Why San Marzano Tomatoes ?
Updated: Jun 8, 2021
Using the right sauce is key to a great pizza. It should be tangy and just a little sweet. Ask any pizzaiolo worth his or her salt and they will tell you: it should be made with San Marzano tomatoes!
This variety of plum tomato grows in the rich volcanic soil of the Sarno River valley, near Mount Vesuvius, resulting in a sweet flesh with low acidity. Its thick skin makes it easy to peel off. Plus, it’s meatier than Romas and other plums, and has fewer seeds: all good things for making sauce.
Our opinion here at The Pizza Pushers is they taste out of this world!
We ensure each of our Pizzas is topped with these flavor packed tomatoes.
San Marzano tomatoes (Campania): Long in shape and bittersweet in taste, these tomatoes are harvested by hand. San Marzano tomatoes are thinner and more pointed. The flesh is much thicker with fewer seeds, and the taste is stronger, sweeter and less acidic.
In San Marzano, the tomato harvest begins in August and runs through September. The crops are very delicate and all the tomatoes are picked by hand at the peak of their ripeness. Because of the close attention to quality, many cooks consider San Marzano tomatoes to be among the best in the world to use in a sauce.
The tomatoes are so revered in Italy that to make true Neapolitan pizza, according to the Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana, you must use San Marzano tomatoes. Anything else will not do.
San Marzano refers both to the region of Italy that these fruits are grown in and to a strain of tomato — thus you could have a San Marzano strain of tomato grown outside the San Marzano region.
The tomatoes are grown under very specific and strict rules and as such, authentic San Marzano tomatoes will have an official DOP (Denominazione d’ Origine Protetta) on the can or jar, although there are domestically grown versions using the same seed varieties. It’s comparable to the difference between French Champagne and sparkling wine from California. Because of their great flavor and texture, very little has to be done to them upon opening then can. To make our flavor packed sauce, we just blend the tomatoes and add some salt.
