I have a good dough receipe but not totally happy with the sauce. What recommendations do you have for a higher end pre-made sauce which can be bought through most food services. My shop is too small to make it on my own. Thanks in advance.
I’d only comment to seriously reconsider the size of your shop limiting your ability to put together a great sauce profile you will proudly call your own. We’re a full-service restaurant, pizza is about 27% of our total sales and we’re not over-loaded with prep nor storage areas. Our homemade sauce comes from an area no bigger than a 4ft table, and is stored in our way too small walk-in in 2 or 3 24QT “Cambro” buckets.
Thanks for the suggestion but wouldn’t I need a stove? I just have room for double conveyor oven and two prep tables? Do you have a receipe you’d be willing to share?
Try Don Pepino pizza sauce. It’s a really good sauce that can be used straight out of the can. Sam’s club carries it along with most major distributors.
We never heat ours. I know that’s a topic that always garners plenty of debate here and on other forums but for US, with OUR expectations and on OUR pizza…not heating is the only way to go.
I’ll be happy to forward you my recipe via PM tomorrow when I get back into the Pub.
We don’t cook our sauce either. Maybe that’s a Chicago and Illinois thing? The first time our sauce cooks is when it’s on the pizza.
We have a very small operation and make our own sauce. We don’t heat our sauce any more, but when we did we started out with a Colman camping stove, we then switch to a food warmer/crock pot thing. You could also get a small one or two burner hot plate from your restaurant supply store. Any of these would be fairly easy to store and then just pull it out when you need to cook your sauce.
Several of us on this forum really value freshness of the tomato flavor in our sauce. That means a couple of things are important to us like fresh-packed tomatoes as the base (I am a Stanislaus shop); high grade herbs and spices with limited salt and usually no sugar; and the ONLY time our sauce is cooked is when it is on the pizza in the oven. That’s our thing, and we make good sauces amongst us.
My sauce is canned tomato product, a little water, herbs and a whisk. No salt, no sugar, no cooking. You can do a really good pizza with just crushed tomato, some basil and oregano and a spoon. You may be tempted to shy away from the bigger named premium tomatoes on the market because they cost a couple to a few dollars more per case. If you do the math, the ‘good’ products will cost maybe 6 cents or so more per pizza when all is said and done . . . .that’s a lot of flavor return for 6 cents. Those products use minimal heat in processing, work all year to get the best fruit from the best fields come harvest time, and they are committed to having the best products available to pizza shops. I picked Stanislaus 5 years ago from an ad in a pizza magazine, and have never been happier with any other decision . . . their service is top shelf, and products outstanding. Take the chance and see if your supplier will give you a few cans for samples. Any number of us can give you recipes to start out with.
i have never heard of cooking pizza sauce…we do cook our pasta sauce though…are you using the same for both?
No cooking here either.
Isn’t stanislauss the best company to deal with. Talk about customer service.
What service? I am missing something. Your order a case of product from your food service distributor and they deliver it. Quality/value issues aside, what is the “service” you receive from Stanislauss?
MTNPizza:
No need to ever cook a pizza sauce as it will be cooked on the pizza.
My own, personal favorite pizza sauce, if you wish to call it that, is made as follows:
Brush the dough skin very lightly with olive oil, then apply about a tablespoon of minced garlic, spread over the surface of the dough, then add a sprinkling of fresh cut green leaf basil, followed by an application of well drained tomato filets (Stanislaus 74/40) done. Great taste, great texture, and wonderful eye appeal. Pretty simple too. For those of you who have seen me at the various shows, this is the “sauce” that we most commonly use while we’re making pizzas.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor
Personally, I have had them troubleshoot sauce consistency/viscosity issues with me, formulation to use less water and more tomato, samples of various products in their line without any hesitation, detailed and involved conversations about the make-up and intended uses of their various products when I was getting started, the oft joked-about posters, product replacement when damaged, website provides nutritional info easy to find, innovation & product ideas for new menu items, pricing review when I was concerned a vendor was charging way more than other outlets, and basically returning/responding to any correspondence I sent to them. That was fairly uncommon for me to have happen with lots of companies until the recession days made small guys valuable customers. Their business model even impresses me in that they sell their product for the same price to every wholesaler/distributor, regardless of how many thousands of cans (or just hundreds) you’re stocking for them . . . . I don’t have to be chained to a huge mega-vendor if I don’t want to be. I like that they leverage that sort of freedom of access in the marketplace. They have enormous data servers where they record every customer interaction/phone contact to reference if I call again.
What it comes down to for me is that this company, and a scant few others I deal with, have shown a level of urgency to respond, and demonstrated the importance of keeping my business. It is an overall impression that is the culmination of a whole bunch of small things as well as a couple more significant ones specific to my business histroy. They just make me believe that their end use customers are a big priority for them.
Several companies are fresh-packing high grade tomato products every July-September. I get that. Stanislaus has shown a personal connection and committment that I have experienced. Others have not had that big a reaction, but I cannot remember anyone who has been actually done wrong by them, either.
[quote=“NicksPizza”]
Several of us on this forum really value freshness of the tomato flavor in our sauce. That means a couple of things are important to us like fresh-packed tomatoes as the base (I am a Stanislaus shop); high grade herbs and spices with limited salt and usually no sugar; and the ONLY time our sauce is cooked is when it is on the pizza in the oven. That’s our thing, and we make good sauces amongst us.
Nicks is right on on his advice. Stanislaus also has some great Prepared Sauces as well. If you go to their website their are recipes also.
We’ve been experimenting a bit w/our sauce…thinking of not using any prepared pizza sauce @ all, but just using Tom’s garlic method (actually infused garlic oil) and crushed tomatoes (Stanislaus “Tomato Magic” is my preference)
Wow, this PMQ is a great resauce!! Thanks for all of the help both here and private messages!
mtnpizza
my 2cents we have used stanislaus full-red fully prepared for8 yrs only had a problem once contacted them they asked us to send it back to the dist and they sent us a followup letter thanking us for caring enough to let them know thier product was not up to snuff.
if you are wanting to spice your own sauce then full red pizza sauce (not fully prepared)is what you want it has the consistency of pizza sauce just no flavor. you can tweek your own sauce no cooking or heating
back in the day with PJ’s i remember opening a case of red sauce and adding there spice pack and using a drill wwith a long mixer tip
this is something you could do make you spice up one day a week and have them on hand for QUALITY control keep the recipe to yourself. or you could look into prepackaged spice packs
not sure where you are at but Roma, sysco, us foods carrie this and i have even seen it at rest depot if you are on the east coast area or in the midwest (ie texas, ok, kan, missouri you can try Lisanti Food Service there pricing is very competetive and thier Casa Primo pizza sauce is pretty good
ok so maybe that was a 50ent piece
dennis
I forgot that once I sent that postcard you find in a case of Stanislaus . . . for a free Italian sayings poster . . . I got on their mailing list and get a quarterly newsletter from them that includes business ideas, recipes, and a letter from Tom or Dino Cartopassi, the co-owners. Usually a pretty decent message for new and intermediate operators. We even got published with one of our ideas, and they sent us a Franklin. Same with every contributor. They sent us Christmas present one year, a glass tomato christmas tree ornament. We started doing that for our staff each year using a different blown glass vegetable or pizza themed thing (like pizza slices).
Nick;
Neat!
Did I read correctly that you found a supplier of Christmas tree ornaments shaped like a slice of pizza? If so, do you remember where you got them? That’s a great idea for Christmas gifts.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor