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Everyone loves pizza! There is something magical about how you can enjoy it as street food or even a gourmet meal at a fancy restaurant.
Regardless of the style of pizza, we believe they all deserve to be celebrated. Our personal favourite is Neapolitan style. This is a thin pizza with a classic fluffy, crispy edge known as the cornicione. It is made out of 00 flour, which is a finely milled flour with a high protein content. This helps keep the pizza crispy, chewy and airy all at the same time. With a perfect harmony of dough, cheese and toppings these pizzas are cooked in high temperature ovens for only 60-90 seconds.
Our obsession with pizza was fuelled by our 2022 trip to Italy. We got a chance to try Neapolitan style pizza in Naples, the birthplace of pizza, the first night we landed in Italy. One bite and we were in love. We later learned how to create it for ourselves by taking a pizza making cooking class and picked up a few helpful tips from the locals.
Pizza Tools
Since it’s impossible to get a kitchen oven close to 800 °F temperature, and a brick oven wasn’t in the cards for us, we knew we had to invest in a pizza oven when we got back home. After a lot of research and talking to friends who are equally obsessed with pizza, we decided on the popular Ooni Koda. Since then, this little oven has been the star of many of our dinner parties!
If you’re also looking to invest in an outdoor pizza oven, here are some tools to get you started.
- Pizza oven
- Pizza Peel, to launch the pizza
- Turning Peel, to turn the pizza while in the oven
- Dough scraper
- Laser Thermometer
Classic Neapolitan-Style Margherita Pizza
Course: Dinner, PizzaCuisine: ItalianDifficulty: Medium1
12-inch PizzaLearn how to make pizza dough and tomato sauce from scratch, to build this classic neapolitan style, margherita pizza.
Ingredients
- Homemade Pizza Dough
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)
- Homemade Tomato Sauce
250g San Marzano tomatoes (canned)
1/4 tsp salt (or more to taste)
1 tbsp oregano
5 basil leaves
- Margherita Toppings
Fresh mozzarella
Handful of basil leaves
Olive oil
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 24-48 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!
- Tomato Sauce
- Add the tomatoes into a medium sized mixing bowl.
- Using your hands, squeeze the tomatoes until most of the juices are out and some small chunks remain.
- Tear up the basil leaves by hand and add to the sauce.
- Add oregano and salt and mix well.
- Margherita Pizza
- Fire up your pizza oven to 800 °F
- Once the dough is stretched and on the pizza peel, add a light layer of homemade tomato sauce using a soup ladle or a tablespoon.
- Top with a generous amount of mozzarella and basil leaves.
- Add a drizzle of olive oil on the inner rim of your dough before transferring to the pizza oven.
- Watch carefully, and rotate the pizza in the oven using your turning peel to evenly cook all sides. Your pizza will be ready to enjoy within minutes!
