Recipe for the Tastiest Pizza from Naples
Traditional Italian recipes with a modern twist: the new cookbook Big Mamma’s Cucina Popolare is packed with them. The Italian chefs at Big Mamma cook according to their mothers’ traditions, but with a contemporary signature. Like this Neapolitan pizza, for example. And for once and for all, the chefs show you how to eat pizza like a true Neapolitan.
Naples is the mecca of Italian street food, and pizza is its crowning glory. Neapolitan pizza, however, is no ordinary pizza. Traditionally, people eat pizza on the street folded into quarters and wrapped in paper. It is called pizza al portafoglio, pizza in a wallet. It is a fitting name because you can eat the pizza while walking or sitting on a bench in the sun. The pizza is mainly topped with pecorino romano and basil. Pizza al portafoglio is timeless and can still be bought on the streets of Naples.
How to eat pizza like a true Neapolitan
If you want to eat pizza like a true Neapolitan, you first need to look for a vera pizza – a pizza with a thin crust in the middle and an extra-thick edge, topped with fresh ingredients and baked in a wood-fired oven. The lucky ones who have found such a pizza fold it into quarters, arm themselves with napkins and ignore the stares of other people as they take a bite. Half of the pizza will land on the floor and your hands and mouth will be covered in pizza, but that is precisely what makes it so good. Andrea, the sexy pizzaiolo at La Felicità restaurant, says you can find the best pizza al portafoglio at Pizzeria Port’alba, which has been around for 120 years. Napolitans, you can be proud!
How to make Neapolitan pizza dough
- Dissolve the yeast in 200 ml of lukewarm water. Sift the flour and add half of it to the water. Gently mix the water and flour by hand until all the lumps have disappeared, then knead the dough well for 10 minutes. Add the remaining flour, olive oil and salt. Knead the dough for another 15 minutes, until it is very smooth and easily comes away from the work surface.
- Place the dough in a bowl, cover the bowl with a damp tea towel and leave the dough to rise for 2 hours in a warm place (approximately 24 °C).
- Dust a large bowl with flour. Divide the dough into two portions and place the dough balls in the bowl. Cover the bowl with a cloth or lid and leave the dough to rise for 6 hours in a warm place. The pizza dough will keep for 3 to 4 days in the refrigerator.
Stretching and shaping pizza dough: - The Neapolitan way of making pizza is an art form (and has been recognised as intangible cultural heritage by UNESCO). Giuseppe Cutraro, our pizzaiolo chef, ‘born and raised in Naples’, explains how to stretch and shape the dough. Giuseppe started working in the trade at the age of fifteen, at the historic Starita a Materdei pizzeria in Naples. We will never match his pizza-making skills, but we can pretend:
- Start by dusting the work surface with flour.
- Place the dough on the work surface, stretch the dough with your hands and shape it into a circle approximately 30 cm in diameter.
- Now comes the difficult part: spin the dough in the air with your hands. Contrary to what you may think, you do not need to throw the dough high into the air, even though it looks amazing.
- You can even do it on the work surface. Shape the dough into a circle by rotating it, or by repeatedly lifting and stretching the dough with your left hand while holding it with your right hand. This way, the dough is stretched evenly.
- Place the dough on the work surface and push with your finger from the centre towards the edges, pushing the air towards the edges and creating a raised edge that will be airy and risen when the pizza is ready. We pizzaioli call this a cornicione (cornice). It is the hallmark of a true Neapolitan pizza: wide edges, approximately 2 cm, that rise and puff up in the wood-fired pizza oven at a temperature of 430 °C.
How to make pizza from Naples
- Preheat the oven to 250 °C. Line a baking tray with baking paper. Roughly chop the plum tomato and crush it with a pinch of salt into a coarse tomato sauce. Cut the mozzarella into 1 cm-thick half-moons.
- Roll out the pizza dough on a floured work surface into a circle 30 cm in diameter and 2 cm thick. Place the pizza base on the baking paper. Spread the tomato sauce over the pizza base and drizzle with olive oil. Bake the pizza for 5 minutes.
- Place the mozzarella and pecorino on the tomato sauce. Bake the pizza for another 5 minutes.
- Remove the pizza from the oven, scatter the basil leaves over it, and buon appetito!
Title: Big Mamma’s Cucina Popolare
Author: Big Mamma
Price: €35
Publisher: Good Cook
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