Margherita Pizza
A slow cold-fermented dough, an uncooked tomato sauce and the hottest oven you own. Three toppings and nothing else.
Nutrition Info (per serving)
- 660
- Calories
- 26g
- Protein
- 22g
- Fat
- 88g
- Carbs
Ingredients
- 500 g strong white bread flour
- 325 ml cold water
- 10 g fine salt
- 3 g instant yeast
- 400 g tinned whole plum tomatoes
- 250 g fresh mozzarella, ideally fior di latte
- Large bunch basil
- 3 tbsp olive oil
- Semolina, for dusting
Instructions
- 1Mix the flour, water and yeast in a bowl until no dry flour remains, then leave it for 20 minutes. This rest lets the flour hydrate on its own and does much of the kneading for you.
- 2Add the salt and knead for 5 minutes, until smooth and elastic. Salt is added after the rest because it slows both hydration and yeast activity.
- 3Cover and refrigerate for 24 to 72 hours. This long cold ferment is what develops the flavour — a dough proved warm in two hours will bake into something that tastes of bread and not much else.
- 4Three hours before baking, divide the dough into 4 balls, place them well apart on a floured tray, cover, and leave at room temperature.
- 5Make the sauce: crush the tinned tomatoes by hand and season with a good pinch of salt. That is the entire sauce. It is not cooked — it cooks on the pizza, and a pre-cooked sauce ends up overcooked and jammy by the time the base is done.
- 6Tear the mozzarella into pieces and leave it on kitchen paper for 20 minutes to drain. Wet mozzarella floods the pizza and gives you a soggy centre.
- 7Heat the oven as hot as it goes, with a pizza steel or an upturned heavy baking tray inside, for at least 45 minutes. Domestic ovens reach about 250 to 300C against a wood oven's 450C, so preheating the surface properly is the only lever you have.
- 8Stretch a dough ball on a semolina-dusted surface, working from the centre outward with your fingertips and leaving the outer 2 cm untouched. That untouched rim traps gas and becomes the puffed crust. Never use a rolling pin — it presses all the air out.
- 9Slide the base onto a semolina-dusted board or peel. Spread over a thin layer of sauce, leaving the rim clear, and dot with mozzarella.
- 10Slide onto the hot steel and bake for 6 to 8 minutes, until the crust is puffed and blistered dark in places and the cheese is bubbling.
- 11Add the basil and a drizzle of olive oil as it comes out, not before — basil in the oven turns black and bitter.
A margherita has three toppings and a base. There is nothing to hide behind, which is why the dough and the oven matter more than anything you put on top.
Time replaces effort
A pizza dough proved for two hours in a warm place will rise perfectly well and taste of very little. The same dough left in the fridge for two or three days develops a completely different depth.
What happens is slow enzymatic activity. Amylase breaks starches into simpler sugars, protease works on the gluten, and the yeast produces a wider range of flavour compounds at low temperature than it does when racing at room temperature. Those extra sugars also brown better in the oven.
Twenty-four hours is a clear improvement. Forty-eight is better. Seventy-two is about the limit before the gluten begins to break down.
The autolyse
Mixing flour and water and leaving it for twenty minutes before adding salt is called an autolyse. The flour hydrates fully and gluten begins forming on its own, so the dough needs far less kneading afterwards — five minutes instead of fifteen.
Salt goes in after because it competes with the flour for water and tightens the gluten early.
Do not cook the sauce
Neapolitan pizza sauce is crushed tinned tomatoes and salt. Nothing else, and no heat.
The sauce cooks on the pizza in those few minutes at high temperature. Start with a sauce that has already been simmered down and by the time the base is baked it has gone twice-cooked, dark and jammy, losing the fresh acidity that balances the cheese.
Drain the mozzarella
Fresh mozzarella is packed in water and holds a lot of it. On a pizza that water has nowhere to go but into the dough, and the middle stays pale and wet while the rim browns.
Twenty minutes torn on kitchen paper solves it. Low-moisture block mozzarella is drier and more forgiving, though it lacks the milky flavour.
Fingertips, never a rolling pin
The gas bubbles created during fermentation are the crust. A rolling pin crushes them flat across the whole base, giving a cracker rather than a pizza.
Press from the centre outward with your fingertips and leave the outer two centimetres completely alone. That untouched band inflates dramatically in the oven.
Nutrition
Around 660 calories per pizza. It is mostly carbohydrate from the base, with the protein and calcium coming from the mozzarella.
The dough keeps in the fridge for three days and freezes as balls for a month — defrost overnight in the fridge and give it three hours at room temperature.
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