Carry Laws
This is a Neapolitan pizza made by a beginner. Oh yes, if you’re watching this blog, you’re not a Neapolitan pizza chef, and you want to learn how to make it like a beginner. Let me tell you: I have been learning from the best pizza chefs and I came up with this easy recipe for making it at home. You will love how easy this recipe is to follow.
Listen to the sound, see how nice it is! It’s beautiful! Hi and welcome to Ben Chancellor’s Plate, the place where you get to learn how to cook fantastic Italian recipes, and the Neapolitan pizza is one of the best creations in Italian cuisine. So, let’s make it together the easy way. If you have a wood fire oven, you can make a sensational Neapolitan pizza.
If you don’t have one, you need to read the blog here by Lucho, where he shows you how to cook Neapolitan pizza in your electric oven. To make the perfect Neapolitan pizza dough, we need one kilo of 00 flour. Then we need one teaspoon of dry yeast, 600 milliliters of water, 5 teaspoons of salt, and just a little bit of extra virgin olive oil. My recommendation is to knead the dough using a stand mixer. It is so much better than kneading it by hand.
It’s more fun to do it by hand, but it’s much better for you, for your mental health, because you get rid of your stress. But to make the perfect Neapolitan dough, we use a stand mixer and you never, never, never fail. Now, this is the accessory that comes with the stand mixer. This is what you normally use when you make bread or pizzas. I actually prefer to use this one.
I’ve been using this for a while and it turns out to be okay, so you choose. I will go for this if you can, but this is my homemade home cook option. First, we want to get the water, which should be at room temperature, and put it in there – 600 milliliters of water. After you put the water in, you want to put a little bit of flour in there, just a little bit, not too much, about ten percent. Now quickly, we want to mix everything.
Mix, mix, mix. Now that the flour is mixed with the water, we’re going to add the yeast. What we want to do now is activate the yeast. So let’s do this for about two minutes. After about two minutes, we start adding the flour.
Okay, let’s put about half of this. Let’s put half of it here. We want to knead the dough at a very slow speed. It’s becoming creamy. How creamy it is.
Let’s go a little bit faster. Yeah, perfect. Look how creamy it is. It looks like a pecorino cream for cacio e pepe. Now, really slowly, let’s add the flour a little bit at a time.
Keep adding the flour. See, now it’s more dense. See the consistency is changing. See that? Let’s add a little bit more.
Yeah, that’s what we want. It’s happening. It’s happening! Oh yes, baby! Oh yeah!
At this point, let’s go lower. Let’s finish putting the flour in there. And now, for the last five minutes, we want to be a little bit faster. Perfect. Alright.
What we do now is get the dough out. Oh, it’s nice and sticky. Just the way we want it. Perfect, beautiful, beautiful dough. And this is what we want to do on the kitchen bench.
Put a little bit of flour at the bottom. Just do this. See the extra flour that we have here? We just put it on top. Okay, put the salt.
Just knead it like this. Quickly, knead it. Scale the excess flour and let’s put it back in the KitchenAid. What we do now is we are going to knead the dough for five more minutes or until it’s ready. KitchenAid is strong.
Okay, guys, as you can see, the dough is stuck together. It’s together. The bowl here is clean. There’s nothing else left. So what I like to do now, we’ve got three more minutes to go.
I just like to add about two tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil. This is something I do, you don’t have to do. Some chefs say extra virgin olive oil doesn’t do anything. I just like it. Okay, let’s put a little bit and let’s do two more minutes.
Alright, guys. After five minutes, the dough is ready. So this is what we need to do now, cut it out and let’s just finish the dough now on the kitchen bench with a little bit of flour. Not too much. See, the dough is nice and moist.
So beautiful, and here we have the dough. Look how easy this is. The stand mixer did everything for you. Look at that. This is beautiful dough.
Now, let’s check. This is the homemade way to check if your dough is good, the homemade way, okay, not a professional way. Let’s see if it bounces back. It does. So this is perfect to go.
Come on. Now we need to let the dough rest, between 16 and 20 hours. I recommend you get a large bowl. Cover it with plastic wrap and make sure it’s airtight. We don’t want air to go through, otherwise the dough will dry up and we don’t want that.
The reason why I like to use plastic wrap is because I can also see the process of the pizza. I can see the pizza growing in there. You know, see the truth, you know? Okay, and now let’s wait. Guys, it’s the day after and let me tell you, look at this beautiful dough.
Let’s reveal the dough. Look at that. Look what happened over here. Look, guys, the smell. Yeah, it smells so good.
But look at the bubbles. And I want you to look at the bubbles here. Okay, look. Look at the bubbles that the dough created, guys. This is a very good sign.
Okay, let me tell you what I did over here. Okay, it’s cold in Sydney right now. Okay, and what I’ve done is I left my dough out of the fridge because the room temperature overnight was about 15-16 degrees Celsius. There was no need for it to go in the fridge. But let me tell you, if where you are it’s warm, you leave it out of the fridge as much as you can, and before you go to sleep, you put it in the fridge so it doesn’t explode.
Because if it’s too hot, I find it a bit too hard to manage. Okay, we want to know that it’s easy to manage. So, look at how beautiful it is. Come on, have a look. What I’m going to do now is put some flour on my hand, put a little bit of flour on my hand, and we just do that.
Look. Look. Look. Look. Look at this beautiful dough.
Look at the inside of the dough. Look at the structure inside the dough. Beautiful. Look how perfect this is. Perfection.
Not bad for a beginner. Let’s place the pizza balls in the pizza tray. Alright, so let’s do this. We cover it and we wait at least four hours before we make the pizzas. Four hours, five, six, seven, at least four hours, and we keep it at room temperature, not in the fridge.
From now on, no fridge anymore. These pizza balls can be used within a week. So if you don’t want to use them today, keep them out of the fridge. Use what you need today and you can put the rest in the fridge. Okay, and you can use it within a week.
But always remember, you need to take them out of the fridge four hours before you use them. The reason why is because the fridge stresses them out. They become too stressed. They need to relax. But see you in four hours.
Look what happens after four hours. Look at the dough. Look at the dough after four hours. Look what we get. Those pizza balls.
Beautiful smell. So what we’re going to do now is we are going to get one pizza ball out and we are going to make one pizza. Let’s cut it out. And this is what we do. We put some flour here on the bench, put the pizza there, and this is what we do now.
We stretch it like a Neapolitan style. Okay, just put the fingers there in the middle and do that. We don’t want to touch the edges. See, the edges are so important. We don’t want to go on the edges because the edges are the cornicione.
They need to grow. They need to grow. The edges, okay? So what are we going to do now? This is the Neapolitan technique of stretching the dough.
That’s it. Done. Done in no time. See, the pizza is done. Okay, guys, what do you do if you cannot spread the pizza like I did before by hand?
What do you do? Okay, it’s not going to be easy, right? So this is what we do. We get a salad bowl, just get a round salad bowl with a round base. Okay, you put your pizza on top and you just stretch it like this with your hand.
Do not touch the edges. Please do not touch the edges. You just do this and push the edges to the side. Okay, you still want the flour there. You basically stretch it by doing this.
This is something anyone can do. A kid can do it, you can do it, anyone can do it. If you want to stretch, do not touch the edges. But what you do is you do that. See what you do with the hand and just push like this.
The dough is so soft that you should be able to do this very, very easily. Okay, this is very simple. Look. It’s done. Make sure you have no flour at the bottom.
Let’s remove the flour. Now, if we have flour on the bench, what’s going to happen is when you put the pizza in the oven, the bottom will burn. Okay, we don’t want that. Okay, now we’re going to make a mozzarella, salami, basil, and tomato-based pizza with my favorite pecorino cheese. So this is what we do now.
I’ve got a beautiful tomato here, which is San Marzano crushed by hand with a little bit of salt and basil. Okay, we put it here in the middle, put it in the middle and spread it. Spread it everywhere. Look at this beautiful tomato. Look how wonderful it is.
In the meantime, my oven is at 400 degrees Celsius. Okay, you do need to have a wood fire oven or a gas oven that can reach high temperatures. If you don’t have one, you can read my blog up here that I did with Lucho. It shows you how to make Neapolitan pizza at home. Now we’re going to put the pecorino cheese.
I love pecorino cheese. We’re going to put mozzarella cheese. We’re going to put the salami. Now, this is not called pepperoni. Okay, pepperoni is not a word.
Pepperoni is salami. Salami picante, not pepperoni. Pepperoni is capsicum in Italian. Okay, it’s pepper. You don’t call salami pepperoni.
Okay, more basil on top, a little bit of extra virgin olive oil, and we’re ready to put it in the oven. It is important for you guys to have a pizza peel. It does help, especially if you have a wood fire oven. So what we’re going to do here is we want to have something on the side, so we elevate the peel. See, it needs to be like this.
Now, before we put the pizza on the peel, put some flour on the peel. Just spread it like this, not too much, just a little bit, so that prevents the pizza from getting stuck on the peel. We get the pizza from here and we move it on top of the peel. Then we stretch it on the peel just like this. Stretch it and we try to make it fit.
Okay, so now it perfectly fits on the peel. It moves and it’s ready to go in the oven. Come on, let’s go in the oven. Okay, the pizza can go in the oven. Perfect.
90 seconds to go. So the first 45 seconds, we want to cook the back there. 45 seconds. Okay, the oven is at 400 degrees Celsius, so it’s going to cook in no time. 90 seconds are more than enough.
You don’t want the cheese to burn. You want the beautiful flavors to come together and be cooked just enough. If you use passata or a tomato sauce that’s already cooked, you’re kind of drying up the sauce in there. You want the fresh, peeled tomato in there, raw, and the flavors will come out when you put it in the oven. Okay, we’ve got 10 more seconds.
Let’s see what’s going to happen. Look at the edges here. Look at that. Look at the edges. They’re growing already.
The bottom is very hot. Okay, let’s take it out. Take it out. See, we’ve got the first edge here, the first side. Here, it’s almost done.
Now we turn. We do 15 seconds per side. So, 15 seconds there. Check it out. Take it out.
See the edge here. The edge here is nice and cooked. So what we do now is we turn again and we do 15 seconds. Guys, this is the perfect pizza, the Neapolitan pizza that you want to serve to your family and friends. The perfection.
Let’s finish off this side. See this side here? I don’t want that pale pizza there. Let’s finish it here. Let’s finish any of the fire.
I want a pale pizza there. And one, two, three, and we are ready. Ready to serve this wonderful Neapolitan pizza. Come on. So yeah, what do you think of this pizza?
Look how wonderful this is, huh? Come on, tell me. What do you think of this? Look at the crust. Look at this.
What do you think of this? Please be honest. Doesn’t it look fantastic to you? Doesn’t it look fantastic to you? You want the pizza to rest for about a minute before we cut it, but look how beautiful it is.
Look at the edges. Listen to the sound. See how nice it is? It’s beautiful. Look at this beautiful pizza.
Look how beautiful it looks. It’s nice. It’s moist. It’s full of flavors. Look at that.
Look at that. Look at this. This is homemade. I’m not a pizza yolo. I’m not a pizza chef.
This is good for a beginner like me. This is great. I love it. If I can do it, you can do it. You can make Neapolitan pizza at home in your own kitchen.
Come on. And can I say, it’s an investment. Get a nice pizza stone, a small one, and you’ll have so much fun. It’s the best. Better than Netflix.
Better than PlayStation. It’s so much fun. Now, guys, it’s time to cut the pizza. Cut it into slices. I like to have a big slice, and this is a big slice I’m having.
Look how perfectly cooked at the bottom. Look at that perfection at the bottom. The pizza is not too floppy. Yeah, you know. Look how easy it is to fold and how easy it is to enjoy.
Oh my god, let’s have a look at this slice. Now that is nice. Easy to fold. Delicious. All I can say is I need to eat this wonderful pizza.
So thank you so much for watching this episode. I will see you in the next Ben Chancellor’s Plate article recipe.
