Bread
Pizza
Base recipe for a spectacular pizza

Makes 4 pizzas (30 cm)
The long rest time makes this pizza dough wonderfully aromatic. In this recipe I use the fine wheat flour type 00, as it is usual for Napolitan pizza.
Schedule
- Dough: 40 minutes preparation, 60 minutes proofing, 12h maturation, 6–48h refrigeration
- Tomato sauce: 30 minutes preparation
- Baking: Preheat oven for 1 hour, 5 minutes preparation, 5 minutes baking
Ingredients pizza dough
- 500g wheat flour type 00 (Pizza flour)
- 350g water (35°C)
- 0.4g dry yeast
- 10g fine sea salt
- Olive oil
Prepare the dough
- Dissolve the yeast in 2 tablespoons of the water; put in a small container and set aside
- Mix the flour with the remaining water in a large, sealable bowl until all of the water has been absorbed; put the mixture aside for 20-30 minutes (autolyse)
- Sprinkle the salt over the autolyse dough, pour the yeast mixture over the dough
- Note: wetten your hand to process the dough; this step can be repeated 3 to 4 times while kneading
- Mix with wet hand until all ingredients are completely absorbed; then knead the dough vigorously with your wet hand for 5–10 minutes, e.g., by stretching and folding
- It doesn’t matter if the dough still has bubbles and knots in it; these dissolve through the long maturation time
- Lightly coat the bottom of the bowl and the surface of the dough with olive oil to make the dough easier to remove from the bowl
- Let ripen at room temperature (20–22 ° C) for about 12 hours
Prepare the dough pieces
- Dust the work surface with pizza flour
- Using floured hands, carefully lift the dough out of the bowl and onto the work surface, without exerting too much pressure
- Use a pastry card to divide the dough into four equal pieces
- Carefully shape the dough pieces into a ball; to do this, turn the dough on the underside inwards with your fingers; also work with caution here so that the surface does not tear and not too much air escapes from the dough
- Place the dough pieces on a baking sheet lined with baking paper and lightly floured; leave some space between the dough pieces
- Lightly flour the surface of the dough pieces, then cover with cling film
- Refrigerate for at least 6 hours (6–8 °C, top shelf); continue processing within the next 2 days
- Take the dough out of the refrigerator 30 minutes before baking
Ingredients tomato sauce
- 1 can of peeled tomatoes (400g); e.g., from the brand “Mutti”
- 1 small shallot
- 2 garlic cloves
- 1 mild peperonchini
- 1 table spoon olive oil
- 1 tea spoon oregano
- Salt, pepper
- 1 table spoon sugar as needed
- 50–100ml passata as needed
Prepare the tomato sauce
- Heat the tomatoes in a small saucepan and chop them with a hand blender
- Add olive oil
- Peel and crush garlic cloves
- Peel the shallot, cut into 3 large pieces
- Cut the peperoncini into thin strips
- Add garlic, shallot and peperoncini
- Add oregano, season with salt and pepper
- Let the sauce simmer for about 15 minutes
- Remove the garlic and shallot pieces from the sauce with a fork
- Season to taste
- If the sauce is too hot or strong for you (or if you bought the wrong tomatoes), you can now add the sugar to the sauce
- Let cool in the pot
- If like your pizza with a lot of sauce, 50–100ml passata can be added before simmering
Bake the pizza
- Approx. 1 hour before baking, put a baking sheet or a wire rack with a pizza stone on the lowest level and heat up the oven to 250 °C with the pizza setting (i.e. bottom heat + convection)
- Dust the working surface with pizza flour
- Carefully shape the dough pieces into a pizza form; the easiest way is to use your fingers to spread and push the dough from the center to the edge; leave the edge a little thicker; alternatively, the dough can also be stretched by pulling and turning
- Work carefully so that the dough does not tear in the middle
- Place the dough on baking paper; Brush with tomato sauce, then spread the grated mozzarella on top of the pizza
- If you really want to, you can of course add other ingredients to the pizza
- Put the pizza on the baking paper on the hot baking sheet
- Bake for 5–6 minutes
Note: The recipe for the dough is based on the “Overnight Straight Pizza Dough” from the book “Flour, Water, Salt, Yeast” by Ken Forkish (pp. 220–221; see books) but has been adjusted compared to the original.
Last updated: 16.01.2022