We’ve been making pizza for many years, making our tomato sauce out of tomato paste mixed with a little homemade tomato sauce. But many people swear by the excellence of pizza made using San Marzano tomatoes instead. 

San Marzano

The San Marzano tomato originated in the town of San Marzano, near Naples in the Campania region of Italy. It’s a plum tomato, but longer and thinner than other plum varieties. It has more flesh than many other varieties, with a stronger, sweeter taste.

The tomatoes originally were grown only in the volcanic soil near Mt Vesuvius, which may have led to their somewhat unique flavor. Here’s a nice summary of the tomatoes and the town where they are grown.

Canned San Marzano tomatoes are widely available, but only those with a DOP label are considered authentic, since they are grown only in the Campania region. Seeds are widely available, and you can grow them yourself, but they won’t be the same as ones grown in the warm climate of southern Italy. 

The tomatoes are indeterminate (which means they keep growing rather than stopping at a particular height) and are thus prolific have a long growing season. My own experience of growing them in New England would suggest that they are a pale imitation of their Italian cousins: they need the Italian climate. They are also somewhat disease prone in northern climates.

So, to make your San Marzano pizza, you would use canned San Marzano tomatoes, just as the Italians do. They are readily available, but more expensive than other varieties. We found a 22 oz can of Cento brand organic San Marzano tomatoes at Stop and Shop for about $6.00. However, you can buy the same tomatoes with the organic marketing label for about $4.00 at Walmart. (For a complete discussion of organic marketing, you can read about how the organic program developed here). 

Our recipe

Still, San Marzano are more expensive. Cento sells a 22 oz can of “canned Italian tomatoes” for only $2.99. But for this recipe, we bought the Stop of Shop Cento organic San Marzano for $6, carrying them gingerly to our car. (We found the Walmart price for the non organic version later).

These tomatoes come in a puree, also made from San Marzanos, but a bit watery to use in pizza sauce, so we scooped out the actual tomatoes and drained them in a sieve before using them.

We always make our pizza sauce using garlic, oregano, basil and rosemary, so we put the drained tomatoes into a blender with the cut up spices and minced garlic. This was really all there was to our pizza sauce, but since it was still a bit watery, we drained it again before spreading it on our homemade pizza dough.

We rolled out our usual pizza dough recipe and slipped some cornmeal under the dough so we could easily slide it onto the pizza peel. We spread the sauce on the rolled out dough. 

Then we added some EVOO and topped the pie with fresh mozzarella, pepperoni, onions and some sliced mildly hot peppers. We slipped the pie onto a hot pizza stone in a 475˚F oven and baked it for 18 minutes.

We’ll have to say that it tasted great. Was it different than our usual recipe? Yes, it did have a slightly different taste.  Was it better and worth the expense?  I think I’ll quote Martha Stewart here, and suggest that you have to decide for yourself. Some people will find it worth it, and others would not be able to tell the difference from ordinary canned tomatoes. It’s up to you!

• Uncategorized