Forget Tomato Sauce — Try This Swap For A Richer, More Luxurious Pizza Night

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Traditional pizza is nothing to complain about. In fact, it's a pretty faultless dish. Sure, bad pizza exists, but the concept of chewy crust, tomato sauce, and mozzarella cheese is culinary perfection for many. Still, you can't deny it's fun to mix it up. If not, pies would have never been topped with barbecue chicken, hot honey, or smoked salmon (like Wolfgang Puck's signature Spago pizza that was inspired by Joan Collins). This is precisely why the team here at Mashed whipped up an amazing roasted garlic white pizza sauce, not to compete with traditional tomato-based sauce, but to make your next pizza night a little more luxurious.

This isn't exactly what you'd use to make New York-style white pizza, which is built with a few different types of cheeses, but you could certainly put it on for a kick of garlic. This roasted garlic sauce starts by making a roux, a mixture of butter, flour, and milk that is cooked until thickened and smooth. It's then flavored with plenty of sweet roasted garlic, parmesan cheese, and herbs. The sauce is so tasty that you honestly don't need any toppings except for the sauce itself generously spread over a slightly charred crust. But where's the fun in that?

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This roasted garlic white pizza sauce is rich, warm, and cozy, and you can play up the comfort factor by topping your pizza with sliced, steamed baby or fingerling potatoes, and bacon. A sprinkle of chives would add some pretty green color and a mild onion flavor. Potato pizza, a popular dish in Rome, is traditionally a bit simpler, with the thin potato slices going on top of a crust that's brushed with olive oil. But, the garlic seasoning and creamy texture of white sauce would enhance the flavor of the potatoes even more.

Caramelized mushrooms would also be excellent with roasted garlic white pizza sauce, as would sun-dried tomatoes, charred broccoli and cauliflower, and blistered cherry tomatoes. This is also the type of sauce that you can enhance by adding some freshness or zing, like zucchini, arugula or other type of peppery or bitter green, artichokes, and pickled onions or jalapeños.

If it's luxury you're going for, don't forget to serve your white sauce pizza with Champagne, prosecco, or your favorite sparkling wine. Red fans might like an acidic choice like barbera or pinot noir. Of course, a happy medium is a dry rosé wine, whether it's sparkling or not. With the character of a red and the body of a white wine, it would be delicious with a creamy, garlic-forward sauce like this one.