Neapolitan-Style Pizza Crust
You can make this Italian style pizza crust at home with mushrooms or any of your favorite toppings.
Ingredients
- 1 cup bread flour
- 1 tsp salt (coarser kosher salt works well)
- water (start with 1/4 cup and add more)
- 1/4 tsp instant yeast
- toppings (e.g. mushroom, buffalo mozzarella cheese, and sauce).
- 1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
- bench flour (e.g. semolina flour or bread flour)
Instructions
- Make the dough. Add flour, water, salt, and yeast ingredients to a mixer bowl or bowl if you are making the dough by hand. You will use about 1/2 cup water per 1 cup flour.
- Knead the dough, until a cohesive pizza dough ball can be formed. With a bread dough hook on a mixer, this will be about 5 minutes on high, 7 minutes on a medium setting (and about double time by hand).
- Add some olive oil to a plastic container with a lid.
- Place dough in container and let proof for at least 2 hours. Can be left overnight in the refrigerator and be sure to not let the dough dry out.
- Then add some bench flour to your pan to prevent sticking (semolina flour is classic for Neapolitan pizza but any flour will do). I suggest a baking pan with a Silpat setup ontop to prevent the pizza crust from sticking to the pan.
- Flatten the dough into the shape you want with your hand and fingers. Avoid the crust edges to create a more airy crust.
- When you're happy with your pizza shape pre-baked, then place in center of the oven bottom rack and bake for about 20 minutes on 350°F/180°C oven. The pizza crust will not be finished but it will be hard enough on the crust bottom to be able to broiled without a pan.
- Add sauce, cheese and pizza toppings.
- For the airy crust and charring pizza crust marks, broil your pizza. For preparation, remove Silpat (if using)and your baking pan, and slide the pizza to the top oven shelf at least 6-8 inches away from the top of the oven where the oven heat will be coming from (not the bottom like baking settings). In most common ovens, the 2nd rung down for the top adjustable metal rack works well. Turn on the broil (caliente hot!) setting for 2-5 minutes until crust is slightly charred giving the wood-burned fire "effect." You'll see the heating source from the oven lines above that could take a minute to heat up (indicated by the top red heating element). Safety tips: Be careful and watch the broiling the entire time with the oven light "on," so you can be fully safe. Do not open the oven door at any time that the broil setting is fully heated or turned on. And do not turn your pizza without turning the broiling setting off and waiting for the oven to cool down before opening the oven door (and then turning back on). Test your oven for the best broiling time for your pizza crust, and do not overcook.
Notes
You don't want your dough to dry out, so be sure to add enough water so it's more like an elastic smooth skin versus stringy dough. And be sure to cover the dough.