There are three main components to a pizza; crust, sauce and cheese. Crust provides a foundation to support the pizza's other elements and cheese provides a pleasing mouth-feel and flavor. However, thinking back to the last great pizza you enjoyed, chances are you best remember the tomato sauce.

A study conducted by a sauce manufacturer revealed the following facts about the flavor profile of pizza. Believe it or not, the crust provides only 6 percent of the overall flavor, while cheese contributes 21 percent. Toppings account for 32 percent of the flavor and sauce accounts for 41 percent. If you want to get more flavors in your pizza, tweaking your sauce can give you the biggest bang for your buck. On the other hand, tomato sauce is a flavor bargain, accounting for 10 percent or less of the overall ingredient cost, while cheese is the most costly ingredient, followed by toppings and then crust.

Chef Dino Ciccone, owner of Famous Eastown Pizza, says, "While the crust is important, most of the flavor comes from the sauce. You get flavor from the toppings too, but an onion is an onion. You shouldn't skimp on your sauce ingredients and buy the best."

The History of the Tomato
While there have been several new variations to the sauce base, such as pesto, white sauces and others, the tomato-based sauce is the most popular. In order to better understand its popularity and usage, let's look at the origins of the tomato. Many may think that they originated in Europe, but in fact the tomato is indigenous to the Americas. Tomatoes were grown by the Aztecs and Incas and discovered and carried back to Europe by the Conquistadors and found favor in areas like Spain, Italy and the Mediterranean. As this fruit and its mystery migrated north, it acquired many names. The French called them Love Apples and Germans referred to them as The Apple of Paradise. Years before they were widely used in cooking, many Europeans refused to eat tomatoes because they were thought to be poisonous, and in fact, they do belong to the same family as nightshade, the tomatoes deadly cousin. This fear of tomatoes was also found in colonial America, but was soon overcome when the Creoles started using them in gumbos and jambalayas (Source: www.tomato.org). In the 1600s, to prove tomatoes were not poisonous, a farmer stood on the courthouse stairs in Philly and ate a dozen to show people there weren't dangerous. The rest is history.

Tomato Sauces
Nearly all pizzerias use a tomato-based sauce for pizza, so let's understand more about the production and divisions of sauce. There are four main divisions of sauce: concentrated crushed, sauce, paste and heavy puree. Concentrated crushed generally has some of the liquid drained and is typically more chunky and has high amounts of solids and salt. Sauce has flavors added and lacks chunks of tomatoes. Paste is usually heavily cooked and has a concentrated tomato flavor while a heavy tomato puree is thick and may contain salt. Puree also has the seeds and skin screened out while sauce has a trace of seeds and skin producing a natural feeling in the mouth.

When it comes to using sauce, most pizza makers would be insulted if you asked them to open a can of ready-to-use sauce and apply it directly to the pizza. After all, who wants their pizza to be ordinary? Most pizzerias start with a base and add their own secret ingredients.

To make your sauce, you can start with a concentrated crushed, prepared base or fully prepared base. Using the concentrated crushed, you can add your own seasonings and cut it with water. The concentrated crushed is best when you want a chunkier sauce and is typically what you see with traditional sauces. One that we will discuss later, and that is gaining much popularity, is a "grandma" sauce. The prepared base consists of the tomato base and has less solids than the crushed. A fully prepared sauce has spices and ingredients already added, but most operators still add their own blend of seasoning to it to enhance the flavor.

Packaging
The most common packaging for sauce is canned. It is still the most mainstream method tomato producers use to package sauce, but there are other ways of packaging that are becoming popular. One is bulk packed, where the sauce is packaged in three-gallon containers. One advantage to bulk packed is pricing, which is lower due to the higher volumes purchased. The newest form of packaging is a pouch. The advantages here are the buyer can actually see the product and there is less space needed for storage and less waste. Other benefits to pouches are: no cut fingers, which can result in workers' comp claims and better evacuation of usable product. In disposal terms, you can fit sixty #10 can equivalent pouches inside one #10 can.

A term used in tomato packaging that some might not fully understand is what is commonly referred to as Fresh Pack. What exactly does Fresh Pack mean? Fresh Pack tomatoes are only packaged during the tomato season. They are vine-ripened and usually packaged within a few hours from being picked in the field. This is in contrast to remanufactured tomatoes where they are picked, processed into a concentrate and packaged at a later date after being reconstituted with water.

Sauce can also be purchased in 55-gallon drums if you are a high volume restaurant. It comes in a plastic drum and should be stored in your walk-in cooler. A drum of sauce can be kept for about one month.

Flavor, Color and Acid Levels
When looking for just the right sauce, the first thing desired is flavor. A first indicator of flavor can be the color of the sauce. You want a nice red color, but not too dark. In many cases, the darker colors may indicate the tomatoes were overcooked. Also, when you cook your sauce, it becomes even darker. Cooking pulls from the flavor and the color.

"Salt is the most important ingredient in your sauce," Chef Dino says. "If you master the use of salt, you are half way to being a chef. The second most important ingredient in my opinion is garlic. I think powder is a good way to go because it is easily distributed throughout the sauce when you mix it. The next ingredients are basil and oregano."

These are your basic additives, but there are other things you can add to your sauce to enhance the flavor, one of which is olive oil. Extra virgin olive oil is best, but you can also use flavored olive oils. One thing you can do to flavor olive oil is to put the oil in a pot and add peeled garlic. Heat the oil, careful not to overcook it and burn the garlic, and let it sit for 20-30 minutes. This can be done with basil and other herbs, too.

To bring out the flavor in sauce, you can also use Romano cheese, black pepper and finely chopped white onion. Be careful in using oregano because when it is used in sauce, it can make it bitter and cause the sauce to go bad in just a few days. Another thing that oregano will do is give your customers heartburn.

There has always been a debate about if sauce should be cooked or not. Chef Bruno, corporate chef for Marsal & Sons and owner of Bellissimo Restaurants, highly recommends the use of a steam kettle to cook sauce. "Look into these," he says. "They keep the sauce from burning, but they are not cheap. I also think cooking takes some of the acidity out of a bitter sauce. Another thing you can do to kill the acid is to add a quarter tablespoon of baking powder per case of sauce. You can also add about eight ounces of liquid butter per case of tomatoes to add a richness to your sauce." The main thing to remember about cooking sauce is that it will burn, so never leave it alone. If it does burn, do not disturb the burnt part on the bottom. Immediately transfer the sauce to another pot and add a small amount of vegetable stock or pasta water, which has a lot of flavor, but if there is the slightest hint of a scorched flavor, you'll have to start all over.

When cooking sauce, use stainless steel pots and pans. Aluminum pots and pans can kill sauce according to Chef Bruno. "Don't ever use aluminum for your sauces," he says.

Another disadvantage to cooking a sauce has to do with lost flavors. When the sauce is cooked the kitchen will smell great, but those aromas will never be appreciated by your customers as they have been lost forever from the sauce. The normal cooking that the sauce receives on the pizza during its baking is sufficient to cook the sauce and release those wonderful aromas. Something else to consider when thinking about pre-cooking a sauce is how to get it chilled back to 40°F in a safe and timely manner. Remember your four-hour food safety clock is ticking while your sauce is between 160°F and 40°F, so you will need to get it chilled down as quickly as possible. This might be easier said than done as 60 to 70 pounds of sauce can take some time to cool down even in the best retarder.

Start your sauce with tomato products that are as close to ready-to-use thickness as possible. Why? Because the longer a tomato is heated, the more it will lose its fresh flavor and instead create a cooked flavor. For a fresher flavor, dial back the temperature and cooking time.

Sauce Trends
Chef Bruno says one of the biggest things in New York right now is a sauce called Grandma's sauce. "This started in Long Island, but the word is starting to spread," Chef Bruno says. "To make the sauce, you take crushed tomatoes and let them drain for half of a day. Add some cut and drained plum tomatoes that you crush by hand and basil, olive oil, salt, pepper and fresh garlic. The sauce is scattered across the pizza. Right now everyone in New York is fighting over who has the best Grandma pizza."

Just a few days after Chef Bruno told me about Grandma's sauce, I ran across an article that appeared in Newsday magazine. It seems that Grandma's sauce is a term also used to describe a style of pizza. Grandma Pizza is described as a thin layer of dough stretched into a "Sicilian" pan and topped with fresh mozzarella and the sauce Chef Bruno described, according to the Newsday article. This pizza is virtually unknown west of Queens, but word is spreading fast. You may want to investigate it.

"The next big things in pizza will be Alfredo and shrimp and Alfredo and feta," says Chef Bruno. "To make a nice Alfredo sauce, simply take light cream and add Parmesan, butter, salt, white pepper and simmer it. Cool and then you can use it. White sauces are also getting big. These usually have Ricotta with butter and Parmesan."

Gourmet pizzas have been rising in popularity and one of the sauces being used on gourmet pizzas is clam sauce. Clam sauce can also be used for pastas. You can take a clam sauce, add it to a pan with shallots, garlic, olive oil, salt and pepper and add your meat. Once it starts to cook, you can add alcohol, like wine or Sambucca, let it flame and develop for about a minute and add tomatoes and let it reduce.

Other sauces that are being used are pesto sauces. Pesto can be found in many different flavors, such as roasted red pepper, basil, and walnut. When using pesto in sauces, remember it has a strong flavor. It is suggested to use two ounces of pesto per 12-inch crust and use one-third less part-skim Mozzarella. This will balance the flavor and offset the cost of the pesto. Pesto is a strong flavor, so experiment with it at first because too much can be overpowering. Also, do not use pesto in a frozen state; be sure to let it thaw and come to room temperature before cooking with it and the results will be much more desirable and pleasing. Spicy sauce is also becoming more popular along with salsas.

Marketing
Pizzerias offer customers choices in toppings and crust and some even have different cheese options. Why not a choice of sauce? Jeff Stewart, owner of Hound Dog's Three Degree Pizza in Columbus, Ohio, offers four different sauces. "We started out offering regular and spicy sauce," Jeff says. "We added one called Smokin Joe and a sweet sauce. The spicy and regular are the most popular, but having a choice gives customers another reason to try us out. I was a big fan of wings and the different flavors they came in and wondered why pizza didn't offer more sauce choices. I figured if it didn't work, we wouldn't be out anything, but it was quick to interest people. "The problems we discovered were we had to have a bigger sauce line and keep up with which pizzas were which. Our customers like the choices and I think it is a hit. We've been doing multiple sauces since we opened and have tried others, but these four seem to work for now." Your sauce is like your pizzeria's signature. It can make or break a good pizza. Nearly every pizzeria owner spends much time creating their own secret recipe and with good reason; it is the flavor that lingers the most. Most pizzeria owners have already established their recipe and probably won't change it, but adding sauce choices is something that should be considered, if not for your pizza, for pastas. Gourmet appears to be the trend, so plain sauces just won't do. And remember, the pizzerias of today are the Italian restaurants of tomorrow. To help you out, here is a list of sauce resources for you to check out. See what you can come up with. Also, for sauce recipes, be sure to visit the PMQ Recipe Bank for sauce recipes, including Chef Bruno's Parmesan Pizza Sauce.
http://www.pmq.com/recipes.shtml

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