While Neapolitan-style is the Holy Grail of pizza, the simple truth is that perfecting it at home requires a specialized oven that can reach staggering temperatures. Most home cooks don’t own such an oven. The same is true in Italy where, excepting the occasional hobbyist, home cooks instead tend to make “Pizza in Teglia,” a pan pizza that is much easier to master and requires no special equipment whatsoever. It’s delicious and has a ton of advantages over homemade Neapolitan pizza—such as being able to easily feed a crowd.
The Secret to Making Perfect Pizza in a Home Oven
A real Neapolitan pizza cooks in about 90 seconds in an extremely hot oven. Traditionally, Neapolitan pizza dough is made with about a 60% hydration level, meaning that the ratio of water to flour is 60% by weight (i.e. for 1000g of flour one would use 600g of water).
Because a normal home oven can’t reach super high temperatures, homemade pizza needs to cook for much longer—about 20-25 minutes in total. A 60% hydration dough will simply dry out after that long in the oven, which is why a higher hydration of 75% yields much better results.
If you follow the recipe and use the proper hydration level, you’ll be rewarded with an incredibly soft and fluffy pizza. The dough will be sticky and might seem difficult to work with at first, but stick with it and trust the process!
Toppings for Pizza in Teglia
You can top the pizza dough with any of your favorite toppings, but it’s important to know how and when to add them. Because the pizza has a long baking time, you can’t simply add all of the toppings at the beginning. Cheese, for instance, will burn long before the dough is cooked.
Raw ingredients that need to be cooked should be added at the start. These include ingredients such as tomato sauce (which should never be cooked in advance) and raw vegetables that take some time to be done (such as potatoes or peppers).
Ingredients that need to cook or melt for a little bit should be added about five minutes before the pizza dough is fully cooked. These include mozzarella cheese, basil, quicker-cooking vegetables (such as mushrooms or olives), and cold cuts (like ham).
Finally, some ingredients should be added after the pizza is fully baked. These include all ingredients that should remain raw, such as pesto and prosciutto crudo.
A Note on Ingredient Measurements
Pizza dough is one case where fairly precise measurements are useful because of the importance of the hydration ratio. While we’ve given volumetric measurements below, we highly recommend measuring by weight.
Watch the Pasta Grammar video where we make Pizza in Teglia here:
PIZZA IN TEGLIA DOUGH RECIPE
Makes: 3 large pizzas
Cook Time: 18 hours from start to finish, mostly unattended
For this recipe, you will need:
3 ⅛ cups (750g) water
½ tsp. (2g) active dry yeast
8 ⅓ cups (1kg) bread flour, divided
4 tsp. (20g) salt
Extra-virgin olive oil
Semolina flour for dusting
In a large mixing bowl, stir together the water and yeast until the yeast dissolves completely. Add roughly ⅓ of the flour and stir it in thoroughly by hand, being sure to break up any clumps of flour that form. Once the flour is well-incorporated, add another ⅓ of the flour and mix it in thoroughly.
Add the salt and mix it into the dough well. Finally, mix in the remaining flour until it is fully incorporated with no clumps. Cover the bowl and let it rest at room temperature for 20 minutes.
It’s time to work the dough! If you have any trouble figuring out the techniques involved, we highly recommend checking out the video above to see them in action.
Uncover the bowl and drizzle the dough with some olive oil. Use your hand to spread the oil gently over the surface of the dough. Keeping the dough in the bowl, slide your hand down one side of it and fold the dough up and over on itself. Turn the bowl 90 degrees and repeat. Fold the dough 6 to 8 times, working around the bowl to fold the dough from all sides. If the dough starts to stick, just rub a little more olive oil into your hands.
Once the dough has been folded a few times, slide your hand underneath the dough and lift it up from the middle. When you do so, the sides will droop down. Place the dough back down into the bowl so that the sagging sides tuck underneath. This helps to incorporate air into the dough. Repeat this lifting and setting down motion about 4 to 6 times. Cover the bowl again and let the dough rest for an additional 20 minutes.
Uncover the bowl. Drizzle and rub the dough with olive oil again and repeat the lifting technique for another 4 to 6 times. At this point, the dough should be much smoother, more elastic, and even starting to develop some bubbles. Cover the bowl and refrigerate the dough for 12-15 hours.
Remove the bowl from the fridge and let the dough come to room temperature for 1 to 1 ½ hours. Generously flour a clean work surface with semolina flour, and rub some of the flour on your hands. Gently pour the dough out of the bowl so that it naturally falls onto the floured surface.
Using a bench scraper or knife, divide the dough into three equal portions. Take a portion and fold it on itself in thirds: fold one side in towards the middle, then fold the opposing side over the first fold. Turn the dough over so that the smoother side is now on top. Gently tuck the rougher sides of the dough ball underneath so that the top becomes even smoother. Set aside on a floured surface and repeat to form the remaining two dough portions.
Brush three large baking trays with olive oil so that they are completely coated, including the sides. Place each dough ball in the center of a tray. Drizzle the dough portions with more oil and gently rub it to coat the surface. Cover the trays with plastic wrap and let the dough rise at room temperature for 1 ½ hours.
Remove the plastic wrap from one of the trays. Drizzle the dough with olive oil and use your fingertips to gently press the dough out so that it fills the baking tray. Do so by starting in the center and gradually pressing outward toward the edges of the tray. You may find that when the dough is fully spread out, it tends to shrink back from the edges. If you simply wait 5 to 10 minutes, the gluten will relax and you can spread it out again to fully reach the edges and corners. Repeat to spread out the other three pizzas. Drizzle them with a little more oil and use your hand to gently spread the oil over the surface of the pizzas. Cover them with plastic again and let them rise for an additional 30 to 60 minutes, until they have roughly doubled in thickness.
Preheat the oven to the maximum temperature, usually around 500 to 550°F (260 to 285°C).
Cook the pizzas one at a time, preferably on the bottom rack. Top the pizza with raw ingredients that require a longer cook time (see above for tips on this) and bake for 15 to 20 minutes, until the crust is beginning to become golden on the bottom (check it by lifting it up with a spatula). Remove the pizza from the oven and add any toppings that need melting or a short cook time, such as mozzarella cheese and basil. Bake for an additional 5 minutes or until the bottom of the dough is golden.
Serve warm and fresh, cut into square pieces. Buon appetito!
Want to try more Italian pizza variations? Check out our recipes for Sicilian Sfincione and Pizza al Padellino!