Perfect Pizza
The neapolitan way.
Servings: 5 pizzas
Ingredients
The Dough
- 1 kg plain white flour
- 700 g lukewarm water
- 20 g salt
- 2 g dried yeast
The Tomato Sauce
- 800 g peeled whole tomatoes, with sauce 2 regular cans, not cooked/pasteurized
- 16 g salt
- 1 handful fresh basil leaves
Toppings
- 1 batch Cashew Mozzarella https://www.thefeastybeast.com/cashew-mozzarella/
- 2 handfuls fresh basil leaves
Instructions
The Dough
- Add the flour to a large bowl. Measure the lukewarm water into a separate container (jar). Add the yeast to a small bowl and cover with 2-3 tbsp of the measured out water. Add the rest of the water to the flour and mix with your hands (it feels great:)) until just incorporated. Now let everything rest for 30 minutes.
- Now sprinkle the salt over the dough and add the yeast mixture (scooping the remaining sticky yeast out of the bowl with a piece of dough). Stretch and fold the dough over itself from all four sides (still in the bowl). Then cut through the dough 5-6 times by pinching it with your index finger and thumb. Fold and pinch again and again until your fingers don't feel any grains of salt anymore.
- Cover the dough with a damp towel and let it rest for 1 hour.
- Fold the dough over itself from all four sides, then lay it folds side down, cover it again and let it rest for 5 hours.
- Gently ease the dough (that has about tripled in size) out of the tub onto a lightly floured surface and cut it into 5 equal parts (with a dough cutter).
- Take one piece after the other and move it to a non-floured area on your worksurface. Gently fold it over itself from all four sides without overstretching and tearing the dough. Now place the folds side down and gently drag the dough ball over the work surface with your hands so that the surface of the ball becomes tight. This helps keeping the yeast gases inside so we get nice bubbles in our pizza rim.
- Cover the dough balls and let them rest in the fridge for 30 minutes. Then take them out and let them rest (still covered!) at room temperature for another 30 minutes. In the meantime preheat your oven to as high as it goes (my kitchen oven goes to 275°). Or if you have a proper pizza oven, to as high as the oven manual recommends.
The Tomato Sauce
- Mash the tomatoes using a passevite (foodmill). If you don't have one of those you can also mashi it with a potato masher, fork or push them through a sieve with a spoon. You should however absolutely not blend them. The goal is to have a thick sauce with the seeds and the juice and the flesh of the tomato combined. Stir in the salt and the cut up basil leaves and let it sit until you're ready for assembly.
Assembly
- Put a pizza ball onto a lightly floured surface and deflate the middle with your fist, leaving a thick rim. Then lift and work the dough (which should be very soft and relaxed now) so it stretches out from its own weight. No rolling pin!
- Spoon about 3 tbsp of the tomato sauce onto one pizza so it's just a thin layer. Then add the mozzarella on top to your liking and sprinkle over some fresh basil leaves.
- Bake the pizza for 5-7 minutes if you preheated your oven to 275°C or much less if it's hotter. E.g. the woodfired oven I used once was 350°C and the pizza needed to stay in just one minute.
- Enjoy fresh out of the oven :D And proceed the same way with the other 4 pizzas. You can also keep some dough balls in the refrigerator and make Focaccia from them the next day.
Notes
I recommend always making the dough in batches of 1kg even if less pizzas are needed. This is because dough magic works differently in smaller batches. If there are leftover pizza dough balls you can make foaccia from them the next day.