Sourdough Pizza Napoletana

It is hard to believe it took a century for Neapolitan pizza to conquer the world.

To become world-famous, pizza first had to take a detour across the Atlantic to America during the mass Italian exodus of the early 20th century. When Gennaro Lombardi opened the very first pizzeria in New York in the 1920s, he probably didn’t expect that it would become such an overnight hit. In southern Italy, on the other hand, pizza for decades had remained simple street food and it wasn’t until the 1950s that it finally made its way to Rome.

Nowadays, it would be hard to find a person anywhere who has never tasted the magic bread-tomato-mozarella mix on his palate. Neapolitan pizza is sourdough, made from natural yeast, pressed out very thin except for the edges that have to rise up nicely. The flour is high in protein, the kind used for bread-making rather than cakes.

Since I started making sourdough bread and my own starter at home, it was only natural to make sourdough pizza as well. Yet, to even get close to making a real pizza Napoletana in an ordinary kitchen was a tough nut to crack. But as our family has close ties with Italy, where we lived for several years, it wasn’t easy to please my sons and husband with my pizza. The question was always hanging in the air: “So when will you make the real pizza Napoletana?” And I have to admit that if it hadn’t been for my older son, I would have concluded that it is an impossible task, knowing that you need a very high temperature oven to achieve perfection. But my son’ s desire for this simple, yet ingenious invention knew no bounds. So he drove us both to the culinary limit and we tried and tried together and finally the happy moment came when Vera Pizza Napoletana landed on our table.

Here is what you need to make your own Napoletana at home.

Ingredients for two pizzas:

300 g (10.5 oz) all-purpose or 00 flour (I buy Neapolitan pizza flour in order to achieve the best result possible)
200 g (7 oz) water
100 g (3.5 oz) active starter (For better result activate your starter with white flour not rye flour.)
3/4 tsp of salt

Method

Mix starter and flour with 150 g water in a bowl and let the autolysis work for half an hour to an hour.
Mix in the salt with 50 g water and knead the dough in a stand mixer or by slap and fold technique. The slap and fold technique starts developing the gluten structures in your dough faster and more effectively than then mixing it in the stand mixer and in fact, it is fun doing it! Slap the dough against the working surface, holding it by the edge close to you. The dough will stick to the surface, stretch it towards you and fold it (flip the part you are holding over the part stuck on the working surface). Turn the dough by 90 degrees and repeat. Keep doing it for about 5 minutes.
Put the dough in a bowl and let it rest for 45 minutes. Cover the bowl with plastic or a wet towel.
Do the stretch and fold technique: Wet your hand, lay it underneath the dough and bring the dough up, stretching it as much as it goes, then fold the dough over the top. Move by 90° and proceed the same way, do about 4 S&F in total. Finally, flip the dough upside down. Do S&F 3 times, every 45 minutes.

Stretch as much as it goes.

Turn the bowl and repeat.

Finally, flip the dough upside down.
Let the dough rest for another hour in a room temperature.
Put the bowl in the refrigerator over night or up to 24 hours. Cover with plastic or a wet towel.
Remove the dough from the fridge and take it out of the bowl. Divide it in two equal parts. Let it rest for 45 minutes. In the meantime heat up the oven. Now, the key is to heat up the oven as much as possible to bake the pizza in the shortest time possible. My pizza is done in less than 5 minutes. I use the upper horizontal line program that heats up the top part of the oven for 300 °C (572 °F). I also put a metal rack with a pizza stone as close as possible to the top part of the oven.
Before putting the dough in the oven, stretch the dough (it is very elastic) and form a circle. Place it on a baking paper and press the dough very thin but leave thick edges. Keep stretching the dough on the sheet until you form a nice circle. Cut the baking paper around the base, spread a thin layer of an olive oil on it, tomato sauce and pieces of mozzarella or anything you want, and with a shovel, transfer it in the oven onto the baking stone.
Bake for 4-5 minutes.