Homemade pizza: a slow-risen thin crust, no-cook sauce, mozzarella
Pizza from a home oven that isn't a soggy tray bake: a dough with very little yeast and a long rise, a sauce of plain passata with garlic and oregano, no cooking, and mozzarella drained so it doesn't flood the base. The whole secret is the highest heat your oven gives and a preheated tray the pizza lands on hot. Two 30 cm pizzas; the dough can be made the day before.
Your own work in that: 30 min.
- Kneading 15 min
- Rising 120 min
- Oven preheating, sauce 30 min
- Stretching 15 min
- Baking 20 min
Step by step
0 / 7 doneKnead the dough
Dissolve the yeast in the lukewarm water. Pour into the flour and salt, add the oil and mix with a spoon, then knead by hand on the counter 10 minutes, until smooth and elastic. It is soft and slightly tacky: don't add flour, just keep kneading; after a few minutes it stops sticking.
Ingredients: 500 g strong bread flour · 330 ml water · 5 g fresh yeast · 2 tsp salt · 1 tbsp olive oil or oil
TipFive grams of yeast for half a kilo of flour is deliberately little. Little yeast and a long time give a dough that tastes of bread, not yeast, and blisters on the rim.
Soft, slightly tacky, ten minutesLong rise
Put the dough in an oiled bowl, cover with film and leave 2 hours at room temperature, until doubled. Better version: instead, put the dough in the fridge overnight (12–48 hours), then give it 1 hour on the counter before dividing. Then divide into 2 balls, round them and rest under a cloth for 30 minutes.
TipFridge dough has deeper flavour and stretches more easily, because the gluten has relaxed. If you have the time, it is the best pizza you will make at home.
Doubled, then two ballsPreheat the oven and make the sauce
Put a baking tray (or a pizza stone) in the oven and heat to 250 °C, the highest setting, for a full 30 minutes — the dough balls rest meanwhile. The hot tray stands in for a pizza oven: the base sets at once and crisps, instead of steaming and going soft. Mix the passata with the crushed garlic, oil, oregano, salt and a pinch of sugar. Don't cook it: the sauce cooks on the pizza in the oven, and raw it keeps the freshness of the tomato.
Ingredients: 250 g tomato passata · 1 clove garlic · 1 tbsp olive oil · 1 tsp dried oregano · ½ tsp salt · 1 pinch sugar
Passata, garlic, oregano, no cookingStretch by hand
Set a ball on a floured counter and flatten with your fingertips from the centre outwards, leaving a 2 cm rim untouched, that's where the bubbles are. Lift and stretch over the backs of your hands to 30 cm. Don't use a rolling pin: it presses out the air and the pizza comes out flat as a cracker.
Ingredients: 250 g mozzarella · 2 tbsp flour for dusting
Fingertips from the centre, the rim stays thickTop the pizza on paper
Transfer the stretched dough onto baking paper and trim the paper close to the edge of the dough. Spread half the sauce thinly with the back of a spoon, leaving the rim, and scatter the torn, drained mozzarella. Keep the sauce thin: spread thickly, it soaks the base.
Ingredients: 250 g mozzarella · 2 tbsp flour for dusting
TipDrain the mozzarella in a sieve an hour ahead or pat dry with a towel. Water from the cheese is the main cause of a soggy centre.
A thin layer of sauce, torn mozzarellaBake on the hot tray
Slide the paper with the pizza onto the hot tray and bake 8–10 minutes, until the rim is tall and charred in spots and the cheese bubbles. Top the second pizza while the first bakes.
Paper onto the hot tray, ten minutesCut and serve
Wait a minute for the cheese to settle, cut with a wheel. Fresh basil or oregano goes on after baking, not before. Toppings (ham, mushrooms, peppers) go on the cheese, thinly: an overloaded pizza doesn't bake, it stews.
A minute's pause, then the wheel
Before you start
Dough for later
Freeze the dough balls after the first rise in bags oiled inside. Thaw overnight in the fridge, then an hour on the counter.
In a pan and under the grill
Without a good oven: heat a dry cast-iron pan until smoking, lay in the topped dough, cook 2 minutes, then put under the oven's hot grill for 3 minutes. Crisp base, browned top.
Pale, soft base
Oven too cool or the tray cold. Always the maximum setting and a full half hour of preheating with the tray inside; without that the base will not crisp.
