No-stick Neapolitan pizza — 75% hydration

this video is sponsored by hot ash what somebody like me would call neapolitan pizza today is certainly the pizza most directly descended from the original pizza but today's neapolitan pizza is really defined i think by the daredevil levels of hydration in the dough extremely wet soft sticky dough it gives you a texture like none other but it is hard to work with i'm going to show you a way to make a terrifyingly wet dough that will not stick to your peel and tear a pizza that you'll be able to dress at your leisure and deliver to the oven whenever the fire is ready i don't have the traditional italian double zero flour i've just got a high quality bread flour here and whenever i make dough i usually start with five or six cups of flour i don't normally weigh things but to be precise about the hydration i'm going to get this to around 700 grams about a tablespoon of normal active dry yeast which is apparently like 9 grams i didn't put in a full spoon the first time there you could bloom it to be sure that it's still alive first but i'm feeling lucky tablespoon of kosher salt which is apparently like 15 grams i normally like to put in a little bit of sugar and a fair bit of olive oil but neapolitan dough is traditionally just four ingredients the fourth one being water and i'm going with 75 percent hydration that doesn't mean the dough is going to be 75 water that would be insane baker's percentages tell you the proportion of the ingredient relative to the flour content so i have 700 grams of flour 75 of 700 grams is grams or milliliters of water that's like two and a quarter cups which is about the amount of water i normally start with for a new york style pizza the difference is i'm not going to add any more flour as i need i'll bring it together best i can with a spoon when that becomes useless i'll get in with my hands when they become useless i'ma go back in with the spoon i was surprised at how well this worked just letting the dough stick to that spoon and using the spoon to stretch the dough up and fold it over on itself you can really see the gluten web forming there knead your dough however you want to there are a million ways i would probably use my stand mixer if you weren't watching but this was easy enough for me and it's okay if it doesn't seem quite ready yet i'm going to need it some more after it sits under a wet towel for an hour or two i normally just portion my dough out into greased up bowls and let them ferment in the cold for days that's super easy gets great flavor but it also gives you a pretty fine bubble structure that is the opposite of what you're trying to achieve with a neapolitan pizza the goal here is huge cavernous bubbles the steam and the elasticity from the water in the dough is probably chiefly responsible for that but it also helps to do a faster rise at room temperature here it is at like 90 minutes later i'm gonna use that wooden spoon again to punch it down and knead it a little more as i understand it this is about redistributing the yeast through the dough to bring them into contact with fresh starch to metabolize with a fast rise they can easily eat everything in their immediate vicinity and end up just sitting there in their own waste products yuck alrighty here's where things get a little bit unconventional i'm going to lay out a couple of big sheets of parchment paper it's not precise but certainly the easiest way to portion a dough this sticky is to snip off some with scissors i'm just trying to snip off one fourth of it and down on the parchment it does not matter that is not a round smooth ball if you want your pizza to be a clean circle you can kind of tidy up the edges a little bit but don't try to unstick the dough from the paper they are permanently bonded now and that's the idea i'll snip off another one and make sure i've got it a good distance away from the first one in a pizza shop they would put these in giant bins where they can rise and spread outward without merging into their neighbors but i don't have anything like that in my house again i normally rise in oiled containers but that requires you to deflate them a little bit on the way out especially if it's a wet sticky dough you need that gas for neapolitan style pizza i've got to cover these with something or they'll dry out i can't put a towel or a plastic wrap on them that'd stick so let's just put them under a dome a big bowl or some other kind of container on each one plenty of space to rise and they won't dry out how long a few hours until they spread out a lot and go very puffy plenty of time to assemble my new pizza oven from the sponsor of this video hot ash this is a local company here in georgia and i actually had the opportunity to weigh in a bit on their design process it's like no other pizza oven because it's not just a pizza oven you stack those two pieces and you've got a fire pit it feeds a huge amount of air into the fire from below so it lights really easily and look the base remains totally cool to the touch you stack on these two pieces and you've got a pizza oven yes it comes with a pizza stone but you could take those off and instead stack on the grill with a lid behold the glory of modular design it's collapsible too so you can travel with it it's solid food grade stainless steel it can easily reach the extreme high temperatures generally used for neapolitan pizza and unlike other portable outdoor pizza ovens that only do one thing this is also a big old fire pit and a wood-fired grill order your three-in-one wood-fired pizza oven today at hotashstove.com that link is in the description thank you hot ash also thank you to another local company here in georgia that provided this beautiful kiln-dried firewood because i'm no lumberjack okay our dough has successfully gone now i'm just gonna flour the top and my hands and then push onto the center the name of the game with neapolitan pizza is flattening and stretching the inner disc of dough without deflating the outer ring the cornice or cornicione in italian so i don't want to touch that at all normally people would work with a dough this wet in a huge pile of flour to keep it from sticking this is already stuck to the parchment and that's just fine embrace it i'm never going to lift this off the paper i'm just going to nudge it outward on the paper as long as you keep your fingertips dusted in flour this should be really easy it takes a minute but it does not take a practiced hand just nudging the dough outward without deflating the cornice and guess what if you tear a hole in this dough it does not matter with this method not one bit each of these will only make about a 10 inch pizza for one or two people that's because a lot of the dough mass with a neapolitan pizza doesn't get stretched and topped it gets fluffed up also when it's time to top these you have to be especially conservative the bread is the main event with neapolitan style just a little sauce what is that sauce well traditionally it'd be canned san marzano tomatoes i say just use the best canned tomatoes you have wherever you live and i'm consistently impressed with these though when i work with whole canned tomatoes i prefer to lift them out of their canning liquid you can crush those by hand but i like to puree them smooth and by the way taste the difference between those and the canning liquid the liquid tends to be kind of bitter and it would thin out the sauce i say skip it i'll just put in a good amount of olive oil and a little salt no pre-cooking that's pretty traditional when i make new york style pizza i don't salt the sauce because it gets covered in tons of salty cheese but that's not what's gonna happen here neapolitan style uses fresh mozzarella not the extra dried and fermented low moisture stuff invented here in the states the thing with fresh stuff is that you can't use very much of it it's filled with water and it will turn the pizza into a kiddie pool if you put on too much cheese you can slice it but i like just tearing off chunks that's it last thing i like to do sometimes is brush the cornice with a little bit of oil that gets you a nice golden brown finish but not everybody is into it oh and basil some people put it on now i prefer to put it on after the pizza bakes and how do we bake it when it's hopelessly stuck to the parchment arts and crafts time i'm just going to cut the pizza out onto a now custom parchment round it's going to bake on the paper you want to minimize the excess around the edge though because that'll burn and there you go instead of dressing that pizza on a giant pile of semolina and then running it to the oven to slide it in before it sticks we have all the time in the world we could dress all four pieces and take them outside this is particularly advantageous when you're working with natural fires which kind of proceed on their own schedules look at that slide on there now if i'd put in enough wood before this stove could easily hit the like 800 fahrenheit 425c where a lot of people like to do neapolitan pizza or even higher i've actually found that i prefer maybe 650 fahrenheit 340c i'm a man who likes his cheese to be brown and if you want it to brown you got to give it time before the crust burns hence the more moderate temperature still way hotter than i can get with my oven inside that's important for getting all the water in the dough to steam out and blow up some big bubbles if you're nervous about shimmying that out with the peel nobody says you can't grab it with some tongs back in the house and now we can put in our basil and let that heat of the pizza gently wilt it down how do we get the parchment off just like that it's that easy crunch right through that bubble there that elasticity and steam from the wet dough creates this pastry-like consistency these glassy layers almost like phyllo pretty special here's one where i did not brush the cornice with oil by the way it's just a different effect more of a powdery finish from the flower take your pick now i'm sure you've been wondering does the parchment somewhat inhibit heat transfer to the bottom of the pizza yes i think it does a little bit that's why i don't normally do this but look we still got some leopard spotting there for the convenience and the peace of mind i think that's a fine trade-off if you're a pro forget it but if you're like me and you're just dipping your toes into these super high hydration doughs i say bake and build on paper makes it easy

Channel: Adam Ragusea

Views: 976,959

Rating: 4.9276958 out of 5

Keywords: pizza dough, neapolitan pizza, high hydration dough, how to make pizza, pizza dough recipe, making pizza, high hydration pizza dough, high hydration, pizza dough hydration, how to make pizza dough, wood fired oven, parchment paper, baking pizza on parchment, baking pizza on parchment paper, hot ash stove, hot ash pizza, wood-fired pizza, wood-fired pizza oven, neapolitan pizza at home

Id: 3ZEGG1mb3Rc

Length: 9min 17sec (557 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 19 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/spaffage]

This video is quite problematic:

The dough would be easier to work with had he used ‘00’ flour, finer flour can absorb more water and is easier to work at 60-70% hydration.

There is absolutely no requirement for the parchment - dont understand that at all, again, maybe if he had used ‘00’ flour it would’ve been easier to handle and shape the dough balls, use a little bit of flour whats the issue?

Again, parchment will act as a barrier, moisture in the base should be naturally drawn down into the stone when cooking.

Olive oil has a low smoke point and will burn in a hot oven. Unnecessary, doesn’t add anything.

Lowering the temperature to get the cheese brown? This will mean it takes longer to cook and cause the dough to dry out and become crunchy. The crust should be springy and elastic. Also the toppings shouldn’t be over cooked, the idea is they are fresh tasting, there is a harmony in the combination of wet mozzarella and tomato which is lost when the pizza dries out.

I appreciate the guy is just sharing his experience but it is definitely a bit misleading for people who are looking to learn about legitimate Neapolitan pizza, especially since there is a ‘how to’ feel to the video.

[u/kvetcha-rdt]

There's no reason this wouldn't work with the Ooni on low-ish heat, but I would not try this at full blast.