Sauce storage procedures

[jillybean0212]

Hi,

I'm super new to this, so I had a question for the pizza vets out there. I work for a museum and we're just starting to self-operate personal pan pizzas. We're planning to sauce and top par-baked crusts, but we don't have a prep table (yet).

I was planning on storing small amounts of sauce, cheese, and pepperoni in metal food storage containers with lids in our barista fridge. We'd take the containers out as we prep each pizza, then put them back once we're done. We likely won't see a ton of pizza volume right away, so I expect this flow would work until it gets busy enough to justify the expense of a prep table.

Question for the people: given this plan, if I have leftover sauce, pepperoni or cheese in my metal containers at the end of the day, do I mix these ingredients with the stored ingredients in my other fridge? For instance, if I only go through half a can of pizza sauce in a day, can I mix it with the open can left in the other fridge?

I feel like this should be fine, but I'm afraid since the sauce used during the day will be spending some time outside the fridge that it would ruin the rest of the batch. Interested to see what you all think.

[Pizza_Not_War]

Not a good idea. Probably breaking food safety rules so check with local food inspector.

[Timpanogos Slim]

30 years ago i worked for a few local pizza hut stores.

The book was strict on the point that the contents of the prep table, including the sauce, go in the trash at closing.

The 2nd store i worked for, they ignored that. They just stretched plastic wrap over the prep table and put the pot of sauce into the fridge.

The pizzas that went out for lunch and early dinner service were TERRIBLE.

Mind, at the hut at the time, a hung-over driver who probably closed the night before and certainly hadn't showered or changed his clothing would stumble in at like 10am, put a couple 5-gallon buckets on the floor -- one up one down -- drain a bag of sauce concentrate into the one open-end-up, add some pitchers of water, grab a giant whisk, sit on the one open-end-down, hunch over the sauce bucket, and mix.

nah, of course he didn't wear a hair net. Or wash his hands. He'd usually go take a nap in his car until the first delivery order after that.

So the 45 cents worth of sauce that went into the fridge the night before would have a fermented funk and acidity that was absolutely gross the next day.

So my advice, if lawfulness and quality are desired, is to see about freezing the portion of your sauce you don't expect to use the next day. Particularly if you have a microwave and can warm up frozen sauce in a hurry if demand is unusually high.

[scott r]

I make sauce 7 days a week.  There is some sauce from the batch made the day before that gets used at lunch, and I don't notice any difference.  One thing that might be different for me is that I put my sauce into small individual bottles, so the longest any one container sits out of the fridge is maybe 2 hours.

I think that is your best bet... rather than one big container of sauce that sits out, split it up into smaller ones.   If kept in fridge you can get a few days out of it without it changing too much.   I have found that if I dont add garlic and herbs, canned tomatoes will taste the same for a very long time.   So thats another possibility..... open a can and mix in your ingredients to only part of it, then make it again in a few days.