Neapolitan pizza and as many people say and I agree, is the best style of pizza in existence with a thin base, puffy, chewy yet slightly charred with a crispy exterior(known in Italian as the cornicione) as well as simple, high-quality ingredients and toppings. Its unique texture is created by baking the pizza quickly in a wooden-fired hot oven. This baking method of baking also creates the iconic charred/leopard pattern on the crust.
Serves: makes 4 pizzas
For the dough:
1 kg rice flour
15 g pink himalayan salt
850 ml water
3g of fresh yeast or 0.84g of active dry yeast
For the pizza sauce:
1 tbsp tomato paste
1 tbsp olive oil
400 g canned crushed tomatoes
4 tbsp water
6 garlic cloves minced
1 tbsp fresh rosemary finely chopped
1 tsp salt
For the topping:
Thinly sliced cherry tomatoes
Chopped fresh basil
Hempmesan ( blend 1 cup hemp hearts with 1/2 cup nutritional yeast and 1 tsp salt)
Extra virgin olive oil to drizzle
Long java pepper and pink himalayan salt to taste
INSTRUCTIONS:
1. Place the flour ingredients in a bowl expect water. Mix well together. Then add the water and mix well. Let it work for at least 8 minutes.
2. Split the dough into 4 equal size pizza balls using a pizza dough scraper or a knife. And form four pizza balls. I recommend weighting them as well, to check that they are roughly the same weight (around 260-270 g) and after having packed them tightly place them in the fridge for 24 hours.
3. Passed the 24 hours, take and roll out each dough ball by flouring the kitchen surface with rice flour. The final dough must be slightly elastic and easily removed from the surface. If you bake cold pizza dough, stretch in the dough will burn, so leave it at room temperature for at least 2 hours before baking the pizza.
4. Roll out each pizza leaving the edge thicker. The middle of the bases must be less than 0.25cm thick, and the edges about 2.5 cm.
5. In a bowl, mix all pizza sauce ingredients together. Pour the pizza sauce over the pizza.
6. Lay down the sliced cherry tomatoes on your pizza, sprinkle some hempmesan.
7. The dough must be cooked in a wood oven at around 485-500 °C for between 60 to 90 seconds. When you bake pizza at this temperature, the crust will raise up and create the tall, airy crust edge that you associate with Neapolitan pizza.
8. Sprinkle some herbs of your choice, drizzle some olive oil and season with long java or blackpepper.
Notes & Tips:
– Do not add anything else other than written in the ingredient list of the dough. Sugar, oil, and other ingredients in pizza dough will make the crust burn faster, and should therefore be avoided when you bake pizza in a wood-fired oven.
– Do not skip 24 hours sitting period.
– You can make the dough with gluten-free white rice flour, as an alternative Caputo gluten-free flour which is a high-quality Tipo 00 flour also works well.
– You can either use fresh or dried yeast. Fresh yeast tends to give you a little better flavor, but it doesn’t make that much of a difference. You can also use sour dough if desired.
– If you add too many toppings, or too much sauce and cheese, it will take longer to bake the pizza. And you’ll end up with a soggy, underbaked pizza.