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Check water temperature
Water temperature is critical for yeast activity. Measure your water to 25°C. Use a kitchen thermometer to check before you start.
Pizza Napoletana is the gold standard of pizza. Soft, puffy dough with a leopard-spotted crust requires good flour and patience — but the result is worth the wait. This recipe calculates exact ingredient proportions and water temperature based on your chosen flour and fermentation time. Feels too advanced or short on time? Start with simple Margherita. Want even more control? Use the advanced calculator.
For authentic Napoletana pizza you need a few specific tools: a digital kitchen scale (ideally with a precision mode, or a separate jeweler's scale), a proofing box (or airtight container) for the dough balls, a kitchen thermometer for water temperature, a bench scraper, and a pizza peel. Everything else — bowl, hands, oven — you already have.
Water temperature is critical for yeast activity. Measure your water to 25°C. Use a kitchen thermometer to check before you start.
Measure at the correct temperature. Pour most of it into a large bowl, reserving about 50ml aside. Add and stir for 1 minute to fully dissolve. Take a small handful of flour (roughly a tenth of ) and mix it in until a loose slurry forms.
Starting with salt in water means the salt never touches the yeast directly, which would slow it down. Keeping a little water aside lets you add yeast separately at the right moment.
Dissolve in the reserved 50ml of warm water. Pour the yeast-water into the bowl and stir to combine. Then add the remaining in 2–3 batches, mixing after each one until mostly incorporated, until a rough, shaggy dough forms.
2g fresh yeast is approx. 2 balls the size of a chickpea.
Add the flour slowly — each batch should mostly mix in before the next. This builds better gluten structure than dumping it all at once.
Work the dough on a clean surface using the AVPN fold-and-push method: stretch the dough away from you with your palm, fold it back, rotate 90°, repeat. No flour on the bench. The dough will be sticky at first — keep going. It's ready when smooth, elastic, and passes the windowpane test.
Do NOT add olive oil to Napoletana dough — pure flour, water, salt, and yeast is the AVPN standard. Oil changes the texture and char behavior.
Form the dough into a ball, place in a lightly oiled container, and cover. Leave at room temperature for the bulk fermentation time shown in the calculator above.
After bulk fermentation, turn the dough out onto a clean surface. Using your digital scale, divide it into equal portions — about 250g per pizza (adjust based on the calculator above). Weigh each piece and tear or cut to reach the target.
Precise portioning is what separates home pizza from great pizza. A 30g difference between balls means uneven results — take the 2 minutes to weigh properly.
Cup your hands around each portion on an unfloured surface. Drag it toward you with a circular rolling motion, using light downward pressure to tighten the surface. Rotate and repeat until the ball is smooth and taut with no visible seams.
Shape on bare counter — friction is your friend here. A floured surface won't let you build the surface tension that holds the ball's shape during cold proofing.
Arrange the shaped balls in the proofing box, evenly spaced. They should not be touching yet — they'll expand overnight. Close the lid.
Put the covered proofing box in the fridge. The dough will ferment slowly overnight, developing complex flavor and the structure needed for leopard-spotted crust.
Remove the proofing box from the fridge. Open it and check: the balls should have grown noticeably, feel pillowy to the touch, and be touching or nearly touching their neighbors. Close the lid and leave the box at room temperature for 1–2 hours before stretching.
If the balls smell slightly sour and spring back slowly when poked, fermentation is perfect. If they spring back immediately, give them more warm-up time.
When ready to stretch, slide a bench scraper gently under one dough ball and lift it out of the box. Place it on a lightly semola-dusted surface.
Place the dough ball in a bowl of coarse semola and turn gently to coat all sides. This prevents sticking during stretching.
Always use coarse semola (semolina rimacinata), not regular flour — semola doesn't absorb into the dough and gives a clean release.
Place the semola-coated ball on your work surface. Press down with both hands from the center outward, pushing trapped air toward the rim. Work in a rotating motion — press, rotate slightly, press again. Keep a 2–3 cm border untouched for the cornicione.
Never press down on the rim — that's where the air stays to create a puffy, airy crust.
Lift the disc over your knuckles and let gravity do the work — rotate gently while moving your hands apart. For the classic Neapolitan slap technique, pass the disc quickly between your hands with a side-to-side motion.
Authentic Neapolitan pizza is ~30cm in diameter with a pronounced, puffy edge.
Hand-crush San Marzano tomatoes directly onto each stretched pizza. Spread gently from the center outward with the back of a spoon, leaving a generous 2-3cm border for the cornicione.
Tear fresh mozzarella (fior di latte) and distribute evenly over the sauce. Leave the cornicione completely clear. Finish with a generous drizzle of extra virgin olive oil.
Generously dust your pizza peel with coarse semola. Slide the pizza onto the peel. Give it a gentle shake — it should slide freely. If it sticks, lift the edge carefully and add more semola underneath.
Work fast — dough absorbs semola quickly. Every extra second on the peel increases the risk of sticking.
A real Neapolitan pizza needs extreme heat. Give the peel a final shake to confirm the pizza slides freely, then launch it into the oven with a quick wrist flick. Bake for 60-90 seconds, rotating halfway. No peel? Use parchment on a preheated baking sheet at your oven's maximum temperature.
A true Napoletana sauce is almost insultingly simple — just crushed San Marzano tomatoes, a pinch of salt, and fresh basil. No cooking, no garlic, no olive oil. The oven does the work.
San Marzano tomatoes
Salt
Fresh basilCrush San Marzano tomatoes by hand (or use passata from good tomatoes). Add salt.
Do not cook the sauce — raw tomato sauce is the Neapolitan tradition. Add fresh basil.
The Pandough calculator lets you fine-tune every parameter — hydration, poolish, water temperature, and fermentation schedule.
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