I’m always scouring the grocery shelves for pizza ingredients I haven’t tried before; this week it is Cento brand. I have previously tried a number of competitors, including Pastorelli, Mutti, and one of my usuals, Contadina in a squeeze bottle.
Cento was founded in 1963 in the city of brotherly love, initially as an importer of Italian products. If you’ve never cruised the old-timey Italian restaurants in Philly, you’ve missed out. About 20 years later, they started putting out products under their own name. They have a very deep line of tomato products, whole, crushed, seasoned, paste and so on.
On the website, they tout their tomato products are fresh picked from the vine, and some are the highly regarded San Marzanos from Italy, but there is no reference to whether this includes the pizza sauce. The ingredients on the sauce label are straightforward: water, tomato concentrate, olive oil, salt, basil, black pepper, garlic powder.
I like it for two reasons, it has a slight acidic taste (which is natural for tomatoes), is not cloyingly sweet like many competitors who add sweeteners to their recipe, and it has a heft/thickness that appeals to me for putting on my pies. More appealing than the watery sauces. Objection? It’s a 15 oz can, which is way more than one needs for a single pizza, maybe they could do the squeeze bottle thing like Contadina? Then I’d be a regular.
Cento Pizza Sauce Review