The wonderful thing about cooking is the unlimited variety you can enjoy. A Google search for italian pizza sauce recipes currently turns up over two million result pages. Are there really two million ways to make pizza sauce?

As it turns out, there is a foundation to making pizza sauce. The more typical recipes use crushed tomatoes, tomato paste with herbs like garlic and basil. The specific amounts and ratios used determine the overall flavor, or the basic foundation of the sauce.

Other ingredients can be added to further deepen the flavor. Some add chili powders or flakes to make the sauce sing hot while others add brown sugar or honey. Some saute onions or even potato slices and then add them (or just their juices.) Others add fennel and other fresh herbs and some flour to thicken the sauce. And of course, a little salt and pepper go a long way toward adjusting the taste to suit.

One exciting method I have seen recommended is what I call The Experiment. You take your leftover meats, cut them into small chunks or slices and cook them down so they are soft and dripping with juices. Add some fresh herbs that you might have along with a selection of whatever flaked and powdered herbs that you find in your cupboard. Add all this to the sauce and let it simmer to distribute the flavors.

Perhaps your first experiment will be a fabulous success that your family and friends insist that you keep making. Perhaps not - and if not, after tasting it you will have an idea about what more needs to be added or what you added too much of. It is usually best to add smaller amounts of something new and increase them over time to suit your taste.

The best thing about this is that every recipe you create will be yours and yours alone, limited only by the selection of ingredients you have on hand. Over time you will begin to understand that some ingredients work better with others and this may inspire other choices from your pantry or while you are in the grocery store. Once you have a crowd pleaser coming out of your oven, make sure to write the recipe down so you can repeat it.

It is worth noting that other things will affect the flavor of the pizza and how the sauce flavors work with it. You can choose different kinds of crusts and a wide variety of cheeses but also your oven and the heat used will influence the flavor. This is one reason why it is not always possible to replicate your favorite pizza sauce exactly.

And that is a good reason to sometimes let your favorite pizza place do the cooking for you. You just can't get Fritz's Pizza from anywhere else in the world.