How to Make Store-Bought Pizza Sauce Better

Making a store-bought pizza sauce better with a savory addition.

Pizza is a very universally liked food. A ready-made, store-bought pizza sauce is essential for a quick pizza build. There are several ways to make a store-bought pizza sauce better. The Don Pepino Pizza Sauce is one of the best ready-made store-bought pizza sauces. As with any ready-made sauce, it can only be so good, with room for improvement. When making homemade pizza, I tend to concentrate on the dough. Using homemade cold fermented pizza dough is essential. I make the dough several days before I assemble, cook, and serve pizza. I use a store-bought pizza sauce when pressed for time, just for convenience. I choose Don Pepino Pizza Sauce when I don’t want to make a homemade sauce.

 Pizza a Savory Food

Pizza is naturally a savory food, especially with cold-fermented dough. A good sauce, the right cheese or cheese blend, and a good meat topping can make an excellent pizza from cold-fermented dough. The pizza sauce, being tomato-based, is inherently savory because of the tomatoes. You can improve the flavor profile by adding additional savory ingredients. The most straightforward approach is adding a premade ingredient with several savory or “umami” components.

Flavor Improving Savory Ingredients

The additional flavor-improving savory ingredients for pizza sauce could take several directions, such as tomato paste, anchovies, and garlic: either fresh or powdered garlic or a combination. The most straightforward and most gain for a savory flavor profile, for a little effort, is adding some San-J Tamari Splash Umami Sauce. This ready-made Asian cuisine ingredient is neutral, with neither an overly strong soy sauce taste nor excessively sweet. The umami sauce adds a savory flavor profile to the pizza sauce. Adding 1 tbsp umami sauce to 6-7 oz of the Don Pepino Pizza Sauce or other store-bought pizza sauce bridges the gap between a store-bought pizza sauce and a homemade sauce.

Don Pepino Pizza Sauce and San-J Tamari Splash Umami Sauce

Delicious Flavor Profiles

You can read more about savory flavor-improving ingredients in our umami sauce post. The post explains some of the synergies of the components that create deep, delicious flavor profiles.