Neopolitan Pizza at Home (using a pan)
- Make a delicious dough, using some sugar to help brown in home oven
- Rest / rise the dough at 66-72F
- Portion out the dough (freeze some of them if desired)
- Fashion a pizza from a dough portion
- Put ingredients on pizza
- Put a little drizzle of evoo on the top
- Slide pizza crust into hot pan on stove (no soggy bottom)
- Move pan into hot oven to finish top (only 90-180 seconds)
Dough prep: 10 min
Dough kneeding: 15-20 min
Dough rest time: min 40 minutes, max 8 hour
Cook time: 5 min
Glass bowl
Flat surface to fashion the pizzas
Flat-ish pan (frying pan could work) that can go in oven
Stove
Oven
500 ml water
25 grams table salt
2 grams fresh yeast
800 grams (split into 500g and 300g) Type "00" Flour https://www.amazon.com/Antimo-Caputo-Chefs-Flour-Pounds/dp/B005HEEFN2
7.5 grams Sugar
25 grams EVOO
Optional: Semolina flour to stop pizza sticking to counter
In a large glass bowl stir together:
- water
- salt
- sugar
On top of the water add 500gr flour. Do not stir yet.
Add yeast on top of the flour and start lightly mixing into the flour. We want to get the yeast into the flour and not directly into the salty water (which will stop yeast).
Once yeast has been mixed into the flour, mix the flour/yeast into the water/salt/sugar mix underneath.
Add EVOO.
Add remaining 300gr flour and mix in until pasta takes shape
Once flour is mixed in, transfer to a flat surface and work the dough adding water or flour if needed. Work the dough for 15 to 20 minutes by folding the dough back towards yourself and then pushing it down and away from you into your work surface. Davide calls this "Grandma style".
Cover the dough with a wet kitchen towel and let dough stand between 40min (worse) and 8 hours (better). The wet towel ensures that no crust forms on the top of the dough. Ideal temps for this are 66-72F.
Once it has rested, cut the dough into 4 or 5 parts depending on the number of pizzas you want. You can always wrap dough in kitchen wrap and freeze it for up to 4 months.
Lightly roll the balls to make a ball shape. Flatten slightly.
Preheat the oven to 500F or whatever the highest your oven goes. I recommend using the second to lowest rack in your oven.
Space out your fingers and press into the middle of the flattened ball. Do this several times, always in the center and slowly going out. This will keep a crust on the outside. Flip over the dough every so often to get an even pizza. Flipping back and forth can help to encourage the pizza to spread.
Put your ingredients on the pizza then put a drizzle of olive oil over it. Davide suggests mozzarella, pizza sauce, basil leaves
Once at size, heat up your pan on the stove. I highly recommend you let it get very hot. Normally pizzas going into a very hot pizza oven are often on a surface that is 500 degrees so having it hot will not hurt the pizz, in fact it will prevent a lot of issues. As long as you keep watching it for burning, you should be ok. When you put on the pizza, you should cover the pizza to encourage cheese melting. Leave it on for approximately 2 minutes but this may vary so check the crust for burning every so often. Crust should now be done cooking.
Next take the pan and move it into your already hot oven. Wait 90-180 seconds to just basically finish melting the top of the pizza.
Take out and enjoy a crust that is not soggy!
I halved the original recipe from davide Civitello and it yields 4 or 5 pizzas depending on how you split the dough. Generally you are going to want smaller pizzas since they need to fit in a pan on the stove. All mixing and kneeding can be done by hand.
Youtube video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SN2HkepzPhU&list=PLWKLqE-7K4-bA-hG9dEG7nAzFSLuoCvjX&index=6
Would love to see a CLI for this!