paste, you can adjust the water if you need to–some people like it a little thicker and some people add a little more because they like it runnier.
Anyway, let us know how it turns out! 🙂
Oh i am so excited for this week. Are you going to teach us all how to grill the pizza?
You bet Alisa, I’ll be doing a cooking class on grilled pizza soon!
Oh this is going to make the male pizza addicts of my household sooooo happy! YAY for pizza!
I’ve been working on my homemade pizzas for the last few months. I’ve had great success with the pre-made dough and pizza sauce from Trader Joes. My best pizza was this past Friday night – sauceless. It was caramelized onions, arugula, fig and goat cheese with a drizzle of unfiltered olive oil…so good!
SO-I made this sauce with your breadsticks and the garlic seasoning (even made some cinnamon-sugary) Very Good! Thanks for all the great recipes. Love it.
One Food Guy-
when I used to live by a Trader Joes I would buy their pizza dough a lot- love it! I also love sauceless pizza. I often do it sauceless when I cook it on the grill. It’s kind of ironic, because on oven pizza, I prefer extra sauce! Anyway, Yours looks delish 🙂
oops, that dailybite comment was me. I always forget to log in as myself!
Wow this sounds great! And so easy. You ARE the best.
Made this the other day and my Hubby thought it was great and my best homemade pizza yet.
I must admit I never make my own pizza sauce. I always have some sort of jarred marinara and I always end up using that. However last night I was out of sauce so I whipped this up and we LOVED it. I think I'll be making it from now on! So simple and easy and we really liked a kick from the red pepper flakes.
Wow wow wow!! The sauce is SO GOOD! I'm enjoying it on my homemade pizza right this minutes. Bye bye jarred and canned sauce. This is so stinkin' easy and sooooo flavorful. LOVE IT! Thank you so much for the recipe. I found it on foodgawker.
Wow we loved this sauce. We made pizzas last night and we loved them. We had leftover pizza today and I think that I loved the pizzas even more. I love this sauce. It is now what we will use every time we make pizza. Thank you so much. I am loving the recipes from this blog and I love making something new to eat.
Made this sauce last night and it was sooo good! Actually it was great! Thank you so much! Looking forward to trying out the rest of your recipes!
You want simple? I don't even mix the spices in a bowl, I just sprinkle them on the sauce that's been spread on the pizza dough. Everybody likes my homemade pizza, so it must be OK. 🙂
This is seriously the best pizza sauce ever! If you are still using the store bought stuff, you are missing out!
This sounds delish! however i cant do dairy, can i do with out the garlic bread seasoning or sub it with something else?
I agree-this sauce is killer!!!!!!!I LOVED it.I’ve always been leery of marjoram but in this case it makes the sauce.Of all the recipes I’ve tried this is the one I’m using from now on.Thanks for sharing.
Easy and yummy. Thanks so much!
This was so yummy and my family loved it! I also liked the fact that it was easy, didn’t have to let it cook for 45 minutes (last my old pizza sauce recipe) and it wasn’t chunky!
I needed to make a pizza and I just realized that I didn’t have any sauce!! ahhhh!!! I decided to jump on here to see if by any chance you would have a recipe and you did!!! You guys have come through for me again!! Thanks!
This is my go to pizza sauce recipe now. It is the perfect consistency and has wonderful flavor. I use my tomato powder in place of the tomato paste and it works wonderfully. I left link to this recipe on a post I just did on how to use tomato powder in your favorite recipes. http://www.thrivequickdish.com/cook/you-say-tomato-i-say-tomato-powder/
Thanks!
Perfect. Just printed. Can’t wait to try this with my new delicious pizza crust by my favorite food bloggers!
Made this tonight for the Family. Everyone loved it!!!
Thanks for the wonderful recipes!!
Made your sauce this weekend and everybody LOVED it!! However I was disapointed when I got the leftovers out of the fridge this afternoon to use as a dipping sauce… it was a globby mess 🙁
how about a white garlic sauce next???
I’m so glad I found this recipe! I left it on low while pizza bites were in the oven…..<3 yum.
Delicious!!! My husband is very picky about his sauce and he LOVED this!!
Can I use McCormick’s Garlic Bread Sprinkle in place of your garlic bread seasoning?
I just bought a new Saber Grill, and they say it is very good for home made pizza. I was looking for a good recipe for sauce, I will use this. I think that I will go with a store bought crust, I just don’t know which one yet.
This pizza sauce is SO delicious. I’m using it on a gluten free pizza crust, so I wanted something with a lot of flavor, and this is definitely it.
Excellent! I made two homemade pizzas with this tonight and my picky kids ate both pizzas! Thank you :).
This is an excellent pizza sauce! 🙂 This will be my go-to sauce! The Garlic Bread seasoning is out of this world. I use it not only in this sauce or on garlic bread…but with any type of italian dish. Great mixed with a butter sauce and pasta.
What is the recipe for garlic bread seasoning? The link takes says it’s not there anymore. Thanks very much!!
I used some garlic bread seasoning from costco that must have a lot of garlic powder. Next time I’ll use 1 T. of that stuff….my family warded off all vampires in the vicinity!
I know this is an old recipe, but I’m so glad I found it. However the link to your garlic bread seasoning is broken.. any chance of finding it?
https://ourbestbites.com/2008/04/garlic-bread-seasoning/
Where do I get garlic bread seasoning? Thanks
You can make your own, or use any regular garlic bread seasoning from the store (found in the spice aisle)
How can something so simple taste so good? What makes it so good? I’m confused. My kids don’t like lumpy spaghetti sauce so they usually use tomato sauce and add garlic powder and italian seasoning. It’s very bland. I made this sauce tonight and it was a flavor explosion in our mouth. We had it on fried ravioli. I don’t know if it’s the sugar or onion or parmesan that does it. Probably the entire combination. Whatever magic is going on with all these ingredients, it was well worth my 5 min to make it 🙂
I love this, hahaha!
What is the garlic bread seasoning? The link in the recipe doesn’t work.
This really sounded good and simple. The link for garlic bread seasoning didn’t work but googled it and found it under our best bites. This was really simple and I really liked the way it tasted in the bowl but not on the pizza. Could just be my pizza taste. Would recommend it though for quick homemade pizza from scratch Using the GBS to make a loaf of bread in the machine. Adding some sliced black olives. Can’t wait. Thanks for recipe 🙂