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Pizza is usually one of those foods that we think of as being in the junk food category rather than in the healthy foods category, but when you make your own pizza from scratch with homemade pizza sauce and dough using good quality ingredients, it can actually be a pretty healthy food.

When you think about it, pizza is basically just bread with tomatoes and cheese. If you use organic, all-natural ingredients and cheese from humanely-raised, grass-fed cows, add some chopped vegetables and fresh herbs for toppings and avoid all of the extra additives and preservatives in regular pizza, it’s a “guilty pleasure” that you can enjoy without any of the guilt.

Making your own pizza might take a little bit more time and effort than just ordering one, but it’s always worth it for me because I always feel so much better after eating homemade pizza than I do after eating takeout pizza. I’m not sure if it’s something they put in the sauce or some chemical they add to the dough, but whatever it is, I always feel like I have a junk food hangover after eating take out pizza. But with homemade pizza, I feel fine.

Today I wanted to share the recipe that I’ve been using for the past few years to make a healthy, homemade pizza sauce. I’ve included the seasonings that I personally like to use, but feel free to adjust this recipe to include any that are your favorites!

Healthy Homemade Pizza Sauce Recipe:

(If you like using printable recipe cards, you can scroll down to find a recipe card version below:)

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cups plain tomato sauce or crushed tomatoes*
• 1/2 tsp salt (I like using real salt)
• 1/8 tsp pepper
• 1/4 tsp dried basil
• 1/4 tsp dried oregano
• 1/4 tsp dried marjoram (or more oregano if you don’t have marjoram)
• 1/4 tsp thyme
• 1/8 tsp garlic powder
• 1 tsp sugar
• 1 Tbs olive oil (or butter) (This is a brand of olive oil I recommend)

For herbs and spices, this is a brand I like to use because they have many organic, non-gmo options and their spices haven’t been irradiated or treated with ethylene oxide. (If you scroll through them, you can see more options on the second and third pages, too.

*Note: I’ve made this recipe with both homemade and store bought tomato sauces, and it tastes great either way. When I have fresh tomatoes from my garden or from a farm stand, I like to make my own homemade sauce, but if I don’t have any fresh tomatoes, then I use store bought crushed tomatoes as the base for this recipe. A standard 28 ounce can of crushed tomatoes makes a bit more sauce then you would need for a pizza, but the extra could be added to other meals the next day, served with vegetables as a side dish, used as a dipping sauce for bread, or even eaten by the spooonful alongside the pizza (that’s what I usually do.

If you’ve never made homemade tomato sauce before, this is a good tutorial to follow (with pictures, too.)

Directions:

1. Simmer tomato sauce in a saucepan on medium heat.
2. Add oil (or butter) and sugar
3. Add seasonings to taste and stir well to combine.

Recipe Notes:

• I usually use a 9 x 13 inch cookie sheet pan to cook my pizza on because I don’t have a pizza stone or a round pan that’s big enough. This recipe makes the perfect amount of sauce for a 9 x 13 inch pan, and it should work well for most rounds pans, too, but depending on the size of your pan, you might need slightly more or less tomato sauce for this recipe.
• I used dried herbs and garlic powder for this recipe because I know that not everybody has access to fresh herbs and garlic year-round, but if you have them, fresh ingredients would be delicious in this recipe. You’ll just want to increase the amounts a little since the dried herbs are more concentrated in flavor than the fresh ones are.

About the Pizza Crust . . .

The crust is one of the trickier parts of homemade pizza. I have one that I’ve been using, but I’m not sure it’s quite shareable yet, so I don’t have a healthy recipe of my own to share here, but in the meantime, here are a couple of recipes to try, depending on whether you want to use packaged yeast or sourdough starter:

• The Best Pizza Dough Recipe from Weed ‘Em and Reap – this recipe uses regular packaged yeast and takes less than an hour to prepare from start to finish.
• The Best Homemade Sourdough Pizza Crust from Holistic Health Herbalist – this recipe uses a sourdough starter, and it takes a few hours for the dough to rise, but it’s a great way to use up extra sourdough starter.

Happy pizza making!

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The information in this post is not to be taken as medical advice and is not intended to diagnose or treat any disease.