The homemade Neapolitan pizza – dough

Have you ever asked yourself how do I make Neapolitan pizza at home for myself? I did!

The Neapolitan pizza is the most traditional of all pizza types. With soft yet slightly crispy charred raised edges and a soft chewy cheesy flavourful centre, this pizza is the original version of a pizza pie. No really, there’s rules and everything (I included it here: Disciplinare 2008 UK or if you want to know more you can visit https://americas.pizzanapoletana.org/en/). Most people are used to a standard New York slice or Chicago deep dish pie but these fresh soft chewy flavourful slices can change your mind I promise! I have created this page to just give my take on how you can make each element of this pizza at home. The idea was to be able to make it as close as possible to the original masterpiece as possible using common ingredients and household and store bought items but still get the lovely taste of classic Neapolitan pizza. I also wanted to give an account of the best ways, ingredients and tastes I have found to make these pies at home.

Without any wait let’s jump into the pizza dough…

Pizza dough ingredients

To make the dough we need to make sure we get the right ingredients to get that base just right. I would also like to note that if you are going to make pizza soon, please read this recipe at least a two or three days in advance just to help prepare you.

First let us discuss the type of flour we need; the most preferred flour is 00 flour which is very finely milled flour, however, you can use bread flour in pinch. We are making this at home so if you really do not have either of those, in an emergency, you can use all-purpose flour, but it will have a little less strength as a final product if you are willing to make the swap. The simple reason for using 00 flour or bread flour is these flours have a higher protein content than AP flour or cake flour which allows for that strong stretchy dough. Flours like cake flour have very low protein content and won’t give you the result you want.

Salt is an important ingredient to every pizza even though a little amount is needed. Sea salt is preferred since it helps with yeast bacteria growth and helps strengthen the gluten mesh in the pizza dough. All technical things aside it makes the pizza dough taste better and without it the dough will lack flavour. If you do not have sea salt (which is preferred), that’s alright so long as the salt you use can dissolve easily in water that will do just fine.

Water, the essence of life, is another ingredient vital to the airy soft dough that is pizza. Depending on the yeast used either tepid water or cool tap water can be used, just make sure it’s clean and drinkable.

Finally, the last ingredient needed is Yeast. There are three types, instant, active and fresh. The most preferred is fresh yeast but the other two can be used if you cannot find or don’t want to keep fresh yeast.

To make a good Neapolitan pizza dough there are a few rules to follow, and I want to try to stick to them as closely as possible, but I will also give you some shortcuts for home use because well we are making pizza at home and some rules are meant to be broken. There are a few things that can help make the pizza taste and look better though.

The addition of sugar in minute quantities will help with the coloration of the crust of dough, especially in home ovens that can’t reach the required high temperatures that a wood fire oven can. Another and final ingredient that can be used is olive oil. Olive oil helps by adding a depth of flavour and softness to the dough and if added on top or on the crust just before baking can help reduce any soggy effects that may be found.

Ok good let’s begin the making of dough process.

Making the dough

Standard pizza sizes where I am from are 25 cm (10 inch) and 30 cm (12 inch). This recipe will be a standard recipe for standard 30 cm pizzas, but I have also included a calculator for amount of pizza and size that you would be looking for.

Let’s begin by measuring all the ingredients we need. For pizza all the ingredients are measured in relation to the amount of flour used. For a standard Neapolitan pizza the ratios of ingredients are as follows:

100% 00 flour

65% of the flour mass of water

3% of the flour mass of salt

0.2% of the flour mass as yeast (yes that little)

I suggest for these measurements you have a scale that can measure in grams for future, but I will try to give portion sizes as well. For four 30 cm pizzas we need approximately 230-gram dough balls. The breakdown of ingredients is shown below.

Flour – 547 grams

Water – 356 ml

Salt – 16.41 grams

Yeast – 1.09 grams

Ingredients calculator 

Ideally, we want the measurement of each ingredient to be correct, but no one is perfect so let’s go with as close as you can get it. As you can see the values for yeast are ridiculously small and this is because little yeast is needed to make the dough rise. Yeast is a bacterium that grows when left in contact with flour and water and will multiply over time given enough time. Most breads, doughs, cakes have yeast and it’s very safe to use.

I think if you want to be exact, like me, all you need is a scale that can measure in grams, and you will be perfectly fine. If not, use half a teaspoon if the values are too low to measure, a little extra yeast will not make the pizza worse, it will just make the dough rise faster.

Active vs fresh vs instant yeast portions and impact of yeast-> Show More

Mixing dough

These are the steps that I use when mixing the dough by hand or with a spoon:

• Let’s begin by putting all the water (or remaining water if you are using active yeast) into a large bowl and adding all the salt to the water. From here stir the salt until it is completely dissolved.
• Add a quarter of the flour to the bowl and and mix up the flour till it’s as smooth as you can get it, shouldn’t take more than a minute.
• Next mix in the yeast or portioned yeast mixture (if using active yeast) into the bowl. Check the yeast section above if you need to understand how to prepare active yeast.
• Once combined, you can slowly add portions (quarter at a time) of the flour while mixing each time to gain as much consistency as possible.
• At some stage you will end up a with a sticky, lumpy mass of dough. Not to worry it is time to knead!

If you are using a stand mixer (yes you can!) ->Show More

Time to knead!

• Turn over the whole lot onto a table and begin kneading by using the base of you palm to push into the dough. As you push into the dough and flatten it, fold it onto itself and knead again. Tear it, rip it, squash it and stretch it if you want to as well, the idea is to work the dough so that it builds its own strength. If it’s sticky that’s okay, it will stick to your hands, trust the ingredients and keep going. Resist the urge to add more flour.
• Knead the dough for about 10 minutes, or until all the flour is incorporated into one. At this point the total mass should and may still be a bit sticky but that’s okay. Try to form it into a round ball by pinching the dough to one point so that the opposite end is taught and firm. If it is too sticky that’s alright, try to get it into as much of a ball as possible.
• From here, lightly oil a large bowl with a tablespoon of olive oil and place the dough ball into it (pinched side down). Cover with a lid or cling film (ensure no air can get in so the dough does not form a crust) and leave the bowl in a place that is room temperature for an hour. If you have used extra yeast and the double ball doubles in size before the hour mark, then your dough ball is ready for portioning.
• After an hour or if the dough ball doubles in size turn it back out onto the bench and you can begin to size or portion your dough balls. For this recipe you can cut the dough into two portions and then reform the dough balls by pinching one side until the top is smooth and firm. If you want to create different sized dough balls you can measure using a scale and then form to whatever size you wish. Please remember that these will still need to be set and will need to rise for a long period.
• Dust some flour into a baking tray and place the dough balls into the tray and cover with clear wrap or cling wrap so that no air can get into the tray (especially important – this will stop a crust forming on the dough ball). You can sprinkle some flour on top of the dough balls to stop them from sticking to the clear wrap before you cover.
• Let the dough balls sit in a room temperature place for four to six hours. It may seem like a long time but we need the flavour and dough to develop. Good things take time right! If you have used extra yeast, no need to worry, just check to see once the dough balls have doubled in size, it should be ready to use.

If you are not using the dough the same day (I usually make my dough the day before), once it is ready for use, you can leave it in the same baking tray (still covered) overnight and it will not continue to rise much since yeast development slows down to almost a halt in cold environments. It will also develop some flavour in the fridge overnight as it sits in the fridge as well so that’s always a plus. Just please take the dough out around 2 to 4 hours before you use it so the dough can naturally come to room temperature before use. Cold dough is very hard to work with (take my word for it), your pizza will not bake well and not have the soft chewy consistency you want.

Now that we have made our dough let’s make a pizza sauce (you can find the page for that here -> https://homemadepizzalife.com/homemade-neapolitan-pizza-sauce/)