Concluding Neapolitan Pizza
Over the course of a few months, we made 4 more rounds of Neapolitan pizza, refining and improving our technique.
Things We Learned
- Push the air out from the center to the edges.
By far one of the most important parts in making a good Neapolitan pizza. In order to get that fluffy, puffed outer crust you have to make sure to push all the air in the dough ball from the center to the edges.
- Put the basil on last.
The book we were following recommended putting the basil on before throwing the pizza on the oven, but we found that our oven baked so slow the basil came out shriveled. Instead, we decided to top the pizza with basil once it was out of the oven. This is also what they did at Mozza.
- Pesto is tasty.
While not traditional Neapolitan style, we discovered that pesto and a mix of ricotta, mozzarella and parmesan on Neapolitan pizza is delicious. For the toppings we used Kenji Lopez-Alt’s recipe.
- Keep the pie small.
Our first couple pizzas were too large, and as a result, had poor sauce coverage and an outer crust that was too thin. For our later tries we threw our pies much smaller, and got much more even sauce coverage, along with much thicker outer crust.
- Lowering the top pizza stone makes for a crisper crust.
Our oven isn’t very hot, so getting our pizza stone closer to the top of the pizza helped to get nice crispiness and browning on our crust.
- Go light on the mozzarella.
Our first couple margherita pizzas were drowning in mozzarella. Being more reserved with the cheese made for a more balanced flavor, and allowed the sauce to come out some more.
The Perfect Margherita Pizza
