One of my favorite foods when I was younger was Pizza. Nowadays I don’t eat it too often, because I have some issues with the gluten, or it has some with me. But I wanted to explore the pizza dough and come up with a recipe that can be made at home, and not needing fancy equipment. My partner told me the other day that this pizza could be perfectly fine to be sold in a restaurant. So that is enough praise for me.
I want you all to be able to do it at home, so you enjoy not only a very tasty pizza, but also one that is more digestible due to its long fermentation. And you can choose your topping and know exactly what you get in it.
I would say the basics are: a 70% hydration, long fermentation, and hot oven. The hot oven is usually the issue in our homes, but we will make do, by preheating the tray that comes with the oven, flipped, on the highest temperature the oven can get to (mine 275°C), and the fan turned on.
I used a baking tray with perforated bottom for a better circulation of the heat, but you can use parchment paper. I avoid using too much things that are usable just once, but I did use parchment paper in the past and it works just fine.
The recipe is flexible regarding timings, and how long you leave it to ferment, I will leave you here 2 options that you might want to use to fit into your timetable.
You can find the recipe bellow and I hope it is all clear and easy to follow. If you have more question, please let me know in the comment section.
Homemade Pizza | Neapolitan Style
Ingredients
Poolish:
- 300 g bread flour
- 300 g room temperature water
- 1/4 tsp 2 g active dry yeast
Dough:
- the poolish
- 50 g room temperature water
- 20 g salt
- 200 g bread flour
Sauce:
- 1 can of whole peeled tomatoes
- oregano
- marjoram
- salt
Toppings(whatever you want from these):
- parmesan or pecorino cheese
- other softer cheese: Gouda goat cheese, etc.
- mozzarella
- olives
- dried tomatoes
- cooked mushrooms
- basil
- spinach
- ham
- smoked salmon
- capers
Instructions
- On day 1, in the evening, start making the poolish by mixing all the ingredients mentioned above. Ferment covered overnight.
- On day 2 in the morning, to the poolish, add the rest of the flour(200 g), and the salt dissolved in the 50 g of water. Mix well. Rest covered for half an hour.
- Perform a set of 8 stretch and folds on the dough. Leave to ferment 1 or 1 and 1/2h, depending on the temperature. It should puff up a little.
- Prepare a shallow, rectangular plastic or glass container that has a lid, by oiling the inside with olive oil.
- Oil the work surface and flip the dough into it. Split in 3 or 4 parts and from each one make a tight ball, by folding the edges into the inside, or tucking in the sides into the bottom of the ball.
- Place the balls into the prepared container, cover and leave at room temperature for an hour.
- Place the container in the fridge for 12, 24 or 36 h.
- One hour before baking, remove the container from the fridge and leave in a warm place.
- Preheat the oven at maximum, option with fan, and insert the oven pan, flipped upside down, to heat inside the oven. This will act as our baking pizza stone.
- Prepare the pizza sauce by crushing the tomatoes and adding the herbs, olive oil and salt.
- Prepare all other toppings, grating cheese, cooking ingredients, etc. They all have to be ready before starting with the dough.
- After the dough got to room temperature we can start the extending the dough. Carefully pick one ball from the rectangular container, flip it on a plate with a lot of flour, flip it again the plate, so that the other one soaks the flour, lay the dough on the working surface and punch it lightly in the middle with your fingers, leaving a circle on the exterior that is not punched.
- Flip it with the bottom up and punch again the center, flip it back on the good side and start stretching it from the inside out, and pulling lightly on the exterior to stretch it, so that the interior will have a thin dough and the exterior will have a 1-2 cm dough ring that is thick and not stretched at all.
- Transfer to the baking dough or parchment paper and adjust again the dough.
- Spread a thin layer of the tomato sauce, and back for 2-3 min, until the tomato sauce has dried a little and the outer ring of dough is slightly golden.
- Remove from the oven, lay your topping starting with the parmesan cheese, and finishing with mozzarella if you use it, brush some olive oil on the outer dough (the one that is thicker) and bake for 2-3 min more, until it acquires the color that you like.
- Let cool on a cooling rack until you cut and serve, which should be while still warm.
