Margherita pizza
( Pizza Napoletana )

Margherita pizza recipe

Preparation and cooking

• - Prepare the dough.
  Choose your favorite recipe or take a look at our pizza doughs. Link below!.
• - Meanwhile ...
  ... prepare tomatoes. Wash and peel them.
  Remove their seeds and cut them into very thin, little strips.
• - Preheat oven to 200°C (400°C).
• - Once pizza dough leavened, divide it into four pieces and, on a lightly floured surface, roll out each piece.
  You can obtain the shape you want: rectangular or round.
• - You have to use four 30cm (12in) round baking sheets if you like crunchy pizza but, if you prefer thick pizza, use only two baking sheets.
• - Oil all baking sheets with 2 teaspoons olive oil.
  Then transfer every portion of dough to a baking sheet.
  Spoon tomatoes on the top, season to taste with salt and spread all remaining oil. Help yourself with an oil cruet.
• - Bake, about 10-15 minutes.
  Ccooking times are indicative. Everyone can adjust them to his oven.
• - Meanwhile ...
  ... cut mozzarella cheese into thin strips or grate it.

Just before serving

• - Remove your pizzas from the oven.
  Arrange mozzarela strips on the top.
  Bake until all cheese melts. At the end place some basil leaves.
• - Serve your pizzas hot.

Note

Tips

• - If you have a pizzeria restaurant and want to begin the certification process, go to this site: http://www.verapizzanapoletana.org/vpn/index.html
• - If you want to prepare this pizza at home, it's better to use good-quality ingredients.
• - Do not use preleavened flours. Use “00” white flour, Italian-style.
• - Some people use to cut tomatoes into slices crossways and place them on the top.
  I do not like this method because pizza dough becomes wettish.
  On the contrary, Margherita dough must be soft inside and crisp outside.
• - Use fiordilatte (made from cow’s milk) mozzarella or buffalo mozzarella; a lot of pizza makers prefer fiordilatte because buffalo mozzarella is too rich in water.
• - Use San Marzano tomatoes or cherry tomatoes or tomatoes with few seeds. You can also use canned peeled tomatoes.
• - Use good-quality extra virgin olive oil.
• - Your basil must be fragrant.

Useful links for this recipe

• - If you want to learn how to make pizza dough very well, consult our directory. There are a lot of recipes with different yeasts and flours.

Healthy eating

• - Pizza Margherita provides 4.8g of fiber.
• - Nutrition facts are calculated with pizza dough made with milk to decrease the amount of total fat. If you make pizza dough with oil, total fat rise to 33.0 grams and calories to 782.
  These are not huge differences but for people on a low-fat diet this may be important.

Loretta

A little history

This pizza was created in honour of the queen Margherita, wife of the king Umberto I, when she went to the palace of Capodimonte in 1889. The best pizza maker in Naples, Raffaele Esposito, made this kind of pizza associated to the three colours of the Italian flag and dedicated it to the queen. Basil reminds the green color, mozzarella cheese the white colour and tomatoes the red color. The queen was spellbound by this pizza and Margherita became the most famous pizza in the world.