This morning, a Facebook-based suggestion from Ilva Berretta about
making focaccias and schiacciate for lunch made me head for the refrigerator and pull out some pizza
dough for my own lunch!

Pizza, like most food ,is subjective. Who makes the best, who invented it, or what it’s supposed to look and taste like? Who says! Well, here in New York City, Neopolitan style pizza seems to be the standard for most. It was later morphed from wood oven to the  brick style oven, which made New York pizza a hybrid amongst so many others. There are endless variations on how to make a dough; yeasted, with an old dough, with “00” zero flour, etc. And the cheese is also a touchy topic, never mind the tomatoes, San Marzano,and even the topping whatever!

My own pizza experiments lately have been less then perfect, and it’s not as if I have a brick oven burning at around 800 degrees either. So I already cancel out the mottled charred up-skirt pizza you find in all the trendy pizzerias and websites blogging on the subject. Instead I get a little chewier, airy dough more similar to a street pizza. Nothing wrong with that, eh?

I decided not to use commercial yeast, but since my last ventures at livieto naturale  weren’t promising, I re-worked my numbers and prayed!  Putting on my baker’s cap I worked out a standard straight dough Napoletana dough formula and made it into a sourdough version. I did incorporate the Jim Lahey method of no-knead, and a long slow rise, about 10 hours, after which I let the dough sit in the fridge to get some typical pizza style dough rest overnight.

Also, I used some “00” flour, and I like it. Maybe it’s a bit snobbish, but what the hell, if you got it use it! I  think this dough is traditional D.O.C., flour; water, salt,fermented dough, that’s it.
The toppings, basic, some tomato product, pesto, prosciutto, mozzarella and a touch of parmegianno!

It worked!

Pizza Neopolitana

500g “00” Caputo or A.P. flour

325g aqua (water)
20g sale  (salt)
3gr livieto (yeast)

Sourdough version
840g Dough yield

375 g flour
200g Water
245g Levain
20g salt

There is a yeasted version if your in a hurry or so inclined, and I didn’t bother with in instruction on mixing, it’s pizza! Here is a pretty decent looking site on the whole deal, sorry I am off for another slice!