Can You Use Normal BBQ Sauce For Pizza Base?

Have you ever wondered whether regular barbecue sauce can be used on pizza instead of traditional tomato-based sauces? If so, then this blog post is for you! Barbecue sauce is a tasty condiment that adds an intense flavour to any dish.

This includes pizza, as the tangy yet sweet and smoky flavours often found in BBQ sauce are perfect when combined with other ingredients commonly seen in pizzas such as chicken, onion, and Gouda cheese.

This article explores the pros and cons of using regular BBQ sauce for your homemade or takeaway pizza bases and alternative options.

Related: The best BBQ pizza ovens reviewed

Can You Use Normal BBQ Sauce For Pizza Base?

Yes, you can use normal BBQ sauce for your pizza base. In fact, this is quite a popular choice for many people as it provides a unique blend of tangy, sweet flavour with smoky barbecue aromas to the dish.

Pros And Cons Of Using Regular BBQ Sauce

Using regular BBQ sauce as a pizza base can create interesting and unique flavour profiles, depending on the type of barbecue sauce used. Barbecue sauces vary based on regional styles, with Kansas City BBQ sauce typically being ketchup-based and boasting high sugar levels.

If using this type of tangy and sweet BBQ sauce from your pizza base it will drastically alter the final product’s flavour profile when compared to traditional tomato-based sauces like marinara or pizzaiola.

While using regular BBQ Sauce could potentially make for an intriguing variation from standard pizzas, there are some important factors to consider before doing so — especially if you want your finished pie to have a strong structure underneath its topping layer(s).

To ensure that they don’t become soggy, ketchup-based barbeque sauces sometimes aren’t thick enough on their own to act as good binders or bases between dough and toppings.

Potential Taste Differences

When it comes to using BBQ sauce as a pizza base, the taste can be quite different compared to other sauces. The key difference lies in the sweetness of the barbecue sauce and its smoky flavour.

This is an important factor to consider when opting for this type of sauce as your base since these flavours could potentially clash with certain toppings. For example, if you were adding olives or salmon to your pizza then a sweet but smokey Barbecue Sauce might overwhelm those delicate flavours and dominate the dish.

Alternatively, Tomato-based sauces such as pesto and marinara offer subtle underlying tones that will not overpower whatever else you are topping your pizza with –– vegetables have particularly good results when they are lightly cooked on top of tomato-based pizzas.

Creamy Alfredo based also offers thick flavorful bases while providing mellow tones which allow non-meat toppings such as sun-dried tomatoes or garlic mushrooms to shine through without being overpowered by strong bbq flavours.

Alternative Pizza Base Sauces

Tomato-based Sauces

Tomato-based pizza sauces are one of the most popular and commonly used options for pizza bases. For a classic tomato sauce, you’ll often see recipes that call for a combination of pureed or crushed tomatoes (or even canned/jarred tomato sauce), garlic, olive oil, salt, sugar and seasonings like oregano and basil.

Tomato-based pizzas sauces are great because they offer bright flavour notes from both the vegetables themselves and other additions (like herbs). Its balance between acidity and sweetness can also be adjusted by adding more/less sweetness or black pepper as desired.

The key is achieving the right consistency, not too watery nor too thick, so it will spread evenly across the dough without something else under it.

Pesto-based Sauces

Pesto sauce is a delicious alternative to traditional tomato-based sauces for pizza. Pesto is a creamy sauce traditionally made of garlic, pine nuts, basil leaves and Parmesan cheese blended together with olive oil.

It has a distinctively bold, nutty flavour which can add an incredible depth to any pizza. The savoury flavours work well with other ingredients typically found on pizzas such as mushrooms, olives or feta cheese while its creaminess also helps to mellow out the acidity of the tomatoes in your topping choice.

Cream-based Sauces

Cream-based sauces are an interesting and delicious alternative to traditional tomato-based pizza sauces. Using a cream-based sauce rather than a tomato sauce offers a way to switch up the flavour of your pizza and give it some added richness.

Common types of cream-based sauces include Alfredo, Garlic Cream, Herb Infused, or even Pesto blended with cream cheese. These sauces can be both savoury and sweet depending on how they’re prepared but will always bring more depth of flavour to a pizza than standard red sauce alone can provide.

Alfredo Sauce is creamy and decadent with real butter providing that extra touch of luxury while garlic cream will add hints of garlicky goodness.

Conclusion

In conclusion, while some may not consider normal BBQ sauce suitable for use as a pizza base, it can be an interesting and flavorful twist. There are pros and cons to using regular BBQ sauce – it is often sweeter than other types of pizza sauce which might affect the overall flavour.

However, for those who don’t mind experimenting with different flavours, there’s nothing that prevents them from trying out this unique spin on classic toppings like chicken breast or Gouda cheese.

Other alternatives include tomato-based sauces, pesto-based sauces, and cream-based sauces.