Search “white pizza sauce” and the first five results give you a recipe for a béchamel-style cream sauce. None of them tell you that the original “white pizza”, the Roman pizza bianca, has no sauce at all. None of them explain why the roux works, what the right thickness is for pizza specifically (different from pasta), or how the sauce behaves on different pizza styles. This is the article that does.

TL;DR

  • White pizza sauce is a béchamel. Butter + flour + milk + parmesan + garlic. Cook a roux first, then add warm milk slowly, finish with cheese off the heat.
  • “White pizza” and “white pizza sauce” are not the same thing. White pizza traditionally means no red sauce (Roman pizza bianca uses just olive oil). White pizza sauce is a specific béchamel recipe. The SERP confuses these constantly.
  • The right ratio for pizza: 2 tablespoons butter to 2 tablespoons flour to 1 cup warm milk to 1/2 cup parmesan. This produces a sauce thick enough to stay on the dough during a 500°F bake, not so thick it goes pasty.
  • NY-style white pizza skips béchamel entirely. It uses ricotta + mozzarella + garlic + olive oil. Detroit-style uses béchamel on top of the cheese as racing stripes. Neapolitan-style skips sauce altogether.
  • Skip the shortcuts. Jarred Alfredo is too sweet and too thin. Mayo-based “sauces” are not pizza sauces. Cream cheese melts wrong. Make the béchamel; it takes 8 minutes.
  • Pair with white-sauce-appropriate toppings: chicken, spinach, mushrooms, garlic, ricotta, prosciutto. Skip pepperoni and sausage on white-sauce pizza (they belong on red sauce).

White pizza sauce vs white pizza (and which one you actually want)

This distinction is muddled across the entire SERP, so let’s clear it up first.

White pizza (pizza bianca) refers to any pizza that doesn’t use red tomato sauce. The traditional Roman pizza bianca is dough, olive oil, sea salt, and sometimes rosemary, baked on a stone. It has no sauce at all and no cheese. American “white pizza” usually means a pizza with mozzarella + ricotta + garlic + olive oil, no béchamel.

White pizza sauce is a specific recipe: a béchamel-style cream sauce made with butter, flour, milk, parmesan, and garlic, used as a layer beneath the cheese the way red sauce is used. It’s an American Italian invention, not an Italian tradition.

You can have:

  • A white pizza without white pizza sauce (Roman pizza bianca, NY-style white pizza with ricotta)
  • White pizza sauce on a regular pizza (the béchamel as the base, then toppings)
  • White pizza sauce on a white pizza (a “double white” combining the sauce with traditional white-pizza toppings)

If you searched “white pizza sauce” and what you actually want is “how do I make a Roman-style pizza without red sauce”, you want pizza bianca. If you want a creamy cheese sauce to spread on dough like red sauce, keep reading.

The béchamel-based white pizza sauce recipe

A proper white pizza sauce is a béchamel finished with parmesan and garlic. Béchamel is one of the five French mother sauces, and the chemistry is well-understood. Daniel Gritzer at Serious Eats covers the canonical version. We’re going to adapt it for pizza, which needs a slightly thicker, more cheese-forward sauce than the classic.

Ingredients (makes 1 cup, enough for one 12 to 14 inch pizza)

  • 2 tablespoons (28 g) unsalted butter
  • 2 tablespoons (16 g) all-purpose flour
  • 1 cup (240 ml) whole milk, warm
  • 1/2 cup (50 g) grated Parmigiano-Reggiano (or pecorino)
  • 2 cloves garlic, finely minced (about 1 teaspoon)
  • 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
  • Fresh black pepper to taste
  • Optional: 2 tablespoons heavy cream, for richness
  • Optional: pinch of nutmeg (the traditional béchamel finisher)

Step-by-step (about 8 minutes)

  1. Warm the milk in the microwave (30 to 45 seconds) or in a small saucepan over low heat. Cold milk into a hot roux makes lumps. Warm-to-warm prevents this.
  2. Make the roux. Melt the butter in a small saucepan over medium heat. When it’s foaming but not browning, whisk in the flour. Cook the roux for 60 to 90 seconds, whisking constantly. The mixture should smell faintly nutty and look like a thick paste, not brown.
  3. Add the milk slowly. Pour the warm milk in a thin steady stream while whisking constantly. Don’t dump it. The roux will absorb the milk in stages; it’ll look thick at first, then thin, then thicken back up as it heats.
  4. Cook to nappé consistency, 3 to 5 minutes. The sauce should coat the back of a spoon. Run your finger across the spoon; if the line stays clean, it’s ready. For pizza, you want it slightly thicker than for pasta. The sauce should hold its shape briefly when scooped, not run flat.
  5. Off heat, stir in the cheese. Add the grated parmesan and minced garlic. Stir until the cheese melts smoothly into the sauce. The off-heat step matters: high heat seizes parmesan into clumps.
  6. Season. Add salt, pepper, and a tiny pinch of nutmeg if using. Taste. Adjust.
  7. Use immediately or cool fully before storing. Hot béchamel will keep skinning on top in 5 minutes (the milk proteins form a film). If you’re not using it right away, press plastic wrap directly onto the surface.

The chemistry of the roux (why this works)

A roux is a mixture of fat and flour cooked together. The fat coats each flour granule and prevents the starch from clumping when liquid is added. This is why the cook-the-roux-first step is non-negotiable: dumping flour into hot milk without the butter coating produces lumps that no amount of whisking removes.

The 1:1 ratio (by weight or volume) of butter to flour is the foundation. More flour produces a paste-thick sauce; less flour produces a thin sauce that slides off pizza. For pizza specifically, the 2:2:1cup butter:flour:milk ratio produces a sauce thick enough to stay put on the dough during a 500°F bake.

Serious Eats has a deeper roux guide by Daniel Gritzer for anyone wanting the full theory. For pizza purposes, the key takeaway: cook the roux for at least 60 seconds before adding liquid. Raw-flour roux tastes like raw flour, and a 500°F oven won’t cook it out fully.

The Italian original: pizza bianca

Before there was American white pizza sauce, there was pizza bianca. Pizza bianca is the Roman tradition: a thin or focaccia-thick pizza dough topped with extra virgin olive oil, sea salt, and sometimes rosemary, baked at high heat. No sauce, no cheese, no toppings. It’s pizza as bread, eaten as a snack, a side dish, or split open and stuffed like a sandwich (the famous Roman pizza bianca con mortadella).

The recipe is almost laughably simple:

  1. Stretch a 12 inch dough round on a peel
  2. Brush generously with extra virgin olive oil
  3. Sprinkle with flaky sea salt and fresh rosemary
  4. Bake at 500°F on a preheated stone, 6 to 8 minutes

What makes it work is the dough quality and the olive oil. A high-hydration dough (65 to 70%) produces an open crumb that absorbs the oil and develops crisp golden ridges. Cheap olive oil ruins it; use a peppery, fruity extra virgin from a producer you trust.

If you’re making “white pizza” because you don’t want red sauce, this is one option. The béchamel recipe above is the other. Both are legitimate; they’re just different dishes.

The NY-style “white pizza” (no béchamel)

Serious Eats’ Kerry Saretsky published a New York-style white pizza recipe in February 2025 that’s worth pointing at, because it represents the actual NY-pizzeria tradition and it doesn’t use béchamel at all.

The NY-style white pizza architecture:

  • Dough brushed with olive oil
  • Dollops of fresh ricotta (well-drained, see the moisture rules in our toppings guide)
  • Low-moisture mozzarella
  • Minced raw garlic or roasted garlic cloves
  • Pecorino or parmesan dusted on top
  • Fresh oregano or basil

That’s the white pizza you’d order at Joe’s, John’s, or Patsy’s. No flour-thickened sauce. The ricotta is the “white” element, the olive oil carries the flavor, and the garlic does the heavy lifting.

If you’re making a NY-style white pizza for the first time, do this version, not the béchamel version. It’s faster (no roux step), more traditional (matches the actual pizzeria standard), and easier to execute well. The béchamel version is good for Detroit-style or for white pizza variations where you want a sauce-like layer.

For the NY base dough, see our New York-style pizza crust recipe.

White sauce by pizza style

How you use white sauce (or whether you use it at all) depends on the pizza style underneath.

Neapolitan white pizza

Skip the sauce. Use the Roman pizza bianca treatment: olive oil + sea salt + rosemary OR add fresh mozzarella and basil for a white margherita. The 90-second bake at 850 to 900°F doesn’t give a béchamel time to integrate with the cheese; you’d end up with a layer of paste under the cheese that didn’t have time to bond. Stick to oil-and-fresh-cheese for Neapolitan.

For the Neapolitan dough, see our Neapolitan pizza dough recipe.

NY-style white pizza

Use ricotta + mozzarella + garlic, not béchamel. This is the Joe’s-of-NY tradition. The 6 to 8 minute bake at 550°F is long enough for the ricotta to set without drying out and the mozzarella to brown lightly. Béchamel would still work here, but it’s not the canon. If using béchamel on a NY-style, spread a thin 1/4 cup over the 14-inch pie before the cheese.

Detroit-style white pizza

Béchamel works perfectly here, and the application is unique to Detroit: the sauce goes on TOP of the cheese, in three “racing stripes” or one oval, the same way red sauce is applied to a Detroit-style. This is part of what makes Detroit Detroit, and it’s why béchamel-on-Detroit beats ricotta-on-Detroit.

Detroit white pizza assembly:

  1. Press dough into the seasoned 10x14 steel pan
  2. Spread Wisconsin brick cheese to the edges (the frico requirement)
  3. Add toppings ON the cheese (mushrooms, garlic, spinach, chicken)
  4. Drizzle béchamel sauce in three stripes ON TOP of the toppings and cheese
  5. Bake at 500°F for 18 to 22 minutes

The béchamel browns slightly during the bake and complements rather than blanketing the cheese. See our Detroit-style pizza recipe and Wisconsin brick cheese guide for the rest of the architecture.

Sicilian / Grandma-style white pizza

Use béchamel mixed into the cheese layer, not as a separate layer. Sicilian’s high-hydration thick crust can carry a wetter cheese mixture without the bottom going soggy. Combine 1/2 cup béchamel with the grated mozzarella before spreading on the dough, add toppings, bake at 475 to 500°F for 18 to 25 minutes. The béchamel melts through the cheese and creates a creamier, richer interior.

For the Sicilian dough, see our Sicilian pizza dough recipe.

The best toppings for white-sauce pizza

The hard rule: white-sauce toppings are not red-sauce toppings. Mixing across this line produces a muddy pizza.

Strong with white sauce:

  • Chicken (pre-cooked, sliced or diced)
  • Spinach (wilted, drained, squeezed dry)
  • Garlic (raw minced for short bakes, roasted whole for longer bakes)
  • Mushrooms (dry-sautéed first)
  • Ricotta dollops (drained)
  • Prosciutto (added after the bake)
  • Caramelized onions
  • Asparagus tips
  • Lemon zest (after the bake)
  • Fresh herbs: basil, oregano, thyme, rosemary
  • Black pepper (heavy)
  • Pecorino or parmesan grated on top

Strong as finishing on white sauce (added after the bake):

  • Arugula tossed with olive oil and lemon
  • Hot honey (the unexpected hero of white-sauce pizza)
  • Truffle oil (sparingly)
  • Burrata torn open in the center

Avoid on white-sauce pizza:

  • Pepperoni (belongs on red sauce)
  • Italian sausage (belongs on red sauce)
  • Anchovies (the brine fights the cream)
  • Olives in heavy quantity (the brine overpowers the white sauce)
  • Pineapple (the acid curdles the cream)
  • Bell peppers (the moisture + sweetness work better with red sauce)
  • Banana peppers / pickled jalapeños (acid + cream = curdle)

A reliable white-sauce pizza combination: béchamel + mozzarella + pre-cooked chicken + spinach + roasted garlic + finishing arugula + black pepper. Order this at the right pizzeria and they’ll call it a “chicken-spinach white” or similar. Make it at home and it’s the best argument for white pizza sauce.

Variations: garlic, herb, lemon-zest, chili-flake

The base béchamel above is a foundation. Five variations worth knowing:

Garlic-cream white sauce. Double the garlic to 4 cloves, roast them whole in a 400°F oven for 25 minutes first, mash into the sauce. This is the chain-restaurant Alfredo-pizza sauce, but actually good.

Herb white sauce. Stir 2 tablespoons fresh chopped herbs (parsley, basil, oregano, thyme, or a mix) into the finished sauce off the heat. Add a teaspoon of lemon zest for brightness.

Mornay white sauce. Add a second cheese alongside the parmesan: gruyère, fontina, or a 50/50 mix. The result is a Mornay sauce, a classic French derivative of béchamel, and the additional cheese deepens the flavor without making the sauce greasy. Mornay is what most chain-restaurant Alfredo sauces want to be.

Lemon-béchamel white sauce. Add 1 tablespoon lemon juice and 1 teaspoon lemon zest at the end. Pairs especially well with pizzas that include chicken, asparagus, or finishing arugula. The acid cuts the richness.

Spicy white sauce. Add 1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes during the milk-thickening step. The chili oil infuses through the sauce. Pair with chicken + arugula + hot honey for the modern white-sauce pizza most upscale pizzerias serve.

Storage and reheating

White pizza sauce stores well, but it’s a moving target as it cools.

Refrigerator: 4 to 5 days. The sauce will thicken into a near-solid in the cold; reheat gently with a splash of milk to loosen.

Freezer: 2 to 3 months. Béchamels freeze fine if cooled fully first and frozen in a flat-bottomed container or in ice-cube portions. Thaw overnight in the fridge before reheating.

Reheating: in a small saucepan over low heat, with 1 to 2 tablespoons milk added per cup, whisking gently. Microwave works in a pinch (30-second bursts at 50% power, stirring between) but the milk separates if you over-microwave.

The pizza-reheat problem: white-sauce pizzas reheat worse than red-sauce. The béchamel can separate or curdle on a second bake. The skillet method (see our reheat pizza in oven guide) works better than the oven for white-sauce reheats.

What to skip

The white-pizza-sauce shortcuts that don’t work, with reasons:

  • Jarred Alfredo sauce as pizza sauce. Too sweet, too thin, too dairy-heavy. Restaurant Alfredo and pizza sauce are different things; brand Alfredo is engineered for pasta, not bake heat.
  • Cream cheese as a base. Doesn’t melt smoothly into the dough; bakes into a sour-tangy patch under the cheese.
  • Mayonnaise-based “sauces”. Some sites recommend this. Mayo breaks under pizza-bake heat (it’s an emulsion of oil and egg; heat splits the emulsion).
  • Pre-shredded parmesan from a green can. The cellulose-coated kraft-parmesan doesn’t melt into the béchamel; it stays grainy. Use a wedge of real Parmigiano-Reggiano, microplane it yourself.
  • Heavy cream as the only liquid (no roux). Cream alone will reduce on the pizza into a greasy puddle. The roux is what stabilizes the sauce against bake heat.
  • Skipping the warm-milk step. Cold milk into hot roux = lumps. The lumps don’t whisk out cleanly. Warm-to-warm is the rule.
  • Cooking the roux to brown. A pizza béchamel uses a white roux (60 to 90 seconds, no color). Brown roux is for Cajun gumbo, not pizza.
  • Over-seasoning with garlic powder. Fresh garlic is sharper and cleaner; garlic powder leaves a dusty texture in the finished sauce.
  • Adding the cheese over high heat. Parmesan seizes into clumps when added to a boiling sauce. Off heat or low heat only.
  • Putting white sauce on a Neapolitan. The 90-second bake doesn’t integrate the sauce with the cheese. Use olive oil instead.

FAQ

What is white sauce on pizza made of?

A béchamel base: butter, flour, milk, and parmesan, finished with garlic, salt, and pepper. Some recipes add heavy cream for richness, others add ricotta. The architecture is always a roux (butter + flour) thickened with milk and finished with cheese. Note: “white pizza” (no red sauce, often just olive oil) and “white pizza sauce” (this recipe) are different things and frequently confused online.

What is the white sauce that comes with pizza?

Restaurant dipping sauces served with pizza are usually a thinner béchamel or Alfredo-style cream sauce, sometimes with garlic added (garlic-cream is the most common chain-restaurant version). White pizza sauce used ON the pizza is firmer than the dip version, because thin sauces slide off the crust during the bake.

How to make basic white sauce?

Standard béchamel: melt 2 tablespoons butter over medium heat. Whisk in 2 tablespoons flour and cook 60 seconds. Slowly whisk in 1 cup warm milk until smooth. Cook 3 to 5 minutes until it coats the back of a spoon. Season with salt and pepper. For pizza, finish with 1/2 cup grated parmesan and 2 minced garlic cloves off the heat.

Can you use white sauce instead of red sauce on pizza?

Yes, but the toppings change. White sauce pairs with chicken, spinach, mushrooms, garlic, ricotta, prosciutto, and finishing arugula. Red sauce pairs with pepperoni, sausage, bell peppers, and standard mozzarella. Mixing white sauce with classic red-sauce toppings (pepperoni, sausage) produces a muddy pizza.

Is white pizza the same as white pizza sauce?

No, and this is the most common confusion online. “White pizza” (pizza bianca) traditionally means no red tomato sauce; the Roman original uses just olive oil, salt, and rosemary on dough. American “white pizza” usually uses olive oil + ricotta + mozzarella + garlic. “White pizza sauce” is a specific béchamel-based sauce recipe that you spread on the dough like red sauce. You can make a white pizza without white pizza sauce, and you can use white pizza sauce on any pizza you want.

What this earns you

A white pizza sauce that stays where you put it, melts cleanly into the cheese, and pairs with the right toppings. More importantly, the vocabulary to know what you actually want: pizza bianca for the Roman tradition, ricotta-mozzarella for NY-style white, béchamel for Detroit racing stripes, or béchamel-in-cheese for Sicilian.

The eight-minute béchamel above will make you better at white pizza than 90% of pizzerias. The pizzerias take shortcuts (jarred sauce, pre-shredded cheese, lazy garlic). The béchamel done right at home tastes better than the chain-restaurant version of the same thing. Once you’ve got the sauce, the next call is the right pizza dough recipe and the toppings ideas to go with it.