HIstory: What sets this style of pizza apart from others are the specifications by which it must be made to be able to call itself Neapolitan. The dough can only use water, salt, yeast and flour, the stretching of the dough can only be done by hand, the products must be of a high quality and the pizza must be cooked in a 400- to 450-degrees Celsius oven for less than 90 seconds.

Not very realistic for an at-home cook, but here are some tricks so you can try to replicate his Neapolitan masterpiece in your own kitchen.

  • Start with high-quality dough.
    DOUGH RECIPE:     1/3 liter of water, 1 gram of fresh yeast, 16.6 grams fine sea salt and .56 kilos of pizza “00” flour.
    To make, first dissolve the salt in the water. Then, add 10 to 15 percent of the flour you’re going to use.Dissolve it in the liquid dough and then gradually add the rest of your flour until you’re ready to knead the dough for at least 10 minutes. Cover with a damp cloth and let it rest for about two hours on the counter. Then, divide the rested dough into smaller balls and let it rest another six hours without refrigeration. Finally, stretch the dough out by hand only. No rolling pins.
  • Add high-quality ingredients. Go for San Marzano tomatoes and either a fior di latte or a buffalo mozzarella.
  • Use a pizza stone. Get a stone that goes into the oven, and preheat that as hot as possible. Then use the same process of sliding the pizza into a normal wood fired oven. That way the stone is already hot and you’re not putting a cold pizza on a cold stone and then in the oven. Cook that pizza in about four minutes in a conventional oven.
  • Or finish on the stovetop. Not everyone has a pizza stone on the ready. In that case, you can cook your pizza on a steel or aluminum tray. “You can stretch your pizza onto the tray top it with all your ingredients and put it into a conventional oven. What you’ll normally find is the top will cook really well, but the bottom may not cook too well because you’re putting a cold tray in a hot oven. So to finish it off, by taking the pizza out of the oven and turn the cooktop on and put the tray directly on the cooktop to brown the bottom.
  • Finish with basil and extra-virgin olive oil. Do not put the basil and extra-virgin olive oil on before you cook the pizza. It will brown up too quickly.