Pizza Margarita – Napolitan pizza as it was meant to be
If you are a pizza eater with self-respect you know about Neapolitan pizza. You also know about Pizza Margarita, the original pizza, made to honor the Italian flag with its red tomatoes, white mozzarella and green basil leaves.
You might also know that for creating a real Neapolitan pizza you need a really hot oven. Most likely a wood fired or gas-fired one, that reaches 450 degrees celsius and can cook a pizza in 1 minute.
You are familiar with the quality of ingredients. To have San Marzano tomatoes that grew on Vesuvius, to have a rich-in-gluten 00-graded flour from Italy, and to have mozzarella made from buffalo milk.
Good good. This pizza will be amazing!
And if you do not know these things, or have a burning hot oven, the pizza will most likely be amazing as well. But we strive for the best here. The best-tasting pizzas. And to get there, you need to master the Margarita first. Do not start to throw other toppings on a pizza until you get a margarita to taste heavenly. Then, when you made a few of those, you can start adding one more ingredient.
Pizza Margarita – Napolitan pizza as it was meant to be
Course: DinnerCuisine: Italian, PizzaDifficulty: Difficult4
servings30
minutes4
minutesThe original pizza Margarita Napolitan style. Master this before starting to overdo toppings
Ingredients
Buffalo Mozzarella cheese
Canned San Marzano tomatoes
Extra virgin olive oil
Basil leaves
Salt and pepper
Directions
- Make the pizza base according to this recipe: The base for Neapolitan pizza
- Take the dough out of the refrigerator at least 1 hour before you want to start making this if you had it in the fridge
- Crunch the San Marzano tomatoes with a fork. Add some salt and pepper.
- Make perfectly round pizzas with a lot of dough left on the edges according to the base recipe
- Add some flour on a wooden pizza peel and put the dough there
- With a spoon, add the tomatoes to the pizza in circles, make it cover the whole pizza but not the edges
- Put pieces of buffalo mozzarella here and there. Not too much.
- Pour a little bit of olive oil in a circle or a 9 or 6 -shape over the pizza. Add a few basil leaves too
- Make sure the oven is between 350 and 500 degrees celsius hot
- Put the pizza into the oven so that it lies on the stone floor of the oven or on a pizza stone
- Turn the pizza after 20 seconds with a smaller, metallic pizza peel. Turn it again after 20 more seconds
- Take the pizza out after 1 minute using a metal pizza peel. Slide it on to a plate and serve
Notes
- Using at least two pizza peels is recommended. One wooden to make the pizzas on and shovel them into the oven with. Another metallic one to turn the pizzas with and to take them out of the oven with. Why this? When using different peels, the wooden one will never get hot, which is good, because on a hot one the pizza would stick. The metal one is also easier to slide in under the pizza while it is in the oven. And having the wooden one free again, someone can make the next pizza on that one as long as you are working and turning the one in the oven
Image by Edsel Little (CC-license)
