The Pizza Sauce - 2024
IN SHORT…
This is where it all began. The Pizza Sauce was the first hot sauce Tim ever came up with; while eating a cheap slice of pizza one day ten years ago he thought he could make it immeasurably better by deepening its flavors with a slightly spicy, umami-rich sauce, one that echoes all the flavors found in those little shaker jars at East Coast pizza shops. And he has been making it - off and on - ever since. This edition of The Pizza Sauce is very bright and clean - meaning there’s only a subtle touch of fermentative funk - and in that sense it is probably one of the most traditional hot sauces we have ever made. While The Pizza Sauce is made for pizza, it works well on virtually anything that comes with tomato sauce and can even sub in for Sriracha as an all-purpose hot sauce.
This sauce was low-temperature pasteurized. While technically shelf stable, we would strongly recommend keeping it refrigerated to help preserve its flavor.
Common Allergens: Onion/Garlic, Fish
This sauce is not vegetarian. It contains a small amount of Red Boat Fish Sauce which is made from anchovies.
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San Marzano Tomatoes, Mammoth Jalapeño Peppers, Flaming Flare Fresno Peppers, Gypsy Peppers, Husky Cherry Tomatoes, Cowhorn Peppers, Corno di Toro Peppers, Red Onions, Tomato Paste, Fish Peppers, Kosher Salt, Garlic, Red Boat Fish Sauce, Aleppo Peppers, Columnar Basil, Spring Water, Red Wine Vinegar, Banyuls Vinegar, Coconut Aminos, Oregano, Onion Powder, Parsley, Sugar, Garlic Powder, Black Pepper, Granulated Garlic, Ascorbic Acid, Xanthan Gum
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All of the peppers and tomatoes - including, for the first time, the tough to grow but incredibly delicious San Marzanos - and basil came from Tim’s garden in Baltimore County, Maryland.
Most of the other ingredients came from farms in Maryland: the oregano and garlic came from Martins Farms in Perry Hall, Maryland; the red onion from Albright Farms, based in Phoenix, Maryland, and the parsley came from the small garden at Tim’s workplace.
Even if if this were a real hot sauce brand and not a pretend one, we would never be dogmatic in our regional approach to sourcing ingredients. There are several in this sauce that came from outside of the mid-Atlantic and one or two - like the coconut aminos from Sri Lanka - that came to us from the opposite side of the planet. We are not only okay with this, we embrace it; free trade makes the world a better place.
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One of the fundamentals of our approach is to make several small batches of each sauce and blend them in the winter to have the best possible final result. However, there are always exceptions and this year The Pizza Sauce was not only made in one batch, but from a single harvest of Tim’s garden, as well.
The sauce was prepared in Tim’s kitchen where the peppers were destemmed, deseeded and had their placentas (“ribs”) removed. Most of the tomatoes were left uncooked, but about a third were roasted and a very small amount were smoked over hickory wood.
All of the ingredients were placed in vacuum sealed bags and slowly fermented at 55°F in Tim’s workplace wine cellar for about two months before resting and very slowly fermented at 41°F until ready for bottling.
The sauce was pureed in December, just prior to bottling, its pH adjusted with red wine and Banyuls vinegar, and then it was slowly pasteurized for 2 hours at 141°F. From there its texture was thickened ever so slightly with xanthan gun, and its color protected with a touch of ascorbic acid prior to bottling.
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The Pizza Sauce might not be our most fascinating sauce, but it is a classic and one we will return to almost every year.
If you were one of the tiny few who tasted The Pizza Sauce from the 2023 vintage, you might remember an appealing pepperoni-like aroma that was likely derived from a an accidental and partial fermentation done by yeast. In 2025 it would be nice to recapture that aroma, if possible, and have it add complexity to the cleaner flavors found in this year’s sauce.
