My list of top ten tomatoes you should be growing if you love pizza.
My two favorite foods, as I may come as no surprise are heavily focused on the things I grow the most of. But I am obsessed with pizza and tacos. So I figured I would share a list of favorites for both, so he is the pizza top ten heavy hitters.
For this list I focus on the two types of tomatoes I use in my wood fired pizza oven.
About mid pandemic I bought an Ooni oven and it has changed my life.
I use tomatoes for making sauce and for slices fresh as a topping.
- Speckled Roman it is a paste variety that is a cross between Antique Roman and Banana Legs, but don’t be fooled this tomato shines in more was than just sauce. Eat it fresh, yeah I said eat a paste tomato fresh (I would not say that about San Marzano) it also dries really well.
- London grove one of our local favorite paste tomatoes, again a solid sauce tomato that can be eaten fresh and is super productive. It used to be known around the valley as rabbits foot.
- Canestrino is an Italian sauce making power house, it’s not as great fresh eating but dude the sauce that comes from these tomatoes is stunning.
- Black krim is one of my all time all around top tomatoes. It’s intense flavor profile is wonderful sliced on top of some nice Asiago cheese. Trust me.
- Auriga is the best orange cherry tomato out there, there I said it. Sorry sungold but you are the poor cousin here. Fully balanced flavor Explosions of sunshine. Radiant halted on any food, but brilliant on pizza.
- Barry’s crazy cherry a wonder tear drop shaped tomato that not only stores forever, it is sweet and bursting with amazing flavors of high summer fruit and florals.
- Matt’s wild cherry tiny cherry tomatoes that pack so much flavors into each one it will blow your mind. It is lots of work, but a sauce made out of this is one of the greatest things I have ever had. So reminiscent of the cherry tomato sauces of Sicily, but not as sweet.
- Northern lights this is another big boy, this is one of the only tri-colored tomatoes in my collection. The body is orange yellow with pink stripes on the blossom end and green on the shoulders. The flavor is a super sweet conglomerate of complexity. Sliced or sauced, I love to mix wick pickled onions to cut the sweetness.
- Goccia di lemoine a sweet cherry tomato that is ghostly whitish yellow, these are so good you might have trouble saving them for the pies.
- You can’t you won’t and you don’t stop! Yeah long name and a long story. Originally from China a friend of mine brought these back for me, I loved them so much but they need a bit of tweaking and I sure they where hybrid, but I don’t read Chinese so I went to work selecting them fir flavor and productivity and wow it turned out great. The spring I was getting ready to release them MCA passed away and all I could think about was how I had to pick hundreds of them and the where so productive they where a sure shot. The flavor is the best red cherry tomato flavor I have ever had! Done. Halted and topped with parmigiana for perfection.
Hope you enjoyed my top 10 tomatoes for the pizza life.
