Neapolitan Pizza Recipe

Neapolitan is the original pizza and still the benchmark: a thin, soft, slightly soupy center ringed by a puffed, blistered, leopard-spotted cornicione (the rim), cooked so fast and so hot it is done before the cheese fully melts. It is a minimalist's bread — flour, water, salt, a whisper of yeast — where every part of the character comes from the flour, the ferment, and the fire rather than from any enrichment.

The ratio reflects how seriously this style is regulated. The AVPN, the body that certifies true Neapolitan pizza, sets hydration at 55–63% and salt at 2.5–3.5%; the default here is 60% water and 2.8% salt, sitting right in the middle of those bands. The yeast is almost nothing — 0.1% — because the flavor comes from a long, slow fermentation, not a fast rise. The flour matters as much as the numbers: a finely milled 00 flour (Caputo and similar) is what gives the dough its extensibility and that tender, foldable rim.

The non-negotiable is heat. Real Neapolitan wants 800°F or more — a wood-fired or dedicated pizza oven — to cook a pie in 60 to 90 seconds, which is what produces the leopard spotting and keeps the center soft. A home oven maxes out around 550°F, where the same dough takes a few minutes and browns more evenly than it chars; a baking steel preheated as hot as the oven runs gets you closest.

Two ferments are documented: a same-day room-temperature rise for pizza today, and a poolish version built 24+ hours ahead for noticeably deeper flavor. Modern artisan bakers push hydration higher (65–73%) for an even airier rim once their oven and handling can take it.