Reverse Engineering/Cloning Papa John's Pizza Sauce

[CDNpielover]

it's the end of a long day mediating between 2 conflicting "senior" co-authors on a scientific manuscript.  i'm making pete's awesome pj sauce clone, and just want to thank you pete for doing such thorough work on this formulation.  i dont know what you do for work, but your approach is inspirational and the depth and clarity of your writing is second to none.  cheers!   and please keep up the great work!   

[Pete-zza]

it's the end of a long day mediating between 2 conflicting "senior" co-authors on a scientific manuscript.  i'm making pete's awesome pj sauce clone, and just want to thank you pete for doing such thorough work on this formulation.  i dont know what you do for work, but your approach is inspirational and the depth and clarity of your writing is second to none.  cheers!   and please keep up the great work!   

CDNpielover,

Thank you for the kind remarks. I guess you could say that what I do on this forum is my work, but it doesn't feel that way to me. I like the technical and mathematical aspects of pizza making, maybe even more than the pizzas themselves.

Peter

[JPHL]

I notice your sauce in reply#20 using walmart tomatoes uses somewhere around 21 oz of tomatoes.  the cans themselves contain 28 oz.  from an earlier post it seems you make them into a finer puree and do something else to remove excess water.  can you elaborate more on this.  I'm sorry if this is something basic but I am fairly new to pizzamaking and really cooking in general. 

[Pete-zza]

I notice your sauce in reply#20 using walmart tomatoes uses somewhere around 21 oz of tomatoes.  the cans themselves contain 28 oz.  from an earlier post it seems you make them into a finer puree and do something else to remove excess water.  can you elaborate more on this.  I'm sorry if this is something basic but I am fairly new to pizzamaking and really cooking in general.

JPHL,

I believe you meant to say Reply 30 rather than Reply 20 in your post. Reply 30 is the post where I discussed using the Wal-Mart Crushed Tomatoes in Puree, at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,6633.msg59208.html#msg59208.

The Wal-Mart tomatoes were not my first choice since they are not made from fresh-pack tomatoes. I decided try them, however, for the benefit of those members who did not have access to good canned fresh-pack tomatoes. I soon discovered, however, that the Wal-Mart tomatoes were more watery than the fresh-pack tomatoes. I was striving for the consistency of ground fresh-pack tomatoes. When I drained the Wal-Mart tomatoes, I ended up with less solid product. That is why the amount of the prepared Wal-Mart tomatoes was around 587 grams.

If you are considering using the Wal-Mart tomatoes, I have some good news for you. For some time now, Wal-Mart has been carrying the Classico brand of tomatoes. They are fresh-pack tomatoes and are produced by the same company (Escalon/Heinz) that produces the 6-in-1 fresh-pack canned tomatoes. You can see the particular Classico canned tomatoes that are available at different Wal-Mart stores at http://tomatoes.classico.com/products/. The product that comes closest to the 6-in-1s are the Classico Peeled Ground Tomatoes, although I think the Classico Crushed Tomatoes should also work. Not all Wal-Mart stores carry the entire Classico line so you may have to check out a few Wal-Marts.

Peter

[chaspie]

Peter, Walmart also sells (at least in my area) Cento brand All-Purpose Crushed tomatoes in 28 ounce cans.  That's what I've been using to make my sauce for NY style pizzas.  I assume they would work well for American style pizza too.  I think they taste great, and they are nice and thick, not watery.  The only ingredients are "Fresh Red Ripe Tomatoes".