You’ve made your sourdough starter, your regularly turning out loaves and you’ve used the discard to make banana bread and cookies, so I think its time to make pizza. When I think of the holy grail of homemade pizzas I think 75% of people would probably be aiming for something akin to a Neapolitan pie, simple toppings, a light puffy crust and thin but slightly soft base, no hard cracker like pies here please. To be a true Neapolitan pizza there is rules you have to follow and since were making these at home were going to breaking a few of them. The main rules I’m breaking, sorry Italy, is with the dough and with the cooking. To be a true Neapolitan pizza the dough should only include water, salt, yeast (sourodugh is allowed) and flour, im breaking that by adding a little olive oil. Why? I find making pizzas at home the oil helps to make an easy to handle dough that gives a little head start. The biggest rule we are breaking though is the oven, Neapolitan pizzas have to be cooked in a wood fired oven and I live in a small apartment in London, I don’t think my landlord or my neighbours for that matter would be happy if I installed a wood fired oven in my kitchen. Rules are made to be broken so whilst my pizzas will only be Neapolitan-ish there’ll still be in the spirit of those excellent pizzas.

The dough recipe is pretty straight forward and whilst it takes the best part of a day to prepare its pretty hands off and really we are just waiting for most of that time, waiting for the sourdough to do its thing, its slow stubborn thing. Once we have a dough the trickiest part is the cooking or baking, or actually in my recipe I guess a bit of both. The problem with making pizzas at home is that they are normally cooked in ovens that can get as high as 500C meaning the pizzas are cooked in just 60-90 seconds. If you’ve ever tried baking a pizza at home you’ll know it takes much longer in a regular oven. The high heat helps to give the crust its lift, its leopard spotting around the outside and it cooks the toppings just so. In a domestic oven by the time the pizza dough is cooked the toppings are sadly overdone. Part of the reason this happens is how the heat is conducted, in a pizza oven the pie is sat straight on the heat source whereas at home you’re putting the pie on a cold baking tray which has to heat up first whilst the toppings start to cook via ambient heat, its like the cooking is reversed. Thankfully you could bake the pizzas on a baking stone or even better a baking steel but the oven still isn’t hot enough to burnish the crust in the way we all want. The key to success? We don’t start the pizza in the oven, we start it in a frying pan.

Frying pan pizza is nothing new, I learnt about it from the guys at Pizza Pilgrims back in 2013 when they released their cookbook. I cant find earlier mentions of the idea so it may well be their idea, and a great idea it is. To replicate the high heat the idea is to separate out the cooking of the base and the toppings, using a very hot frying pan to cook the base and then popping the pizza under a grill to cook the toppings and brown the crust. It works brilliantly and combined with a great dough you can turn out stellar pizzas. In regards to the frying pan we want to get it HOT so a non-stick is out of the question, as the coatings are not normally designed to get that high. The ideal pan is made of cast iron, ive made pizzas in both classic American style cast iron (a lodge frying pan) and in enamel coated pans ala Le Creuset, both worked great but my preference overall would be traditional black cast iron (I use my le cresuet mainly because the lodge pan I have is a little smaller than I would want my pizzas)

Note: if you like working with bakers percentages I have included those below, if you prefer grams just ignore the percentages

Sourdough Neapolitan (ish) Pizza 
Makes Four 9-10 inch Pizzas

500g 00 Pizza Flour* (100%)
15g fine sea salt (3%)
325ml water, 28-30C (65%)
75g mature sourdough starter*, 100% hydration (15%)
10ml extra virgin olive oil (2%)

*I prefer 00 pizza flour which is 12-13% protein but if you can’t get hold of it you can also use plain or bread flours but you may need to up the hydration a little as they will hydrate a little differently than the finely milled pizza flour. Pizza flour is prized because it creates a delicate crust with a slight crisp texture and a soft interior with a little chew

*If when you start making the dough your starter has fallen and is no longer at its peak (this is what you call mature starter) you can make a levin by simply mixing together 25g of the starter, 25g water at 28-30C and 25g flour (this can be the 00 or bread flour) covering and setting in a warm spot, oven with the light on is ideal, and leaving until doubled in size. Using the above ratios and temperatures this should take 2-3 hours.

To make the dough pour the water into a large bowl and scrape in the mature starter/levain and mix with your fingers briefly to break up a little. Add in the flour, salt and olive oil and use your fingers to mix this to form a shaggy dough. We are not kneading at this point, we just want everything to be hydrated with no pockets of flour. Once mixed scrape off any dough from your fingers and cover the bowl and set aside in a warm spot for 30 minutes to rest. 

Once rested we are going to knead the dough. You can do this by hand for about 10 minutes, in mixer for 5-8 minutes or use the slap and fold method. If you haven’t heard of this technique before its a great method for kneading sticky doughs when you don’t have a mixer. I learnt it originally from Richard Bertinet (who has excellent bread books should you want more reading) which makes sense as this is often known as the French method. Basically you scrape the dough out onto the worsurface. Both hands go under the ought, scooping it up turning it over and slapping it dough on the counter (this basically tuns it over) the dough is then stretched back towards you a little and then folded over on itself. This motion is repeated over and over again for about 8 minutes or until the dough looks smoother and is nice and elastic. I don’t have any pictures to illustrate this technique and its a little hard to understand but if you watch the video its much clearer. 

Once the dough is kneaded use a dough scraper to form the dough into a ball and place seam side up into a bowl very lightly greased with olive oil. Cover the bowl and set aside somewhere warm (26-27C is perfect) for the moment. After 30 minutes, using the techniques we learnt making our first loaf of sourdough bread, were going to preform a set of stretch and folds to build in more strength. Cover the bowl and leave for another 30 minutes before doing a second, and final, set of stretch and folds. Cover the bowl and place back in its warm spot and leave for another three hours, a total of 4 hours. 

After 4 hours you should be able to see some signs of fermentation, even if the dough hasn’t risen significantly. The dough should have a slight domed appearance and there should be lots of fermentation bubbles over the surface. Carefully turn the dough out onto the worksurface and use a dough scraper to divide into 4 pieces (you can weigh these if you’re looking for perfectly portioned pieces). Form the dough into balls, trying to make the shaping nice and tight so the skin on the outside of the dough is taught. 

Once divided and balled you need to decide if you’re going to use all four of the pizza balls tomorrow or if you want to freeze them to use at a later date. If using tomorrow simple place them into a lightly floured container, a high walled plastic box is good for this or a baking tray with high sides, something that means when covered the lid or clingfilm wont touch the dough. If freezing the balls I like to place these into small individual plastic tubs greased with little oil. Either way once in their new resting place the dough needs to sit for a further four hours, again in a warm spot around 26-27C is ideal. Once out second four hour stint is up you should once again be able to see signs of fermentation. If in the individual containers you should be able to see some rise and bubbling on the sides and if on the floured tray you should see the dough has spread out a little and there is fermentation bubbles on the surface as before. For the dough you want to use later place the containers in the freezer (for up to two weeks) and for the dough you want to use place the container in the fridge for 12-24 hours. You can leave the chilled dough for longer but after 24 hours it can be harder to handle. 

Once your dough has rested for its desired time it needs to come back to room temperature before using, otherwise it’ll be harder to stretch and the chill will affect how it cooks. If using refrigerated dough this means taking out the dough 4-5 hours before you want to use it. If your kitchen is in the low to mid 20’s then room temperature is fine if its colder you’ll want to leave it in a warmer spot. If the dough your using is frozen you need to think a bit further ahead. I take the dough out the day before I want to use it leaving it in there for 12-24 hours to slowly defrost and then as with the regular refrigerated dough take it out 4-5 hours before using. 

When ready to make pizzas get everything set up, get your toppings prepped and your workstation ready. Preheat your frying pan over medium heat for about 5-10 minutes (this should get it about 300C), it wants to be about as hot as you can get it. Turn on your grill and set a rack just below, giving you enough space to fit the frying pan. 

Carefully remove a portion of dough from its container (dough scraper is good for this if you chilled the dough on a tray) and place onto a floured surface, dusting the top of the dough too. Press your fingers into the middle of the dough, leaving the outside inch or so untouched. To stretch the dough I place it on the back of my fists, resting it on my knuckles and gently stretch it as I turn the dough. You don’t want to use a rolling pin as you’ll deflate the dough and you’ll have wasted all that time. Once stretched to about 9-10 inches carefully transfer it to the pan. The base will start to cook immediately so as soon as the base is in top it with your tomato sauce (recipe below) spreading to the edges but leaving the now puffed up crust clear. I don’t add the cheese yet because I find it releases too much water if cooked for too long. Use a spatula to keep an eye on the base and as soon as it has nicely browned spots on the base, working quickly, add your toppings. This entire cooking process should take 2 minutes, 3 max. Carefully lift the frying pan under the grill and cook until the cheese has melted and the crust is browned. With this method you wont get the leopard spotting you associate with Neapolitan pizza but it will brown and I personally like to take it pretty far so there are nice dark spots around the pizza. Remove the pan from the grill and immediately transfer the pizza to a plate. Finish with a drizzle of oil and some fresh basil (you can add the basil before hand but because the pizza cooks for longer than in a restaurant oven I prefer adding it after cooking). 

Tomato Sauce
400g can San Marzano (or good quality tinned plum) tomatoes
Large pinch flaked sea salt
2 crushed garlic cloves
1/2 tsp crushed chilli flakes

For the sauce place all of the ingredients into a bowl and use your hands or a hand blender to make a sauce, using your hands is more traditional and will give a sauce with more texture and using a hand blender will make a smoother sauce.

Cheese
For the toppings the one thing I always struggled with was the cheese. Mozzarella is obviously the cheese easiest for us home pizza makers to get our hands on and over the years I’ve tried so many types and they all had problems. Fresh ball style mozzarella from the supermarket or deli tastes great but in a home oven it leaves behind so much liquid it makes for very very soupy pizzas and not in a good Neapolitan way. Pre-grated mozzarella that comes in bags had the opposite problem, it was so dry (often coated in starch to stop it sticking) it just kind of stayed the same. Thankfully I accidentally stumbled on a mozzarella that is the best of both worlds. It’s a block mozzarella called Galbani Cucini thats sold at Waitrose and on Ocado and Amazon. When you see American recipes for call low moisture mozzarella I think this is close as us brits are going to get. It releases next to no water when cooked, but if its cooed for too long it tends to melt away into the pizza, hence my method for adding the cheese just before it goes under the grill.