The first topping for any pizza is the sauce. Depending on what you choose, the sauce can either be the predominant flavor of your pizza or a more well-balanced accent.
In Naples – the spiritual home of all good pizza – crushed San Marzano tomatoes are spread over the crust. You can buy canned San Marzanos at good grocery stores. Grown in the ashy soil on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius, they’re expensive but have wonderful flavor.
Just be sure you drain them thoroughly before using them so your crust doesn’t get soggy.
For a more American pie, you can use your favorite marinara sauce, or ready-made pizza sauce from a can or jar. Tomato sauce stands up well to bold flavors like cured meats, olives, and artichokes. And it’s great with Italian cheeses.
A “white pizza” is made without a sauce in the conventional sense. The crust is brushed with olive oil and maybe a little garlic before the cheese and other pizza toppings are added.
Although a tomato-based sauce is the traditional favorite, it’s by no means the only choice. Pesto is a wonderful base for a vegetarian or a chicken pizza. If you grow your own basil, consider making your own. You can freeze it in ice cube trays and then just pop out the number of cubes you need. They’ll thaw in a flash and taste fresher than many of the alternatives.
If you don’t feel like making your own, many grocery stores carry fresh pesto in the refrigerator section, and it’s also available in jars and tubes. Pesto, ripe tomato, artichoke hearts, and pine nuts make a wonderful combination. And big, full flavors like these let you reduce the amount of cheese, yielding a healthier pizza.
In addition to basil, there are many other kinds of pesto – sun-dried tomato, artichoke, and walnut, to name a few. These are all terrific pizza toppings. When trying to decide which toppings to combine, think of your favorite pasta dishes. If the flavors blend well in the bowl, they’ll likely complement each other.
A barbecued chicken pizza with barbecue sauce, smoked gouda, red onions, and cilantro is a nice break from the usual. And enchilada sauce or salsa makes a great base for Mexican pizza toppings like ground beef, chiles, and cheddar.
Non-traditional or “gourmet” pizzas, use sauces from other cuisines to great advantage. Thai peanut sauce is a wonderful base for chicken, shrimp, or crisp vegetables. Hoisin or plum sauce – the kind used in mushu pork – is another bright taste that is fantastic with Asian ingredients.
Think outside the box, and you can enjoy pizza every night of the week.