At the end of the mix, measure the temperature of the dough with a probe thermometer. The goal is to create an environment that will kick-start fermentation; since we’re using such a scant amount of yeast, the dough temperature needs to be warm enough to speed up the yeast’s metabolic rate. Write down the time your mix ended and the dough temperatu

SATURDAY PIZZA DOUGH This same-day dough is the answer when you wake up in the morning and decide you want pizza for dinner. Good call. Me too. This dough was inspired by the Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana (AVPN) pizza dough rules, with my adaptations for the home kitchen. It uses the same salt and yeast percentages as the AVPN specification

You cannot exactly replicate the methods of Neapolitan pizzaiolos and expect to get their same results if you are baking in a home oven. That may seem obvious, but it’s significant. The AVPN rules state that the allowed hydration in a true Neapolitan pizza is between 55 and 59 percent of the flour weight. This makes a dough that is perfect for baki

Until about 1920, all pizza was made with a natural levain (also known as a wild yeast culture), levitazione naturale in Italian, and each day’s batch was leavened with a piece of the previous day’s dough. Then, when commercial monoculture yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) became available in Naples around 1920, many pizzerias switched to this becau

Di Fara’s pizza on Avenue J in Brooklyn is nothing like the pizza at La Notizia, Salvo, or Da Michele in Naples, which are nothing like Frank Pepe’s in New Haven, Patsy’s in Harlem, Buddy’s in Detroit, Totonno’s on Coney Island, Delancey in Seattle, Anthony Mangieri’s Una Pizza Napoletana in San Francisco, or Pizzeria Bianco in Phoenix.

DETAIL 1: MATCH THE DOUGH AND ITS HYDRATION TO THE OVEN AND ITS BAKING TEMPERATURE

It took a while to realize what was right in front of my eyes: think like a pizzaiolo, not like a bread baker. Pizza dough and bread dough have different needs. Bread wants to expand to its maximum volume; pizza does not. Pizza dough has structural needs—to stretch without breaking and without being too elastic.

When it comes to pizza, I depart from the current bread trend of using whole grain flours. I adore these in bread, but I do not use whole grain flours in hearth-baked pizzas because the crispness and delicate lightness of texture in the crust go away. When making pan pizzas, however, I do sometimes like a blend of white flour with whole wheat, whol

A bread baker thinks the bulk fermentation period is critical to allowing complex flavors from fermentation to develop, so it’s important to give your dough enough time for that to happen. And a bread baker is also driven to make a loaf that has its maximum possible expansion without collapsing. A pizzaiolo only thinks of managing the dough’s abili