Our pizza sauce has two ingredients: tomatoes and salt. We do not cook it, sweeten it or add herbs. It goes on the dough raw and cooks for the first time in the oven, in about 90 seconds.
That means the tomato has to be right before it reaches us. We use plum tomatoes because they have thick flesh, few seeds and less water than a round salad tomato. Less water matters. A wet sauce steams the dough from above and leaves the middle of the pizza soft and pale.
We taste every batch for two things: sweetness and acidity. A good sauce tomato has both. If a batch is flat we blend it with a sharper one rather than reaching for sugar.
The tomatoes are crushed by hand, not blended. A blender breaks the seeds, which turns the sauce bitter and slightly orange. Crushing by hand leaves small pieces that you can see on a Margherita or a Marinara.
The pasta sauces are a different matter. Arrabbiata and sugo are cooked down slowly with garlic and olive oil, because pasta needs a sauce that clings. Same tomato, opposite treatment.
