Neapolitan Pizza in Your Home Oven with a Pizza Steel

Neapolitan pizza, the pinnacle for many, is attainable for so few. A proper

Neapolitan pizza baked in a home oven is simply not possible. The governing body of

Neapolitan pizza, the Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana (AVPN), specifically states “Pizza Napoletana is baked exclusively in wood-fired ovens with a baking temperature of 485C.” That’s 905 degrees Fahrenheit!

Anyone who has used a home oven knows it is impossible to reach that extreme temperature. Before you say “...uh, technically self-cleaning mode can reach that temperature,” imagine dealing with the oven window glass that will eventually shatter from the temperature swings as you open and close the oven door. Or, your insurance company letting you know your home fire isn’t covered because you decided to modify the safety functions of your oven.

No pizza is worth that. Fortunately, with an understanding of the dough, the fermentation process, and proper equipment, many qualities of a true Neapolitan pizza are possible in a home oven.

What are the characteristics of a Neapolitan pizza?

A Neapolitan pizza is round with a diameter of approximately 12 inches. It features a pleasingly browned and crisp rim with hints of char (but not burnt!), and a soft, light interior. The AVPN states, “the product is easy to cut, it has a characteristic, savory taste given by the raised rim, which has a taste typical of bread which has risen and been baked well.” Perhaps the most famous characteristic of Neapolitan pizza is also its most unique. Neapolitan pizza is more easily digestible than other pizzas.

Digestibility refers to how much of the pizza is absorbed by the body vs. excreted (gross).

The more pizza absorbed by the body, the more digestible it is. Put it another way:

That entire pizza you inhaled from your local pizza chain (just once, right?) that felt like a brick in your stomach?

That pizza was NOT digestible.

Neapolitan pizzas are known for, and often bragged about by their pizzaioli (pizza chefs), for being able to be consumed in their entirety with no ill effects.

This concept of digestibility is the first aspect of the Neapolitan pizza we’ll address for the home pizzaiolo.

How to achieve digestibility in pizza?

A digestible pizza comes down to a few key factors. The type of flour, the amount of yeast used, and the fermentation time all work together to create a more digestible product. Neapolitan pizzas use almost exclusively Type 00 Flour.

This flour is a soft wheat variety that is finely ground to a powder and sifted of bran and germ, leaving only the endosperm.

The two most common types are Caputo Pizzeria (packaged in a blue or red bag) and Caputo Cuoco/Chef’s Flour (always packaged in a red bag).

Caputo Pizzeria has a protein content of 12.5% and a W number of 260/270.

The W number is used in Italy to refer to the strength and extensibility of the dough. The smaller the number, the weaker the flour, and the less it will be able to handle an extended fermentation.

Caputo Cuoco has a protein content of 13% and a stronger W number of 300/320. That means Caputo Pizzeria is a weaker flour by comparison, ideal for short fermentations (24 hours) to reach peak digestibility.

Caputo Cuoco is ideal for longer fermentations (48-72 hours) to achieve a proper digestibility.

If you use a strong flour but neglect to give the enzymes the time they need to break down the proteins and starches, the resulting pizza will be much less digestible.

Fermentation time is a critical factor to digestibility and the amount of yeast used dictates much of the fermentation time as it transforms the dough’s structure and taste.

Yeast feeds on sugars present in the flour and in turn produces gas (CO2) and ethanol (alcohol).

Too much yeast means too much gas, an unwieldy dough that will ferment too quickly (overproof), and a resulting mediocre bake.

The smallest amount of yeast for the given fermentation conditions is always going to be best. For a 24-28 hour room temperature (68F-70F) fermentation, 0.02% of Instant Dry Yeast results in a properly proofed dough that bakes with an ideal amount of oven spring and depth of flavor.

Understanding your flour, yeast, and fermentation is crucial to creating a digestible Neapolitan pizza at home.

What other characteristics can be achieved at home?

The qualities of a Neapolitan pizza you can replicate easiest at home are the shape and size.

Opening a dough ball into a circular pizza takes practice, but can be done with flour, fingers, knuckles, and patience. It must be shaped by hand without the use of a rolling pin or dough press.

The size of the pizza, anywhere from 10-13”, is also easily achievable provided you use a properly weighted dough ball to start with. The AVPN mandates a weight between 180g and 250g.

Giving yourself a little more “wiggle room" with a 270-280g dough ball results in a very satisfactory pizza that can be a little easier to stretch to 12”.

I won’t tell the AVPN if you won’t.

Neapolitan pizza at home tricks

How can we “hack” our oven and manipulate our dough to best replicate a Neapolitan pizza now that we understand the characteristics that are within our control? It once again comes back to heat and how the pizza reacts to heat.

Home ovens cannot reach the high temperatures needed to make authentic Neapolitan pizzas.

Most home ovens max out at 550F, far short of the wood fired ovens in Naples that reach the requisite 905F. In a rare case of size actually mattering, we need to maximize our oven’s heating potential and bring 550F as close as possible to 905F.

Harnessing Heat by Using a Pizza Steel

Some models of ovens have the ability to calibrate their temperature.

Manufacturers do their best to make sure when you set an oven to 350F, the oven heats (on average during the baking time) at 350F. However, things happen and calibrations can get out of whack.

Ovens can run inconsistently and the only way to check for accurate heat is to properly “tune” it with a high quality digital thermometer. The ability to calibrate your oven means you can either subtract or add up to 35 degrees to make sure it is running at the correct temperature.

To close our temperature gap, we can calibrate our oven temperature +35 degrees and effectively run it at 585F. 

Convection or Not for Neapolitan Pizza at Home?

Many ovens have convection - the use of a fan to increase the temperature. If you’ve heard of wind chill, it is the exact same thing, but for heat.

It moves the air around, blowing off the evaporative cloud from the food you are cooking, thereby increasing the temperature around the food and at its surface.

This allows the food to cook quicker and brown better.

Ovens will usually automatically convert the temperature down 25 degrees to compensate for this negative “wind chill” effect, meaning 550F set at Convection Bake is only at 525F with the fan doing its part to make up the additional 25F.

Some ovens have only Convection Bake and others have Convection Bake and Convection Roast.

• Convection Bake uses the bottom element in your oven as the heat source and the fan does its job blowing the heat around.
• Convection Roast, which we want to use for Neapolitan pizza, uses the bottom element of your oven AND the top broiler element.

A Pizza Steel is Your Best Friend

The pizza steel, popularized by Modernist Cuisine, has become the home pizzaiolo’s best bet in ensuring a pizza baked at home is as close to a pie found at their local joint.

A pizza steel conducts/stores heat better than a pizza stone, but most importantly, it puts heat into the food much faster than a pizza stone.

This results in:

• better browning
• crispness
• oven spring

Oven spring refers to the rise you see in the dough in the first 30 seconds after launching your pizza. This creates the fluffiness of the Neapolitan pizza. 

To bake as close to an ideal Neapolitan pizza as possible in your home oven you need to:

1. Put the steel in the upper third of the oven five inches or so from the broiler element.
2. Start by preheating the oven for 50 minutes on Convection Roast. This heats the oven air, walls, and your steel, building a “core” temperature that will helpfully mitigate heat loss as you open and close the door to launch, while also increasing the surface temperature of the steel.
3. After 50 minutes, switch the broiler to Hi for 10 minutes. This will further raise the surface temperature of the steel as you want it to be as close to 750F as possible when you launch your pizza.Much hotter and you risk burning the bottom, not enough heat and the pizza won’t “spring” as nicely.
4. Finally, after launching, leave the broiler on Hi during the entirety of the bake. This will evenly cook and brown the top of your pizza as the steel takes care of the bottom.

Dough Adjustments

00 Flour, such as Caputo Pizzeria, is what is known as an unmalted flour.

Malted flours contain sprouted barley that contribute to the breaking down of starches into sugars.

These sugars feed the yeast and contribute to browning. Malted flours are ideal for baking at lower temperatures (650F and below) and are the most common flours found at the grocery store.

Unmalted flours do not contain this sprouted barley, which means they brown at greater temperatures, 750F and above, where malted flours would burn.

his makes them ideal for Neapolitan pizza cooked in a wood fired oven. More sugars mean better browning, but too much heat also means burning, while inversely, not enough heat means not enough browning.

Therefore, Caputo Pizzeria and other unmalted flours are not ideal for the home oven’s lower temperature, but there is a way to address this while still being able to take advantage of the finely milled 00 flour’s unique properties.

Diastatic Malt Powder (DMP) is an ingredient used by professional bakers to help with the fermentation and browning of the final product.

DMP is produced from barley that has been sprouted, dried, and ground into flour. This barley helps to release sugars from starch that the yeast will feed on as well as contribute to browning at the lower temperatures of a home oven.

DMP can be found online and in some grocery stores and will make a positive impact on your pizzas, provided you do not use too much and watch your fermentation closely.

You should only use 0.5% to 1.0% of DMP in your dough, which means one bag of DMP should last you a considerable amount of time, making it extremely cost efficient compared to all other dough ingredients.

Too much DMP can result in a sticky dough that is difficult to handle and the resulting pizza can have a gummy texture.

The amount of granulated sugar needed to replicate DMP’s contribution to 00 Flour is high enough to negatively affect the taste of the pizza.

Hydration's Role (Water to Flour Ratio)

Finally, we come to hydration—the ratio of water to flour in your dough.

Per the AVPN, Neapolitan pizzas must be 55%-62% hydration.

With these lower hydrations and the high heat of the wood fired ovens, pizzas bake in 60-90 seconds. This results in a crisp rim and an airy interior.

A home baker can adjust the hydration of their dough to compensate for the lower oven temperature they are working with to produce somewhat similar results.

If you’re able to take advantage of all of the oven “hacks” discussed above, a 62% hydration dough can cook in 90-120 seconds and have similar characteristics of a Neapolitan pizza.

If you’re only able to change the position of the steel in your oven, then a 68% hydration dough can cook in 2-4 minutes.

The higher hydration is needed when baking at a lower temperature to keep the crust from drying out while it cooks.

This balance of hydration, heat, and bake time results in similar qualities of a lower hydration Neapolitan pizza dough baked in a hotter oven.

Finding the right hydration for your specific oven and steel set-up can be an enjoyable (and delicious!) experience of trial and error.

Final Thoughts

You cannot replicate a Neapolitan pizza without the necessary amount of heat, but you can replicate characteristics of Neapolitan pizza. Through the flour type, amount of yeast, and fermentation, you can affect its digestibility. Through the dough ball weight and proper shaping you can achieve an identical size and shape.

Through the use of Diastatic Malt Powder and adjusting hydration rates you can achieve a similar finished look and texture.

Lastly, the carefully considered placement of a pizza steel in your oven, manipulation of your oven’s heat, and a long preheat can combine with all of these other elements to bake a pizza quickly with a crisp, attractively browned rim and a soft interior.

Most importantly, you’ll have a pizza you can finish in one sitting.

Sources and Further Reading:

The Neapolitan Pizza: A scientific guide about the artisanal process

www.pizzamaking.com

Modernist Pizza

Robert Brown can be followed on Instagram at “@rubofthekitchen” for plenty of pizza and other food related content