Neapolitan Pizza Margherita (Pizza Margherita Napoletana)

// SUPPLY LIST

// OPERATIONS

1. 1 Pour the 375 ml water (18-20°C / 64-68°F) into a wide bowl and dissolve the 17 g salt completely, then whisk in about 60 g of the flour to make a thin slurry. Crumble in the 1 g fresh yeast and whisk until it disappears, then add the remaining 540 g flour in three additions, working first with a wooden spoon and then with one cupped hand until no dry flour is left, about 4 minutes. This water-salt-flour-yeast order is the Neapolitan one and it matters: the flour slurry buffers the yeast from direct contact with the salt, which would otherwise blunt it. At 62.5% hydration the dough will feel wet and unpromising at this stage and that is correct. Do not substitute soft supermarket 00 pasta flour — at around W 170 it has no strength for a 24-hour ferment and the balls will slacken into puddles.
2. 2 Cover the bowl and rest 20 minutes, then turn the dough onto an unfloured worktop and knead 10-12 minutes, using slap-and-fold or a firm press-fold-quarter-turn. It moves from shaggy and tearing to smooth, taut and only slightly tacky; a walnut-sized piece should stretch thin enough to pass light through before it tears. Check the finished dough with a probe: you want 23-24°C / 73-75°F. Resist adding flour to fight the stickiness — every dusting drops the hydration and pushes you toward a dense, crackery base; use a bench scraper and damp hands instead.
3. 3 Rub a large container with a few drops of the olive oil, round the dough into a tight ball, set it seam-down inside, cover airtight and leave 2 hours at 20-22°C / 68-72°F. This is the puntata and it will not double: with this little yeast expect only 20-30% growth, but the dough should feel distinctly softer and air-cushioned, and a floured fingertip pressed 1 cm in should leave a dent that fills back slowly. If it has not moved at all after 2 hours the room is too cold — give it another hour rather than sending dead dough to the fridge.
4. 4 Scrape the dough onto a lightly floured surface and cut it into four pieces of about 248 g with a bench scraper, weighing each one — uneven balls stretch unevenly and burn at different rates. Ball each piece by folding the edges into the centre, then rolling it seam-side down under a cupped hand against the bench until the skin is drum-tight and the seam has sealed shut. Set them in a lidded proving box, or on a semola-dusted tray 3-4 cm apart under a second inverted tray, and cover airtight so no skin forms: a ball that dries out grows a leathery crust that will not stretch and tears at the rim.
5. 5 Refrigerate the balls 18-24 hours at 4°C / 39°F, on a middle shelf rather than against the back wall where they can partly freeze. Be honest about what this step is: Naples ferments at ambient temperature, and a cold retard is a domestic workaround rather than the Neapolitan method — but no home kitchen holds a steady 18°C / 64°F for a day, and the fridge buys the same slow flavour development on a timetable you can actually plan around. The balls will look barely changed when they come out, which is expected; the rise comes later.
6. 6 Take the balls out 4-5 hours before you plan to bake and leave them covered at 20-22°C / 68-72°F for the appretto. They are ready when they have spread and domed, nearly doubled, wobble like set custard when the tray is nudged, and show a few small blisters on the surface. A ball that is still cold, tight and rubbery is under-proofed: it will fight you, spring back, and tear at the centre, so give it another hour rather than forcing it. Use this window for the three steps that follow — the sauce, the cheese and the oven all have to be underway well before the appretto finishes.
7. 7 While the balls prove, tip the 400 g can of San Marzano into a bowl, pull out any hard pale cores and stray basil stems, and crush the tomatoes to a loose pulp with your hand, leaving pieces around 1 cm. Stir in the 1/2 tsp salt and nothing else — no oregano, no garlic, no sugar. Do not blend it, because a blender aerates the tomato into a pale pink froth that bakes grey, and do not cook it, because Neapolitan pizza sauce is raw: the tomatoes were already cooked in the can, and cooking them twice gives you a dull, jammy sauce instead of the bright acidity that carries the whole pizza. You want about 350 g of loose pulp; if it looks watery, sit it in a sieve for 15 minutes, keep the pulp and discard the thin juice.
8. 8 Start the cheese as soon as the balls come out of the fridge, because it needs a clear hour and the pizzas will not wait for it: tear the 350 g fior di latte into 1.5 cm strips, spread them on a rack set over a tray or on a double layer of kitchen paper, and refrigerate at least 1 hour and up to 4. They are ready when the strips look matte and feel dry to the touch and a visible pool of whey has collected beneath them. Wet mozzarella is the single commonest cause of a soupy centre, and drained cheese browns and blisters rather than boiling in its own liquid.
9. 9 About 90 minutes before the first launch, set an oven rack in the upper third so the top surface of the stone or steel sits 12-15 cm below the grill element — much further away than that and the top element cannot brown the cornicione before the base overcooks waiting for it. Put a 6 mm baking steel (or a 2 cm cordierite stone) on the rack and heat the oven to its maximum, 250-300°C / 480-570°F: give a steel a full 60 minutes to saturate with heat and a stone the full 90. Fifteen minutes before you launch the first pizza, switch the grill/broiler on so the top element is glowing orange.
10. 10 Dust the bench generously with semola, lift one ball onto it with a scraper, and press with fingertips from 2 cm inside the edge outward, driving the gas out toward the rim; flip and repeat. Then drape the disc over the backs of your knuckles and let gravity walk it out to 28-30 cm, thin enough at the centre to see the shadow of your hand through it, with an untouched 2 cm cornicione. Never use a rolling pin: it crushes the gas out of the rim and you get a flat cracker with no crown, which is the one failure you cannot rescue in the oven. Slide it onto a semola-dusted peel and shake once — if it does not move freely, lift an edge and dust underneath before you top it.
11. 11 Top in under 60 seconds, working fast so the dough has no time to glue itself to the peel: 80 g sauce spread in a spiral with the back of a ladle leaving the 2 cm border bare, 3-4 basil leaves laid straight onto the sauce so the cheese shelters them from the grill, then 85-90 g of the drained mozzarella scattered in even pieces, then a thin thread of 1 tsp olive oil. Stop there — much past 90 g of cheese and the melt floods the base faster than it can set, and a dressed pizza left standing on the peel for three minutes will weld itself down and tear on the launch.
12. 12 Launch with one short, sharp jerk of the peel and bake 5-7 minutes with the grill on, rotating the pizza 180° at the 3-minute mark. It is done when the cornicione is puffed and leopard-spotted with near-black blisters, the cheese is molten with the first bronze freckles, and the base lifts stiff on a peel with dark brown spots underneath; on a steel already at 300°C / 570°F it can be ready in 4 minutes, so watch it rather than the clock. Give the steel 5-8 minutes with the grill back on to recover between pizzas — launch onto a steel that has dropped and the base goes pale and biscuity instead of setting fast.
13. 13 Slide each pizza onto a wire rack for 60 seconds before plating — straight onto a plate and the trapped steam softens the base you just worked a day for — then move it to a warm plate, tear over 2-3 fresh basil leaves and finish with about 1/2 tsp olive oil. Serve immediately and whole, eaten with a knife and fork or folded a libretto, with a cold glass of Falanghina, a Gragnano frizzante, or a Neapolitan lager.

// CLASSIFICATIONS