- Moin and gluten tag.
I hope you're hungry because today
we are making amazing
Neapolitan style pizza at home.
Let me show you exactly
what that looks like.
("Non piu andrai" by Mozart)
(singing in foreign language)
I will show you step by
step, how to get there.
Now, this recipe is called
an engineer's guide,
because I'm an engineer myself, and I love
to understand things.
I will explain everything in
detail so that you can follow
this recipe at home, step by step,
because let's face it, every
home kitchen is different,
every flour is different.
You don't have the exact
same environment as I have.
Simply following a recipe
without understanding it,
won't make you this amazing pizza.
Chances are you have to do
some adjustments on the way.
And that's why I personally
think that understanding the why
behind the recipe is so important.
Why should I do a certain step?
Why should I use this ingredient?
Can I also use this ingredient?
Those are all questions
that I'll be covering
in this complete guide.
Now, I also added chapters in this video
so that you can just skip
ahead when you, like.
If you already know
something, just skip ahead,
or if you had enough of
this random German talking,
then also just skip ahead.
Now, this a Neapolitan style pizza,
and because this term
is protected in Europe,
there have to be written
regulations for it.
I will show them to you.
It's crazy.
Everything is explained
pretty much in detail,
all the steps, even the
color codes before the bake,
and after bake, everything
is completely covered.
So, if you have questions,
I definitely recommend you
to have a look at the
official written regulations.
Luckily, there is also an
English translation available.
I'm going to be linking the
guidelines in the description
of the video as well, so that
you can easily find them.
Anyways, enough said, let's get
started by making the dough,
the most important
ingredient of the pizza.
The secret for the dough
is a long fermenting dough.
Don't try to make the dough in
an hour, give it a full day.
The enzymes in the flour
become activated by mixing
in the water.
This starts to break down the flour,
giving it its unique taste.
It's not only the taste,
it's also because it's easier
for the yeast to digest your flour.
You will have a more
fluffy dough in the end.
Now, because we ferment over
a longer period of time,
We also only have to use
a tiny amount of yeast.
I'm going to be using dry yeast,
but you could also definitely
be using fresh yeast.
It's a ratio of one to three
and actually fresh yeast
and dry yeast is the same organism.
If you're not sure, double
check your packaging,
it should say the same.
To calculate all the ingredients,
I built a small calculator.
Side note to all the other
engineers, it's open source,
so feel free to submit a pull
request and change the code,
make the calculator better.
Just one small side note,
have a look at the protein
content of your flour.
Based on this, you have to
adjust the water content
that you're using.
Now, bakers always like to
specify this with a percentage.
This way they can easily scale
up the quantities when needed.
So if you see a value such as 50%,
that would be 50% based on
the total flour that's used.
So 50% based on one
kilograms of flour would be
around 500 grams of water, for instance.
That would be 50% hydration.
For 10% protein flour,
double check the packaging,
I would recommend around 55% hydration.
For 12% protein flour go
for around 60% hydration.
This is what the pizza in Naples has,
around 12% protein flour,
and the official guidelines
also recommend 60%.
For 14% plus protein flour,
go for around 65% hydration.
That's what I'll be doing in this video
because it's the same
flour that I also use
for baking sourdough.
Now, the reason for this is
that the water absorption
greatly depends on the amount
of protein that you have
inside of your flour.
It's mostly the gluten.
The more gluten you have,
the more water your flour can absorb.
And for wheat, 80% of
the protein is gluten.
Now you could also definitely
enhance your own flour at home
by mixing in a little bit
of vital wheat gluten.
And it's the same with sourdough baking,
you have to make sure
that you take the correct
amount of water.
It's really critical that
you don't use too much,
but also not too little water.
And it also just simply depends
on the flour that you have
at your disposal.
Sorry for going on about
this for such a long time,
but I feel this is a very,
very important point.
I'm getting started by
making the dough one evening
before the guests arrive.
I want to make around 10 pizza balls,
and the exact ingredients I extracted
from my pizza calculator.
I'm just getting started by
mixing flour, water, salt,
and then the dry yeast.
And it's only very, very little dry yeast,
because we are going to ferment our dough
for a longer period of time.
If you can't measure less than
a gram, just go for a gram.
That's also totally okay.
Then I'm just starting to
mix everything together.
And it's very hot right now in Germany,
more than 30 degrees.
And yes, this is going to make
my dough ferment much faster
than it does in winter times.
I will show you a quick
hack in a little bit
that allows you to monitor the progress.
I'm just making sure everything
is evenly incorporated now,
and then I let that dough sit.
15 Minutes passed and now it's time
to add a little more strength.
During the first stage, we
pretty much just incorporate
all the ingredients, making
sure that there is no flour
left which is untouched with the water.
And now we need to be
kneading a little bit,
but not too much because we
have a lot of time overnight
where this dough is
going to come together.
And you see by just letting
every everything sit
for a while, we got a really
good window pane effect.
This is the gluten holding together.
This is also how your dough should be.
Now let's take out the
dough from the container.
I just like to rotate the dough like this,
fold it over until the
dough comes right out.
And now I didn't flour the surface.
I did this on purpose
because the dough sticks
to the surface now, and
this means I can pull it out
and fold it over.
And by doing this, we are gluing the dough
So take it out, fold it over,
repeat this a few times.
And it is already creating
a lot of strength.
We need to develop this gluten network.
We want the dough to stay together.
Resist the urge to use
any additional flour.
Now this is the dough,
but it's not looking
nice, round, and smooth.
I like to smoothen the
dough up a little bit,
and I will show you how that works.
We will just turn around the
dough, and now using our hands
at around a 45 degree angle,
we are pulling the dough towards us.
Now with this right hand here,
I'm going to push the dough
and then I'm pulling the dough
again towards me.
This only works because
we don't have any flour
on the surface.
The dough sticks and that
way I can roll it up.
Note how the dough here is not rolling.
Roll it.
Practice this, because this
technique you might also need
for the shaping of the
pizza balls later on.
45 degree angle, pull,
pull, push and pull.
And this is our smooth lookin' dough ball,
which is now going to ferment
in exactly the same pot overnight.
It's now, 11 p.m. here, and
I'll be back up, I guess,
German time's eight a.m. or so.
Not a real German.
Let me just show you the temperature.
That's around 30 degrees Celsius.
It's incredibly hot here currently.
That must be 90 F I guess
90 Fahrenheit or 29,
a little less.
So yeah, it's gonna ferment overnight
and make sure you close
the pot or container,
whatever you're using.
That's why I like to use a pot.
I'm already sleepy, I
forgot one important thing.
Note how I have those
two tiny glass bowls.
They will act as my fermentation sample
and I also placed a small
rubber band around here.
Now what I'll do is I will
extract a tiny probe, like this,
and I know that the first stage
of the fermentation process
is complete the moment
this doubled in size.
I'm just taking as much as I
need to fill those tiny jar.
So just place the dough here
at the bottom of the jar
and then make sure to mark it
properly with a rubber band.
And that way you can clearly see
how the dough is developing.
This is a great way,
especially because temperatures
are always different, so the
speed is always also different,
the fermentation speed.
And that's why I can't
give you an exact timing.
This really depends on your
environment, your setup,
but this is a safe way to
always know that your dough
is pretty much ready.
So as you can see here,
I marked it like this,
and I just have this tiny other
jar, which I place on top,
so the probe doesn't dry out.
And now, I'm going to round
this up one more time,
just like we did before.
And look, now it's even smoother.
What a nice looking dough,
this the way, how your
dough should look like,
and it's not sticking to my hands anymore.
Good night, Mr. Dough.
And before going to bed, this
is the fermentation probe,
and the probe in the morning.
Now the actual dough here in the morning,
tells a different sign than the probe.
What we will be doing is
we will be giving this
one coil fold, and I'll
show you exactly how
that is done.
Wet your hands a little bit,
and then go here on the
sides of the container.
You can see that the dough is
de-gassing just a little bit.
That's where you know, no problem.
Go around the edge here, of the dough.
And then with two hands go
inside and lift the dough upwards
and place it down.
Repeat this twice.
Rotate the dough.
And repeat this twice as well.
Now from this side, I will
just roll the dough over.
I will not repeat it from both sides.
I'm basically creating a swirl, a roll.
Now this is a little
bit, the trickiest part.
I lift the whole dough,
place the bottom down,
and then just lay this one on top.
This dough is already so, so fluffy.
So I will just wait a little bit more
and monitor the probe.
Yeah, and this is good.
This created additional strength,
this way we made sure
the dough sticks together
a little bit more, exactly what we need,
because we also didn't knead
that much in the start.
This dough is looking good.
The probe also says it doubled in size.
Look at this nice jiggly dough.
So satisfying.
I just want to touch it.
Mm, this is so good.
I wish you could touch this dough.
Mm, ah, I could do this all day.
Good dough, good dough.
So I'm just applying
just one more coil fold,
as you can see.
Just again, (laughing)
I'm amazed by this dough.
But now the problem is I have
to move this to my fridge
and this pot is a little bit too large.
The coil fold helps to remove the dough
and ah, (laughing), ah this is so good.
Mm (chomping).
Look at this perfect fit (laughing).
Ah, this is so satisfying.
The fridge really slows down
the fermentation activity
and I left the dough in the
fridge until around two hours
before I wanted to start baking pizza.
Now I'm carefully removing
the dough from the edges
of the container, and then
I'm taking the dough out,
placing it on my un-floured surface.
Next up, we then have
to divide the main dough
and create our pizza balls.
For this, I like to
mark the dough already,
to indicate the portions
where I should cut.
And each dough ball is
going to be 250 grams.
That's perfect for my oven,
but you could also be going
for a little bit less.
250 is the official size of
a Neapolitan style pizza.
Yeah, and don't worry
about cutting a few scraps.
That's really no problem.
Take the ready portion and just place it
on your kitchen counter one more time.
If you don't have a dough scraper,
you could just be using a sharp knife.
Now our chunks of dough
don't look uniform at all,
and that's what we are going to change.
Using the tension of the
surface, we drag the dough
over the surface, rounding the dough up.
Don't do this too much or
else the surface of the dough
is going to tear.
So just as much as is required.
One more time, this only
works because we don't
have any flour on the surface.
Resist the urge to use additional flour.
This is the same technique
that you used before
to round up your main dough.
So when making your main dough,
this is a great way to practice.
Now at this stage, you don't
want to be pre-shaping too much
or else you're de-gassing your dough.
So yeah, give it a shot, practice
this with your main dough.
Now the gluten is relatively stiff.
For this, we will let the dough
ball sit at room temperature
for at least 10 minutes.
This makes it easier to
shape them in the end.
I like to prepare a small bowl
with some additional flour.
I will start with this one and
I'll show you step by step.
Put a little bit of flour on
your surface, not too much.
And now this is stuck to the counter,
so I'm carefully using my hands
and I'm removing the dough
here from the counter, like this.
And now I'm taking this side
and placing it upside down right here.
Wait, better angle like right here.
And now I'm just taking the
outside, pull this into middle,
push this down, rotate, push this down
until I have this done once completely.
Now I remove the excess flour.
Remember the movement we did before,
over the surface.
I just make a nice round ball.
So, this is our first pizza ball.
What I do is, I will put it to the side,
I will shape the others
and I will show you
how I store them.
A small bed of flour.
This is where your dough ball will rest.
Place your dough ball on
top, and I just like to use
another bowl to cover this.
And this is where the dough ball will rest
until I'm ready to make
them, make the pizzas.
Just this much flour is probably
already enough to do this.
So one more time from the
outside to the inside,
rotate with a quick movement of my hand.
I'm just rotating this pizza ball and yes,
well done, finish this up and you see,
I use less flour, and this
way I can use more tension
of the surface to give the
ball the final round shape.
And this is how I store
all of the pizza balls
until I'm ready.
They're gonna stay in here
for at least 30 minutes,
up to an hour, depending on
when I'm ready, and have a look.
This is the pizza ball before,
and I will show you when I'm ready,
it's gonna spread out a
little bit more and yeah,
then it's time to shape it.
Now don't worry, if they
become a little bit too flat,
you can just re-shape them.
That's the beauty of
using yeast in comparison
to a sourdough.
There, you don't have any room for error.
While our dough balls are resting,
let's prepare our tomato sauce.
You will be surprised how simple it is.
For the tomato sauce,
you want to make sure that
you have San Marzano tomatoes.
They are just so incredibly
sweet and just a pinch of salt.
That's it.
("Non piu andrai" by Mozart)
(singing in foreign language)
Now that the tomato sauce is done,
let's have a look at the mozzarella.
I will show you two
different possibilities.
You can be using regular fior di latte,
which is regular cow mozzarella,
but you can also be
using buffalo mozzarella.
Both are allowed by the pizza regulations.
Buffalo mozzarella has an amazing taste,
but it's also more expensive,
and a little bit more watery.
This means that it makes
it a little bit harder
loading the pizza to the oven.
So as a beginner, I definitely
recommend you to start
with fior di latte,
regular, basic mozzarella.
But regardless I will
show you both options.
See for yourself, what you prefer.
We don't need the whey, I
will just remove the whey.
You can drink it, you can
make a bread out of it,
or you can throw it away, as you like.
Now for baking of the pizza,
we will be having a look
at three different options.
First, steel, then a stone, and third,
a special pizza, oven.
For the home oven, you want to
make sure that your home oven
is pre-heated to the max.
And I recommend you to preheat
it for at least 30 minutes.
If you have a broiler function,
make sure you activate
that broiler function.
The hotter, the better.
The idea of a Neapolitan
pizza is to only cook
for max 90 seconds.
That way the ingredients on
top are still somewhat raw.
The idea is to have amazing ingredients,
which taste incredible
even without cooking them.
That's why, yeah. 90
seconds max, baking time.
In Naples, they have stone ovens.
Now I guess most of you won't
have a stone oven at home.
Maybe I should build
myself one (laughing).
The stone ovens have a lot
of heat coming from the top
due to their shape,
and that's exactly what
we're trying to simulate
with the broiler function in the oven.
The temperature in a stone oven
is around 450 degrees Celsius
or 850 degrees Fahrenheit,
much hotter than the average home oven.
Now you might be wondering
why are we using a steel.
In general, a stone can absorb more heat.
However, the steel can yield
the heat faster to the pizza
than the stone can.
This means that the bottom
of the pizza will be cooked
faster with the steel in
comparison to a stone.
And yeah, since we don't
have that high temperature,
that's a great hack for the home oven.
Ideally you want to have
tiny dark spots at the bottom
of your Neapolitan pizza, but yeah
let me show you if the steel
is worth an investment or not.
Let me show you how the three
different baking methods
come together and then we
will be comparing them,
and you can decide for yourself,
which one you like the most.
I hope you are hungry because they all
turned out incredibly delicious.
Start by preparing your pizza peel.
For this, semolina flour works best.
Look at my German label
maker game (laughing).
Semolina flour just works a
little bit like a rolling agent.
The pizza is just gonna
slide off this peel,
also making sure the pizza doesn't stick.
Use a little bit more than too little.
And now first dough ball.
Ah, it came right off.
If it's stuck a little bit, no worries.
Using slightly floured hands,
tuck below the dough ball
until you can move it.
I'm going to be adding some
additional flour right here
on the surface now.
This is where I place the dough ball.
Add some more flour on
top of your dough ball.
Make sure your hands are
also a little bit floured.
Now, push the dough inside,
leaving this edge intact.
Now I'm not a real pizzaiolo.
There are probably faster techniques,
but I find this method to be
very effective and you can see
how the dough still comes back together.
That's the biggest sign
that I might, or should have
let the dough rest a little bit more.
That's the gluten pulling the dough back.
Now carefully work your way outside,
tuck down the edge a little bit.
I would say this is probably the height
that you want everywhere.
Be very careful making sure to not damage
those edges and those nice bubbles here,
that's exactly what you want.
Now, what I like to do is,
I like to take the pizza
into my hands and I'm just
using gravity a little bit
along the pizza to stretch.
Again, this is probably
not the fastest method,
but this method always works.
You will notice how the pizza
starts to just flatten out.
That's exactly what you want.
And note, I'm holding the pizza here on,
below the edge pretty much.
Just keep doing this for a little bit.
The pizza is going to elongate.
And if that doesn't work,
I like to put the pizza
here onto my knuckles,
just the tip of my knuckles,
and I just gently stretch
the pizza using my knuckles.
Make sure to also stretch
it from the inside.
Now, the longer your dough
stayed on the surface,
the easier this goes.
If this does not work for you,
then just wait a little longer.
This always reminds me a little
bit of an alien (gasping).
And you can see already,
this is already my pizza,
and now I will just keep doing
this for a little bit longer
until I have the desired size.
And you can look through the
pizza from the other side,
hold it against the light,
and this is called the window pane effect.
You can briefly see this here,
unfortunately, there is
not so good lightning.
That way you can judge where you should
stretch a little bit more and where you
already stretched enough.
It should be very thin in the middle.
That's the idea.
And you can always leave
the pizza on your knuckles.
No worries, you have all
the time in the world
And look at this pizza pie
already coming together.
It can be a little bit larger even,
and also have a look at those
nice pockets of air here.
Excellent pizza dough.
This is when you
fermented your pizza dough
the way you should.
(laughing) So I'm already very satisfied
with this pizza now,
and what I will do is,
I will just put it here for a second.
No worries.
Oops.
Put my pizza peel and I
will load the pizza here
on this pizza peel.
I'm using my full hand to load the pizza.
Now I'm just placing the pizza
gently on the pizza peel,
and note how it's not
perfectly shaped yet.
I can just stretch it a
little more on the pizza peel.
This is the perfect pizza
pie, and note the edge.
Now you should be using
between 60 and 80 grams
of tomato sauce.
And the moment you apply the
tomato sauce, a timer starts.
You have to be quick because
else the dough becomes
too wet and it's hard to load the pizza.
So I will be applying the tomato sauce.
In a spiraling movement,
I will cover the pizza.
Then I'm going to add the
mozzarella, a little bit of basil,
and then I'll finish that
off with a little bit
of olive oil.
So in my case, this is
around 60 to 80 grams.
Also depends a little
bit on how you like it.
Place the tomato sauce and
just, with an easy movement,
rotate the tomato sauce outwards.
Perfect.
I like to add a little bit
of basil before the cook
and a little bit of basil after the cook.
I will start with the
mozzarella, the fior di latte.
("Non piu andrai" by Mozart)
(singing in foreign language)
And now comes my special
gas operated pizza oven.
Thanks mom and dad for gifting
it to me to my last birthday.
Hello, are you watching?
Hi mom, hi dad.
("Non piu andrai" by Mozart)
(singing in foreign language)
Mm (munching), so good.
Now let's have a look at
the three different pizzas.
First up is going to be the
seal, and then the stone,
and then the oven.
I'm always surprised how good
of a job the broiler does.
We even have some nice
leopard spots on the edge.
That's really, really good.
Not as much as on a real Neapolitan pizza,
but quite a good result.
Now with a home oven, you typically never
get the black spots from the bottom,
but have a look at this.
Pretty impressive what the
steel did to the bottom
of this pizza.
The pizza from the stone has been cooked
for a little bit too long.
The crust is too dark.
My bad, and the bottom of
the confirms my expectations.
There's pretty much no
black spots at the bottom.
The steel was able to
deliver the heat much faster
to the pizza pie.
The steel definitely won
in terms of the bottom
of the pizza.
The pizza from the pizza oven
has a beautiful leopard pattern,
except in that area where
I let it in the oven
for one second, too much.
This oven is just so hard to operate.
I will be elaborating on
that in just a second.
Let's have a look at the
bottom of the pizza first.
And this to me is the perfect bottom.
Totally nailed it.
This is how the pizza should look like.
You might be thinking
now, if this non-Italian,
random German can make an
amazing pizza like this,
I need that oven too.
Well, don't be fooled.
This oven is really hard to operate.
You need to have perfect timing.
Let me elaborate a little
bit on how to operate this,
and then you can decide for
yourself whether a stone,
or a steel might be a
better option for you.
Now for baking, you have
to slide in your pizza,
wait for 20 seconds,
then take it out again,
rotate it, and slide it back in.
One second more, and it's going to burn.
After the 20 seconds, you
want to take out the pizza
every 12 seconds and
rotate it a little bit.
I'm still struggling,
but if you know better,
please drop a comment
in the comment section
and help me with operating this oven.
There should be an oven,
maybe that automatically
rotates the pizza.
That would be truly amazing.
I will also be placing a link to the oven
in the description.
Now, that's going to be an affiliate link.
If you want to support me,
consider using the link.
If you're thinking,
screw this random German,
then just go to the
website directly and buy it
from the website.
No matter what, no hard
feelings, but regardless
let's do some more not safe for
work pizza action right now.
After watching all of this
random German gibberish,
you definitely earned it.
("Non piu andrai" by Mozart)
(singing in foreign language)
That brings us to the
end of this tutorial.
I have two questions to ask,
what are your tips for other hobby bakers
when making Neapolitan
style pizza at home?
Do you have other questions
other troubleshooting?
Then please drop a comment
in the comments section.
I would be very curious to
know what you have to say.
I hope you had fun and I hope you
learned something new.
Again, I will be placing all
the links and the details
for the dough, as well, in the
description, so have a look.
As always, may the gluten be with you.
Thank you for watching, take care.
