Hey I'm Kirsty, Ooni's brand manager. At Ooni, we're
all about pizza. There are many ways to make great pizza, and many different styles of pizza from
all around the world. There is Detroit style, Roman thin crust, Chicago deep-dish pizza, and so
many more, but Naples is said to be the original home of true pizza. I've just spent the last 18
months living in Naples, so I know a thing or two about Neapolitan style pizza. It's one of
our favourites here at Ooni HQ and we love it, and we make it every single week. So - what
exactly is Neapolitan style pizza? There is actually an organisation in Naples called the
Association of True Neapolitan Pizza that sets out all the official rules of making the real
deal, which are pretty particular. That's why you often hear the term Neapolitan style, which
typically means that the pizza has a certain style of base, featuring a dough made with zero-zero
flour, a raised generous crust that's chewy, and a crisp bass with a nice bite to it. The
toppings are quite light; traditionally they're margarita or marinara, but these days there's
a lot of creativity to the toppings used on Neapolitan style pizza. The most important
factor for making awesome Neapolitan style pizza is the oven temperature. It needs to be
super high so that the pizza cooks very quickly, which means you get a crisp base that's cooked
through, without drying out or feeling brittle, along with evenly melted cheese and well-cooked
toppings. This is why it's so important that Ooni pizza ovens are able to reach 500 degrees Celsius
or a 932 degrees Fahrenheit, so that they cook Neapolitan style pizza in just 60 seconds. When it
comes to making your own Neapolitan style pizza, it's all about starting with high quality but
simple ingredients. For a silky but strong dough, we use zero zero flour. This is a traditional
Italian style of super finely grained flour, with the right protein content for making a dough
with good structure and elasticity. All you need to add to that flour is yeast, salt, and water.
Caputo is a well-known brand of Italian flour that we really like. We use Caputo blue here to
make our pizza dough throughout the week, but any good zero zero flour is great. When it comes to
toppings, traditionally it's San Marzano tomatoes that are used to make the pizza sauce - they're
a firm, sweet plum tomato, that are typically grown in the area around Naples, and you can find
them sold in cans. Again, if you can't find San Marzano tomatoes, go for any good quality temp
tomatoes. The most classic toppings are really simple, featuring little more than fior di latte
mozzarella, which is a soft cow's milk mozzarella, plus fresh basil and extra virgin olive oil.
But, if you start with a great pizza dough, then you can really do whatever you like with the
toppings. Here is how to make our tried-and-tested Neapolitan style dough. This recipe makes
five 12-inch pizzas, or three 16-inch pizzas, and it's the same recipe we have in our cookbook
and online. For equipment, you'll need electric scales, a stand mixer (or a large bowl if mixing
by hand), a proving tub - any kind of bowl you can cover, or a tub with the lid is good - a dough
scraper or a sharp knife, a proving tray or any tray you can cover and set aside, and last but not
least, an Ooni pizza oven. For the ingredients, you'll need 300 grams of water, 10 grams of salt,
7 grams of fresh yeast or 3 grams of active dried yeast, and 500 grams of zero-zero flour, plus a
little extra flour for dusting your work surface. First of all, we place 2/3 of the water into a
bowl. Next, we take our saucepan that has the other third of the water. This has been brought
to the boil. When we add this to the cold water, it brings the water up to the perfect temperature
for activating yeast. So we just pour that in. Next, we need to add obviously the yeast and the
salt. Today, we're using a stand mixer - you can of course do this process by hand. First of
all we take our flour. We have the zero zero flour - it's been pre measured - and we add it to
the mixer. We are using a dough hook to make sure that everything is mixed in nicely. Flour in. Next
what we need to do, is we need to turn it on at a very low speed. And then finally, we start to add
our mixture, which has the yeast and salt, but we add it very slowly. Once the flour and water are
combined, you want to leave it mixing at the same speed for around 5 to 10 minutes. You need to make
sure that the dough looks firm and stretchy. Okay, so our dough looks ready now. Okay. Just gonna add
a little bit of flour to the work surface, because we need to just neaten up the dough slightly
before we leave it to bulk prove. We don't want to do too much with it, we just basically
want to make sure that we have a nice, round, smooth ball. So this is looking nice and smooth.
So now what I'm going to do, is place it in a bowl. We're using a bowl today, but you can use a
proving tub as well. Just make sure that whatever you use is fully covered today using a cover, but
you can obviously use plastic wrap as well. I'm going to leave this to prove in a warm place now
for one to two hours - it will be ready when the dough has doubled in size. So here is some dough
that's been proving for a couple of hours at room temperature. It's really soft, very shiny, and and
we also have a few lovely air bubbles as well. So you can see that it's really light, fluffy, and
it's definitely ready to be turned into pizza. Now it's time to divide up and ball our dough. So
- what we need here, is we need some scales. And we need a sharp knife or a dough scraper - kind of
doubles up as both. Really important that we flour the work surface, so it doesn't stick to the
surface. Okay, now it's time to roughly divide this up into five parts, and then from there we
will weigh each of them. We want each of our balls to be 160 grams each. So if it's not quite right,
we just take a little bit off another. Okay, so now it's time to shape these. Now this is how
I like to do it - so just gently moving it round, and making sure you tuck that additional dough
underneath. And then, gently at the bottom, just pinching, and spinning the dough round.
Just so you have a neat little ball there. once you have your five balls what we need to do
now is leave these to prove just to kind of settle before you cook for around about 20 minutes so
what we like to do is use a proving tree again we need to lightly flour the bottom of this so
the dough balls don't stick make sure they're not sitting too close together otherwise you will just
have one giant flat pizza really important that we remember to cover it with a lid if you don't have
a proving tray you can use a regular tree just remember to cover it with plastic wrap or cloth
okay so here we have our pizza dough balls they have had their final 20 minute proof the stage
is really important because you want the dough to be super pliable so it's easier to work with
when you ball up the door the door becomes quite tight and this final stage just makes it much
easier for you to shape the door to pizza we flour the peel just a little flour make sure the
door doesn't stick and then we take our dough ball it's really important that we're quite gentle with
it at this stage so you just want to scoop it up from underneath and then place it kind of shiny
soft side down from here you just want to push out from the middle to the edges because you need
to make sure that you leave that nice fat crust on the edge once you've pushed out from the edge
to get that crust on both sides you want to pick up your door and you start to do what we call the
steering wheel okay so really gently just turning around making sure that you're using your thumb
and your forefinger to gently pull the door all the while making sure you have that nice generous
thick puffy crust once you've done that for a bit you might notice that the door in the middle is a
little bit thicker so if you use your hands like this and you just start to slowly pull the door
out again takes a little bit of practice but once you're there you're there and that's how you hand
stretch a pizza it's really not that difficult just to have a few practices and don't worry if
it's not rained it will still taste absolutely delicious okay so now I'm gonna make a classic
Neapolitan style margarita before we top this pizza we need to check that our only oven is
up to temperature know we have been preheating any pearl here for around about 30 minutes so
you want to have the oven to 500 Celsius or 93 to fahrenheits really Neapolitan style pizza
shouldn't be cooked below 400 degrees Celsius make sure your pizza base is not sticking to
the peel as a final check before you start to talk so first of all we use the San Marzano
tomatoes don't use too much because you don't want a sloppy pizza next we add our mozzarella
just tear it and sprinkle it around about meat so again don't use too much because you don't
want an overloaded pizza because it makes it very difficult to get off the peel ok next
we add a little drizzle of olive oil and then couple of sprigs of fresh basil smells
absolutely wonderful now we're ready to cook and there we have it classic
margarita Neapolitan style I'm good
