If you’ve spent any time in online pizza forums or talking with fellow home pizza enthusiasts, you’ve probably heard it countless times: “You have to make your sauce from scratch!” “Fresh tomatoes are the only way to go!” “Store-bought sauce is cheating!” 

Well, we’re here to share a secret that might ruffle some feathers, but will absolutely elevate your pizza game: homemade sauce isn’t always the better option. In fact, for many pizza styles, a quality store-bought sauce will actually yield better results than the fresh tomato sauce you’ve been laboriously preparing. 

Not All Pizza Styles Are Created Equal 

Here’s what many home pizza makers miss: different pizza styles require fundamentally different sauces. That bright, fresh sauce made from San Marzano tomatoes that works beautifully on a Neapolitan pie? It could actually ruin your Detroit-style or tavern-style pizza. 

Think about it this way: Detroit-style pizza uses a cooked, concentrated sauce that’s applied in stripes on top of the cheese, not spread across the entire surface. Tavern-style pizza requires a long-cooked sauce with bold, assertive flavors that can stand up to generous toppings. New York-style pizza needs a sauce that won’t make the thin crust soggy during the longer bake time required in a home oven. 

The common thread? These American pizza styles thrive with sauces that have a higher concentration of tomato solids and less water content than what you get from fresh or whole peeled tomatoes. 

The Water Content Problem Nobody Talks About 

Here’s the science that home pizza makers need to understand: when pizza sauce has too much water, the dough absorbs moisture from the sauce, preventing it from getting crispy. This extra water creates a layer of steam between the dough and toppings, which leads to that dreaded soggy, undercooked center. 

Fresh tomatoes are about 94% water. Even high-quality canned whole peeled tomatoes contain significant water content that needs to be drained or cooked down. When you’re working with a home oven that maxes out at 500-550°F (instead of a wood-fired oven’s 900°F+), you simply don’t have enough heat to evaporate all that excess moisture quickly enough. 

You want a thick pizza sauce since the sauce is in direct contact with pizza dough – if you use a watery sauce, the water seeps into the dough and results in a soggy and underbaked crust. 

Why Tomato Paste is Your Secret Weapon 

Professional pizzerias making tavern, Detroit, and New York styles have long known what home cooks are just discovering: tomato paste is the backbone of a great pizza sauce for these styles. 

Tomato paste is made from cooking tomatoes (without their skins and seeds) at least twice until the result becomes a super-thick tomato concentrate. This concentration process: 

• Removes excess water that would otherwise make your dough soggy 

• Intensifies the tomato flavor 

• Creates a sauce that spreads evenly without pooling 

• Develops natural sweetness through caramelization 

Many pizzerias, including renowned establishments, use concentrated tomato products for their sauce because they provide consistent results and bold flavor. 

The Quality Store-Bought Advantage 

Let’s address the elephant in the room: using store-bought sauce is not “cheating” or compromising on quality. In fact, a well-made commercial sauce can offer advantages that are hard to replicate at home: 

Consistency: Professional producers have perfected the water-to-solids ratio for optimal pizza performance. You get the same reliable results every time. 

Premium Ingredients: Quality brands like Pastorelli source ingredients globally – California tomatoes for sweetness and body, authentic Pecorino Romano from Italy, extra virgin olive oil, and oregano from Greece. Building this pantry at home for occasional pizza making can be expensive and wasteful. 

Time and Convenience: A quality sauce lets you focus on perfecting your dough and technique rather than spending hours reducing tomatoes. 

Balanced Flavor: Professional sauce makers have spent years perfecting the balance of acidity, sweetness, and seasoning. They’ve done the R&D so you don’t have to. 

When Fresh Sauce Makes Sense (And When It Doesn’t) 

We’re not saying fresh sauce is never the right choice. For authentic Neapolitan pizza baked at extremely high temperatures for 60-90 seconds, that simple crushed tomato sauce is traditional and works beautifully. The intense heat evaporates moisture almost instantly. 

But for the pizza styles most of us are making at home – the Friday night Detroit squares, the Sunday tavern-style rounds, the New York slices for the kids – a concentrated sauce is simply the better tool for the job.