Pizza sauce

Tippenze wrote:What's your favorite out of the can/jar?
My absolute favorite is Pastorelli's - I haven't found anything close. I'd like to try something new though. Suggestions?

Antonius wrote:

G Wiv wrote:As we were placing our two thin crust pizza order our waitress, Michele, suggested we switch one to her favorite a "Panless Pizza."

Panless Pizza which doesn't mean no-pan, but, for reasons unknown, crushed tomato instead of tomato sauce and less cheese, was very good, rivaling Candlelite, but not Vito and Nick's on Pulaski or Zaffiro's in Milwaukee. The roughly crushed tomato lent a freshness to the pizza accented by the light hand with the cheese...

Gary:

I would guess that the pizza is referred to as "panless" because the tomato element is not a sauce cooked in a pan but rather just (canned) pomodori pelati which are crushed and/or chopped, perhaps combined in a bowl with garlic, seasoning and perhaps a touch of olive oil, and applied thus to the dough, without any cooking. This method is an old one, used by many pizzaioli on both sides of the ocean, including Antonius and his apprentice, Lucantonius:

http://lthforum.com/bb/viewtopic.php?p=28099#28099


See also:
http://lthforum.com/bb/viewtopic.php?p=29441#29441

Antonius wrote:This time we made our Neapolitan-style pizza with thinly sliced pieces of proscitto di Parma which were shielded from the heat by the uncooked tomato ‘sauce’ (roughly chopped pomodori pelati tipo San Marzano, touch of oregano, touch of garlic), slices of mozzarella di bufala, torn basil leaves, a sprinkle of parmigiano and a restrained drizzle of Sicilian olive oil. I’ve mentioned elsewhere that I rarely buy imported mozzarella di bufala but did so for this occasion, in part as a result of having had to reflect on my dissatisfaction with the mozzarella di mucca or fior di latte which I find around here in the context of the discussion of my previous recent post on homemade pizza. An additional reason I could not resist buying this particular imported cheese was that it was produced in an old satellite village of my family’s home-town in northern Campania (Provincia di Caserta), the zone that is considered by many to produce the very finest mozzarella di bufala in Campania. Of course, it was no less delicious than it was expensive, but predictably the texture was no longer as it should be. Here is our pizza col prosciutto in the precooked state:

I take it that there is some awareness on the part of the folks at Romano's that this approach is a more traditional one and they therefore also use less cheese in combination therewith, rendering the pie more Italianate in character and less 'Merican'.

In general, I find the cooked sauces employed in most pizzerie in this country unappealling. But then I'm probably to be counted among those people who, according to some, are to be forgotten. ( )

Tippenze wrote:What's your favorite out of the can/jar?
My absolute favorite is Pastorelli's - I haven't found anything close. I'd like to try something new though. Suggestions?