Margherita Pizza

Pizza Margherita (Neapolitan Style)

The benchmark of Neapolitan pizza: a thin, soft base topped simply with San Marzano tomato, fresh mozzarella, basil and a thread of olive oil. In a wood-fired oven it bakes in about 90 seconds; a home oven needs a few minutes longer but the principles are the same.

Prep

120 min

Cook

7 min

Total

127 min

Serves

4 (four 250 g dough balls)

Difficulty

Medium

Recipe ingredients

• •1000 g (35 oz (about 7 cups)) tipo 00 flour, or strong bread flour if 00 is unavailable
• •650 ml (2¾ cups) cold water, around 65% hydration
• •25 g (1 oz (about 2 tbsp)) fine sea salt, about 2.5% of flour weight
• •2 g (½ tsp) fresh yeast (lievito di birra), or 1 g instant dry yeast; a slow, cool ferment is traditional
• •400 g (14 oz) San Marzano tomatoes (DOP), whole, peeled; the only acceptable tomato for true Margherita
• •250 g (9 oz) fior di latte mozzarella, or mozzarella di bufala Campana DOP; drained very well for several hours
• •20 g (a small handful) fresh basil leaves, Genovese if possible; added after baking
• •30 ml (2 tbsp) extra virgin olive oil, a fruity Italian one, for finishing

Steps

1. 1 Make the dough: dissolve the yeast in the cold water, add the salt, then mix in the flour until shaggy. Knead 10–12 minutes until smooth and supple (it should pass the windowpane test). Cover and rest at room temperature 1 hour, then refrigerate 12–24 hours for a slow, flavourful cold ferment — this is traditional and preferred.
2. 2 After the cold ferment, divide into four balls of about 420 g each, round them tightly, and let them come to room temperature (about 22 °C) for 2 hours, covered, until puffy and relaxed. Cold dough will not stretch.
3. 3 Prepare the topping: blitz or hand-crush the San Marzano tomatoes with a pinch of salt. Do not cook them. Drain the mozzarella thoroughly on a plate for at least 2 hours in the fridge (or use the day-old mozzarella sold in balls), then tear or slice it into pieces and blot again with paper towels so it does not water out on the pizza.
4. 4 Preheat a home oven to its absolute maximum with a heavy steel or cast-iron plate (or pizza stone) on the middle rack for at least 45 minutes. Target a cooking surface temperature of 250–290 °C (480–555 °F). A pizza steel is the closest a home kitchen gets to a wood-fired deck oven; broil setting for the final minute helps char the rim.
5. 5 Shape one dough ball on a heavily floured work surface (never a rolling pin): press out from the centre with fingertips, leaving a puffy outer rim of about 2 cm, then drape over the knuckles and stretch by gravity to roughly 30 cm. Transfer to a floured peel.
6. 6 Top sparingly: a thin layer of crushed tomato (about 80 g), a pinch of salt, a few torn pieces of mozzarella (about 60 g), a small drizzle of olive oil. Less is more — the dough must read through the topping.
7. 7 Slide onto the preheated surface and bake 4–7 minutes: the cornicione should puff and show characteristic leopard-spot charring, the base should lift cleanly with no raw flour streaks. Doneness cue: underside blistered with dark brown spots; internal crumb just set, not doughy.
8. 8 Remove with a peel, immediately scatter fresh basil leaves over the top and finish with a thread of raw olive oil. Eat at once — Neapolitan pizza is never reheated.
9. 9 Repeat for each pizza, shaping the next ball only after the previous one has been eaten or transferred to a warm plate; cold dough shapes poorly.