Home Oven Neapolitan Style Pizza Recipe!

After we spent so much time sharing our pizza journey in Marthas Vineyard with all of you, we realized how unrealistic it is to expect that tons of people have pizza ovens outside like that. That’s when we realized we had to share a more translatable recipe, the one we had been using in our home all along! This is Matt’s best attempt at recreating a true neapolitan style pizza (like the ones we were making in our wood oven) but for the home oven. You get that amazing combination of crispiness on the outside and a soft and chewy inside from a wood oven pizza because when you cook it at such a high temperature (800*F plus), the dough is able to retain more moisture since it cooks in 60-90 seconds. If you were to use that same dough and cook it in your home oven at 500* F, it would take 6 or 7 minutes to fully cook, and you would end up with a dry, cracker-like crust due to the extra loss of moisture. 

One of the ways to compensate for that is to increase the hydration of your dough, which allows it to retain more moisture. Matt learned this extremely important fact and many others from Ken Forkish’s book “The Elements of Pizza”. The recipe here is based off of his “Saturday Pizza Dough”, and I highly encourage you to purchase the book and read it if you are serious about making good pizza at home. Matt has also used recipes for longer fermented doughs, grandma pies, and even sourdough pizza and they are all great. 

Ingredients:

Makes 3 to 4 medium size pies.

500 grams caputo 00 flour

350 grams warm water (90 to 95 F)

⅛ tsp instant dried yeast 

15 grams fine sea salt

1. In a large bowl or dough tub, combine warm water and salt. Swish to combine 
2. Add yeast, let rest for a minute or two to hydrate. Swish around until dissolved 
3. Add 500 grams of flour to the water. 
4. Mix the dough. We generally use a kitchen aid with a dough hook (a major departure from Forkish, he advocates always mixing by hand. But its nice and easy and cleaner and I personally cant tell the difference) but did it by hand for this one to show that anyone can do it with minimal tools. Also Hudson was invested in the process. The goal is to fully combine the flour and water, developing it into a consistent mass. At this point we’re not kneading the dough, just combining it and it should only take a minute or two. 
5. Let rest for 20 minutes covered in bowl. 

6. Now we knead. Dust a counter or work surface with flour, and knead briefly until the skin is nice and smooth. Form into one ball and place in an oiled bowl or dough tub that has enough space to allow it to rise. Cover tightly with a lid or plastic wrap.

7. Let rise for around two hours – this will vary based on your climate. It will take longer when its cold, and accelerate when its hot out. 

8. Shaping – Flour your work area, take the dough out of your container and place it on the surface. Dust the top with flour, and using a bench scraper or knife cut into 3 to 4 pieces depending on how big of pies you want. Shape into dough balls, and place in a lightly floured baking dish with enough space between them to expand (a plate works too). 

9. Cover with a tight wrap, and let rest at room temp for 6 hours. If you wish to use them later, you can rest at room temp for 4 hours and then refrigerate to hold. If you do that, just take them out an hour before making to allow them to come to temperature. 

10. Make pizza!

Cooking the Pies (Margherita Pizza)

It’s essential to have a pizza stone to cook on. We use a Lodge cast iron one. We’ve heard of stones cracking, though we never owned one, but cast iron is bulletproof. The other most important tool is a pizza peel. We prepare pies right on a wooden peel, topped with flour, and then use that to place them in the oven. Ken Forkish’s recipes call for a complicated series of preheating at 550, switching to broil, turning the oven off, etc. We forgo this for a simpler sequence as follows:

1. Preheat the stone at max oven temp (550/500) for at least 30 minutes, generally around 45. 

2. Shape pizza, add sauce. Place into the oven and bake for 3:30-4:00 minutes. We use the same sauce from our other recipe, but plain san marzanos blended with sea salt works great as well. 

3. After about 4 minutes, pull pizza out, drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle with grated pecorino or parm, and then layer with fresh mozzarella and basil leaves. 

4. Return to 550F oven, bake for 1-1:30 minutes. 

5. Switch to broil, let bake for approximately 2 minutes until the cheese is melted and the crust is golden with some brown spots. 

It takes patience and practice but after 14+ years of home pizza experimenting, this is our family go to now. As with other simple recipes that rely on minimal ingredients (such as sourdough), getting the best stuff is key. Caputo 00 pizza flour can be found on amazon and it really makes a huge difference. You should buy the best italian DOP tomatoes you can find, and the best fresh mozzarella available (extra points for bufala). You can also make this more of a NY style pie by using shredded low moisture mozzarella and putting it on the pizza from the start since it takes longer to cook. Just be sure to shred your own since the pre-shredded contain anti-clumping additives that are no bueno. 

There you have it!! It if you use our recipe make sure to tag us on stories!!

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