Good pizza at home is not about a special oven. It is about giving the dough enough time and getting the oven as hot as it will go. The dough is made the night before and does its work while you sleep.
What you need
For two 30cm pizzas:
- 500g Casillo Tipo 0 pizza flour
- 325ml cold water
- 10g salt
- 2g dried yeast — half a teaspoon, no more
- 1 tin Casillo peeled tomatoes
- 250g fior di latte or mozzarella
- Extra virgin olive oil
- Basil
The night before
- Mix flour, water and yeast in a bowl until no dry flour is left. It will look rough and shaggy. Leave it 20 minutes.
- Add the salt and work the dough in the bowl for 5 minutes, folding it over itself. It will go from ragged to smooth as you do. No mixer needed.
- Cover and leave it out for 2 hours, then into the fridge overnight — 12 to 18 hours. This slow cold rise is what gives pizza its flavour and its blistered edge. Warm and fast gives you bread.
The next day
- Take the dough out 2 hours before you cook and cut it into two. Shape each into a tight ball, cover, and leave to come to room temperature.
- Turn the oven to its maximum with a heavy tray or a stone inside, and give it a full 45 minutes. Most home ovens reach 250°C. Every degree helps.
- Crush the tomatoes by hand with a pinch of salt and a little oil. That is the sauce. It does not get cooked first — it cooks on the pizza.
- Stretch the dough with your fingertips from the middle outwards, leaving the last 2cm untouched — that rim becomes the crust. Never use a rolling pin; it presses out the air you spent all night making.
- Top sparingly. Thin sauce, torn cheese, nothing else yet. An overloaded pizza steams instead of baking.
- Bake 6 to 8 minutes on the hot tray, until the rim is blistered and the base lifts stiff off the tray.
- Basil and olive oil after it comes out, never before.
Notes
On Tipo 0. The number is the grind, not the strength — 0 is a fine mill. It stretches thin without tearing and takes high heat without going tough. Ordinary flour will make something perfectly edible, but it fights you when you stretch it.
Why so little yeast. Half a teaspoon for 500g of flour looks like a mistake. It is not. A long cold rise with very little yeast develops flavour; a short warm rise with a lot of yeast develops gas and not much else.
The dough keeps in the fridge for up to three days and improves on the second.