Pizza Napolitana

You want to impress your family? Create their favourite take away food at home by following this recipe.

Buy or find
“00” flour, 1kg
Dried yeast powder, 2gm
Water, 700ml
Salt, 30gm (using less is fine)
Whole tomatoes, 2 400g cans (these really must be San Marzano tomatoes, several brands including Mutti produce these)
Salt, 8 grams salt (rule of thumb is 1 g salt per 100g tomatoes), I often use less
Fresh basil leaves, 10, washed
Olive oil, 1 /2 tsp
Parmesan cheese, 150g, finely grated
Flor di Latte cheese, 200g, chopped into cubes
Scarmoza mozarella cheese *, 150g,

To make the dough

Combine salt, yeast and 100g flour in a large bowl and stir to combine. Add water and stir using the handle of a wooden spoon to combine. Add remaining flour and stir using the handle of a wooden spoon, stirring in a circular motion until you have a shaggy dough.

Cover the bowl with plastic or place the bowl inside plastic bag and leave to sit for 5 minutes.

Wet your fingers in a bowl of water or under the running tap.

Gather underneath a portion of the dough and fold it up and over itself towards the centre of the bowl. Rotate the bowl 1 quarter turn (90 degrees). Keep repeating the folding and rotating until you have worked your way around the bowl and each portion of dough  (more or less) has been folded towards the centre of the bowl.

Place the bowl inside a plastic bag and leave in a warm place to sit for 5 minutes. Room temperature is fine, you want to avoid drafts.

Repeat the folding described above (remember to use wet fingers).

Place the bowl back in the plastic bag and leave in a warm place to sit for 5 minutes.

Repeat the folding described above (remember to use wet fingers).

Place the bowl back in the plastic bag and leave in a warm place to sit for 5 minutes.

Repeat the folding described above (remember to use wet fingers).

Cover the bowl with plastic (I cover the bowl with glad wrap and then place the bowl in a plastic bag) and leave for 19-20 hours at room temperature.

At the end of the 20 hour rest period, tip the dough onto a floured surface and divide the dough into 6-8 balls of roughly equal size. Leave them to rise for another 3-4 hours. (I do this by placing each ball of dough on a floured plastic chopping sheet, I usually fit 3 balls per sheet. Dust the balls with flour and cover the sheets with glad wrap to make sure little or no air can get in). If you are not using the dough today, you can store the dough balls in the fridge for up to 24 hours. You can even place the whole batch of dough in a plastic container and divide into balls of dough, using a knife or dough scraper as you need them. Cold dough is easier to handle than room temperature dough. You do not need to leave the refrigerated dough out to rise for 3-4 hours, you can cook it within 5 minutes of it being removed from the fridge.

To make the sauce

Tip the tomatoes into a large bowl and add the salt. Using your hands, gently crush the tomatoes until you have a roughly uniform mixture. Add the basil leaves and oil and mix together until well combined. (I do this using clean hands). Cover the bowl and leave for 3-4 hours at room temperature or even a little longer. The longer you leave this mixture, the better the sauce. Refrigerate the sauce if it will be sitting for more than 5 hours.

To make the pizza
Preheat the oven to 250 degrees celsius (use the top and bottom element setting, ie not fan forced). Allow the oven to heat up for 30-40 minutes, you want a very very hot oven.

I like to use both a rectangular baking tray and a cast iron skillet to make these pizzas. Each of these cooking surfaces creates a different effect and both are very good.

5 minutes before you want to cook your pizza, switch the oven to the grill setting.

Using a floured surface, take one of the balls of dough, sprinkle a little flour over the dough and press and stretch the dough out into the desired shape. Lift the dough occasionally while you do this to prevent the dough from sticking to the benchtop. Add another dusting of flour if the dough is sticking to the bench or your fingers. You can use a rolling pin rather than pressing and stretching with your fingers. I find a combination of using the rolling pin and hand stretching works by firstly rolling the dough with the pin until almost the size you would like, then finishing the shaping job using your fingers and hands.

Push the dough out at the edges to create a raised rim (in Italian this is called cornicione). In order to achieve a great cornicione, the centre of the pizza dough should be thinner than the outer edges after rolling or stretching.

Drizzle a small amount of oil over the tray or skillet. Lift the dough from the bench and carefully place onto the tray. This type of dough with 70 percent water is quite stretchy so take care when you lift the dough from the bench and place it on the baking tray. Reinforce the cornicione by pressing the dough out at the edges again. At this point you can place the pizza pan on the stovetop over a high heat while you add the toppings. This will assist the base in becoming crunchy. A standard oven does not reach the same high temperature as a pizza oven, using this stovetop crisping technique compensates for this.

Place the desired amount of sauce on the pizza, for me this is about 2 tbs. Sprinkle a small handful of parmesan cheese over the sauce. Sprinkle the desired amount of cubed cheeses over the sauce. (Don’t overdo the amount of cheese, less is more with this type of pizza).

Place the tray in the oven and cook for about 5 minutes. I switch the oven from grill to fan for about 2-3 minutes of the cooking time and then return it to the grill setting. Rotate the tray once or twice during the cooking period to ensure that the pizza browns evenly. The pizza should have very crispy browned edges and melted cheese.

Remove the tray or skillet from the oven and place on the stovetop. You can also heat the cooked pizza on the stovetop for another minute or two to crisp the base a little more, making sure that you don’t burn it. Remove the pizza from the pan and place on a chopping board to chop.

Repeat with the remaining dough.

* You want cheese with relatively high moisture content to prevent it from burning in the hot oven.

The 70 percent hydrated dough can be a little temperamental to use, use a lightly floured surface and sprinkle flour on the dough when shaping it. You don’t need a large amount of flour sprinkled just a light sprinkle.

Using less salt in the dough makes it more fluffy (and is good for people who need to lower their salt intake, you can reduce the salt to a tiny pinch if necessary).

Add very finely sliced mushroom over the sauce and parmesan for a mushroom pizza.

This pizza is also great with some rocket strewn over the top of the pizza after it comes out of the oven.

I have been having some success without the second rising of the dough, you can explore this as well.

If you don’t have 19-20 hours to let the dough rise, add 1 tsp of sugar to the flour salt and yeast and you can leave it for 3-4 hours. You will still need to let the dough balls rise. 8 Hours of rising in total instead of 24.

This dough keeps well in the fridge for 2-3 days.