Margherita
Neapolitan · Classic
Classic Margherita
Three ingredients, zero shortcuts. The featured recipe above, with the full grams and the six-step method.
The Family Pizza Book is a plain-English notebook of the pizzas that get made on a Tuesday night in a real kitchen, with a domestic oven, a steel from a hardware store, and dough that has been resting in the fridge since Sunday. Weighed grams, honest timings, no ghostwritten "hack" recipes.
A faithful Margherita retuned for a 275 °C domestic oven. San Marzano passata, torn fior di latte, basil picked at service — no stone pretending to be a pizzeria floor.
Jump to recipeMargherita is a three-ingredient pizza — dough, tomato, mozzarella — which is why it is also the hardest. Every shortcut shows on the plate. This recipe is what gets made here on a Friday when there's nothing else in the fridge: grams on the scale, a cold overnight in the fridge, and a steel that sat in the oven under the broiler for a full forty minutes before the dough ever came out.
Whisk the water, salt and yeast until the salt dissolves. Add the flour. Mix with a wet hand until no dry flour remains. Cover and rest.
Two sets of stretch-and-folds, 20 minutes apart. The dough tightens and smooths. If it still looks shaggy after the second set, give it a third.
Divide into 240 g balls, dust lightly with flour, place seam-side down in a sealed container. Refrigerate. The flavour arrives in the second night.
Pull out 90 minutes before baking. Flour the bench generously. Open with fingertips from centre out, keeping the outer 2 cm untouched — that's the cornicione.
60 g passata spread with the back of a spoon, 100 g fior di latte torn (not sliced) into irregular pieces, a thread of olive oil. Basil goes on at service, never before the oven.
Launch from a floured peel onto the preheated steel. Highest rack. 275 °C with the broiler cycled on the last two minutes to finish the leopard-spotting on the cornicione.
"A great pizza is three ingredients in which none of them is embarrassed to be seen with the other two."
— Rosa Mancini, kitchen notebook, 2021Each one has been made in a domestic oven at least a dozen times. The notes next to the recipe are what the kitchen learned on the way — the small pivot that stopped the cheese from weeping, the right moment to add the basil, the trick with a cold skillet.
Three ingredients, zero shortcuts. The featured recipe above, with the full grams and the six-step method.
Tomato, garlic, oregano, olive oil. The oldest Neapolitan pizza and still the clearest test of a good dough.
A 16-inch round, oil-slicked low-moisture mozzarella, a thin sauce under the cheese, foldable crust. Steel, 260 °C.
Buttered pan, cheese to the edges for a lace crust, racing stripes of sauce on top at service. The sturdy weeknight pizza.
A tall, airy focaccia-base from Palermo. Breadcrumb top, anchovies optional. Four hours, one dish, feeds a table of six.
Ricotta, mozzarella, confit garlic, lemon zest and a late shower of arugula. The pie you make when there is no sauce in the house.
This is the house dough, the one every recipe above is built on. Weighed grams. 65% hydration. 0.2% instant yeast. 2.9% salt. The headline is the fridge, not the yeast — flavour and structure come from the long, slow night in the cold.
You can short the ferment to 18 hours in a pinch; the loaf still rises, the crumb still opens, but the depth that comes from a second night in the fridge isn't there. Plan ahead on Friday for Sunday service.
Makes 7 balls at 240 g. Divide after the first 1-hour bulk, refrigerate immediately.
You don't need a wood-fired oven to make a very good home pizza. You do need these four, in roughly this order: a scale, a steel, a peel, and patience with the dough. Everything else is personal taste or marketing.
Cups lie, grams don't. A scale that reads to 1 g is the single most useful tool in a pizza kitchen.
A steel holds and releases heat faster than any home stone. Preheat under the broiler for 40 minutes before launch.
A wooden peel is for the launch; dough slides off it dry. A perforated metal peel is for the retrieval, after the bake.
For the oven surface, the fridge, and the dough itself. Guessing temperatures is how perfectly good pizzas turn into frisbees.
Yes. A heavy cast-iron skillet, preheated upside-down for 30 minutes under the broiler, gets closer to stone temperature than a cold baking tray and produces a cleanly browned base. A steel outperforms both.
A 00 flour with a protein content between 11 and 12.5 percent is the baseline. In North America, King Arthur Bread Flour or Caputo 00 Pizzeria are both forgiving starting points. For Detroit or NY-style, a higher protein (13–14%) gives more chew.
Between 18 and 72 hours, depending on the yeast quantity and hydration. For a 65% hydration dough with 0.2% yeast, 48 hours in a 4 °C fridge is the sweet spot for flavour. Past 72 hours the gluten structure begins to break down and the dough becomes slack.
Fresh mozzarella (fior di latte) is a wet cheese. Tear it an hour ahead and lay the pieces on a clean towel so the whey drains out. Low-moisture mozzarella does not need this step.
Two usual causes: the dough is too cold (pull it out 90 minutes before service), or the gluten was over-developed (shorter mix, more rest). Over-flouring the bench also drags the surface and tears it. Use a light dust.
Yes, after a full 24-hour cold ferment. Freeze on a tray, then bag. Thaw overnight in the fridge, then 2 hours on the counter before shaping.