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Neapolitan style is a thin pizza with a classic fluffy, crispy edge known as the cornicione. Made out of 00 flour, the high protein content of this finely milled flour helps create a crispy, chewy, and airy pizza. And finally, it’s finished off in a high temperature oven in under a minute!
Our recipe calls for a 48-72 hour fermentation period which adds complex flavours to the final result. Don’t let the waiting time hold you back– this is still an approachable recipe, and will be well worth your patience.
For a pizza night, you can easily scale up this recipe to create multiple pizzas (because one is simply never enough!)
Classic Neapolitan Pizza Dough
Course: Pizza, DinnerCuisine: ItalianDifficulty: Medium1
12-inch PizzaA classic base to compliment any of your favourite pizza toppings!
Ingredients
170g of 00 flour
1/8 tsp active dry yeast
100-110ml water (we recommend starting with 100ml for your first time, and increasing the hydration level as you get comfortable)
1 tsp salt
Coarse cornmeal (for dusting the dough)
Directions
- Dough Recipe
- In a medium bowl, mix yeast in water.
- Add flour to the water. With a wooden spoon mix well.
- Add salt and continue mixing.
- Transfer the dough to a lightly floured counter and start kneading (pushing the dough with the palm of your hand and pulling the dough back with your fingers). Knead for a couple of minutes and shape the dough into a roughly shaped ball. The dough is ready if it bounces back when pushed with a finger.
- Let the dough sit at room temperature for 2 hours.
- Transfer the dough to the fridge and let it ferment for 48-72 hours. This is when your dough will develop complex flavours.
- Take the dough out of the fridge two hours before baking.
- Shaping the Dough
- Have your toppings pre-prepped before starting on your dough.
- To get started on forming your dough, pour half a cup of cornmeal onto a plate.
- With a dough scraper swiftly move the dough ball from your storage container to the plate with the cornmeal.
- Coat both sides of the dough ball lightly with corn meal (this will stop the dough from sticking to the surface).
- Move the dough ball to the counter. Dough is ready to be shaped now.
- With your fingers, start to flatten the dough by pressing it starting from the middle of the dough out to the outer edge, creating a 1 centimetre wide rim. Ensure not to flatten the edge of the pizza as this will ruin your cornicione (crust).
- There are many ways to stretch the dough. We find it easiest to lift the pizza by the rim using both hands, (careful not to flatten the rim) and slowly going around the rim letting gravity stretch the dough.
Another technique is to lift the flattened dough and rest it on your knuckles and slowly stretch while rotating. Try to stretch the dough evenly. The stretched dough should be smaller than the pizza peel. - Sprinkle some cornmeal on the pizza peel and transfer the dough to the pizza peel. Ensure the dough is not sticking to the peel and is free to move on the peel. We do this by moving the peel back and forth using the handle, allowing the dough to move on the peel. If the dough is sticking to the peel, lift the dough and apply more cornmeal to the peel.
- At this point your pizza dough is ready for toppings! Refer to one of our other pizza recipes for our favourite topping suggestions.
