Homemade pizza margherita with slow-fermented dough

dairy Italian · regular · 240 min, including 60 hands-on

Two 30 cm Neapolitan-style pizzas baked in a home oven: dough made with 00 flour and kneaded the day before, hand-crushed raw peeled tomatoes, well-drained fior di latte, fresh basil and a drizzle of oil, baked on a blazing-hot tray until the rim is puffed and mottled.

easy version

Ingredients for two

Method

1. The evening before, or the same morning 9–10 hours before baking, dissolve the yeast in the lukewarm water in a large bowl and wait 2 minutes. Add 300 g flour and mix with a spoon, then by hand, until no dry flour remains. Cover and rest for 10 minutes so the flour hydrates and needs less kneading. Add 8 g salt and knead on a lightly floured surface for 8–10 minutes, folding and pushing with the heel of your hand, until smooth, elastic and barely sticky. A piece stretched between your fingers should become translucent without tearing.
2. Shape into a ball and return to the bowl, lightly greased with a few drops from the 20 g oil. Cover with cling film. Leave at room temperature for 1 hour, then refrigerate for 8–24 hours. If starting in the morning, allow 1 hour at room temperature followed by 5–6 hours in the fridge, never all day at room temperature: at 25°C or above, this amount of yeast would make the dough collapse and turn sour. When it comes out of the fridge, it should have doubled, with bubbles beneath the surface.
3. Three hours before baking, turn the dough onto a floured surface and divide into 2 balls of 250 g. Shape by tucking the edges underneath to tighten the surface. Space apart on a floured tray or large board, cover with oiled cling film or place in an airtight container. Do not use a tea towel, as the surface would form a skin and the rim would rise less. Leave at room temperature for 2–3 hours, until slightly relaxed and a finger pressed into the dough leaves an indentation that slowly springs back.
4. Forty-five minutes before baking, place a heavy baking tray upside down, or a pizza stone, on a rack in the upper third of the oven. Preheat to its highest setting, 250–275°C, preferably conventional heat. If not done the day before, tear the mozzarella into 2 cm pieces, drain in a colander for 30 minutes and pat dry with kitchen paper: wet mozzarella makes soggy pizza. Drain the peeled tomatoes for 10 minutes in a second colander, or the same one over a bowl once the mozzarella is removed, reserving the juice for a sauce. Weigh out 180 g tomatoes, roughly three-quarters of the tin's tomatoes, and roughly crush by hand in a bowl with 3 g salt. Keep them raw and textured, not puréed. Add the remaining tomatoes to the reserved juice.
5. Shape the first dough ball on a surface sprinkled with fine semolina. Press with your fingertips from the centre outwards, leaving a 1 cm rim untouched to form the puffy cornicione. Turn and stretch over the backs of your hands to 28–30 cm, without a rolling pin, which would knock out the air. Shake off excess semolina and place on a sheet of baking parchment cut to fit, on a thin board or the back of a cold baking tray to use as a peel.
6. Top with half the crushed tomatoes, 90 g or 5 level tbsp, spreading in a spiral with the back of a spoon to within 2 cm of the edge. Lay 3 basil leaves on the tomato, then scatter over half the mozzarella in spaced pieces. It will spread as it melts and protect the basil, which flavours the tomato. Drizzle with 1 tbsp olive oil. Add the remaining basil raw after baking; exposed on top, it would burn during 8 minutes in a home oven.
7. Open the oven and quickly pull the parchment with the pizza onto the hot tray, then close the door. After 3 minutes, the dough will have set: lift the edge with a spatula, pull the parchment out sharply and discard it so the base browns better. Bake for 7–9 minutes overall, until the rim is puffed and mottled brown, the melted mozzarella bubbles and starts to colour, and the base, lifted with a spatula, is dry with brown patches. If the top is still pale after 6 minutes, switch to the grill: the element takes 2 minutes to glow red, then allow 2–3 minutes beneath it, watching closely.
8. While the first pizza bakes, shape and top the second on another sheet of parchment on the now-free peel, following steps 5 and 6. Lift the first pizza onto the serving board with the spatula and put the second in the oven within a minute. The tray will be even hotter, making the next pizza better still. Tear half the remaining basil over the first, cut into slices and share it piping hot while the second bakes, as they do in Naples when the oven holds only one pizza. If you want both pizzas served together, leave the first on a wire rack for no more than 8 minutes, not on a plate, which would soften the base.

On your plate

Cooking tips

This is a dairy meal, so serve no meat; the starter should be pareve or dairy. Make the dough the evening before in 20 minutes and refrigerate. The stated 4 hours cover the final dough rise and preheating, not hands-on work. A shaped dough ball can be frozen for up to 1 month; thaw for 6 hours in the fridge, then leave for 3 hours at room temperature. The evening before, remove the mozzarella from its liquid, tear it and leave to drain in the fridge in a colander over a bowl, covered with cling film. By the next day it will be dry enough to melt without flooding the pizza. The drained tomato juice makes a base for tomorrow's pasta sauce. Variations: marinara, without mozzarella and with sliced garlic and oregano, is pareve; or replace the fior di latte with burrata torn over the pizza after baking.

Equipment : large bowl, cling film or airtight container, tray or large board for the dough balls, then serving, heavy baking tray or pizza stone, baking parchment, 2 colanders, or 1 colander and 1 bowl, thin board or back of a cold tray to use as a peel, large spatula, wire rack

Pizza napoletana verace (AVPN), adapted for a home oven: 65% hydration, less yeast, a long cold rise and baking on a preheated tray.