I made a great tasting Pizza Margherita by mistake and you can, too!

​We’ve just spent several days pointing cameras at pizzamakers who are stretching dough and topping it with only tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, fresh, basil, salt and olive oil.
 
The resulting footage is glorious.
 
Behold: the simple joy of Pizza Margherita.
 
And as one pizzamaker put it during the interview: Margherita is simple, but it’s not easy.
 
That said, you can make a Pizza Margherita of your own—the wrong way, even—and you can love the result. We’re going to talk about how in just a moment.  

ABOVE: Marisol Doyle, top-ranked pizzaiola with a top-ranked pizza joint in Cleveland, Mississippi, makes a Margherita while Director of Photography Steve Mims captures it on camera. 

ABOVE: The Pizza Margherita Marisol was making in the previous photo.

ABOVE: Marisol in her interview about making Pizza Margherita in Mississippi. PHOTO CREDIT: Homey Parker

​The first four shooting days of our pizza documentary, entitled Little Miss Margherita: A Misunderstood Pizza In A Misunderstood Place, ran like clockwork. I wish I could say the same for the pizza Margherita coming out of my own kitchen.
 
The good news is, I have continued to make mistakes so you don’t have to.
 
But you can reenact those mistakes if you want to. They helped me make the best Margherita I’ve ever produced in 20-plus years of making pizza in a home oven.

ABOVE: the surprising Pizza Margherita that resulted from my various on-purpose mistakes. 

Below is the rundown of what I did and you can decide for yourself if you'd like to try. Also, there are some affiliate links to ingredients if, like me, you live in a high-end grocery desert. (If you buy any of those products after clicking the links, Amazon scatters small change in my general direction at no additional cost to you. It's a little embarrassing.)

And just one note: despite being baked in a 550-degree home oven instead of a 900-degree wood-fired dome, this pizza Margherita was surprisingly authentic in taste and texture.

I'm going to guess that the reason is the high-hydration dough meeting the lower-temperature oven. 

Here's how it all rolled out...
​
 
First, I made a no-knead dough of about 79% hydration.
 
My regular and preferred dough recipe is about 60% hydration—more like a classic Neapolitan-style dough. It’s much easier to handle and, from a 550-degree home oven, it produces a pizza with more structure than Neapolitan.
 
Second, the tomatoes were as basic as it gets. I used Bianco Di Napoli tomatoes straight from the can with a little salt. And, in the eyes of the experts, I also used too much.
 
The cheese was a brand of “fresh” mozzarella you’ve probably seen in your supermarket: Bel Gioioso. I also used “too much” of that cheese.
 
I also used a flour I was not enjoying the taste of.
 
I’d been using the King Arthur “00” Pizza Flour. King Arthur products are my default—but I wasn’t feeling the love during this experiment. For some reason, the taste was off-putting. 
 
That all changed because of one simple tweak that wasn’t even really a tweak: cold fermentation.
 
If you want to do it all wrong the way as I did, you’ll have access to the entire recipe.
 
You also have to bring the added ingredient you cannot purchase at any price: Patience.
 
Without patience, I can’t guarantee you’ll get my results.
 
In fact, even if you do everything exactly as I did it, I still can’t guarantee my results.
 
You’re not me. You don’t have my oven. And you’ll do a bunch of things I never said to do. Some of them by choice. Some of them by accident. That’s life and recipes.
 
You also probably don’t have two baking steels. I do and I used both.
 
Still, you can do this with one steel.

(If you don't know about baking steels, you can read more about them here.)
 
You can even do it with none. You can use a baking stone.
 
You can even use an upside-down cast-iron skillet, but you will get a different pizza.
 
Of course, how bad could it be? It’s pizza. That much, I can guarantee.
 
And the good news is you don’t have to knead the dough.
 
The other thing we’re doing here is flying in the face of pizza oven snobbery.
 
The pizza oven snobs who are all standing around their Mega Dome Portable Thunder-Fire Pizza-Magic Madness Machines think they’re special.
 
We are not special. You and I know we are inferior.
 
We are The Bad News Pizza Bears.
 
That’s why the snobs will feel a little foolish when we produce something so good that they begin crying in their wet mozzarella.
 
So if you want the no-knead pizza dough required to make this pizza, it is right here.
 
It’s the same dough I developed for the Cheap The Pizza concept, using the conceit of making great pizza at home for under three bucks a pizza.
 
The tomatoes are part of the big success here. Bianco DiNapoli are some of the finest American tomatoes you can buy.
 
I have to order mine on Amazon. I cannot buy them locally. You can do the same, or else use a 28-ounce can of whatever high-quality canned tomato you can find.
 
Key phrase: “high-quality.” A better tomato leads to better flavor. And everything about this pizza’s flavor is dependent upon high-quality ingredients. (If you've ever wondered what the difference is between a two-dollar can of tomatoes and a six-dollar can of tomatoes, it usually begins with flavor.)
 
You begin working with the whole tomatoes. You drain them in a strainer over a bowl.
 
You break up the tomatoes using your hands, discarding the stems. You can tell they are the stems because they are impossible to break up.
 
You can throw away the stems or you can eat them. Your choice.
 
As for the cheese, it comes in a ball. You have to break it up into small chunks. If you’ve never used fresh mozzarella, it’s wet. I recommend pinching off chunks of about one inch and, as with the tomatoes, putting them into a strainer over a bowl.
 
Moisture is the enemy!
 
We have far too much of the enemy within. The dough is wet, the cheese is wet, the tomatoes are wet. Moisture is the enemy within. We must deal with that.
 
The water that drains from the cheese into the bowl you can throw away. The liquid you drain from the tomatoes you can save and drink. Or use it in cocktails. Whatever. It’s good stuff. I have some in my fridge right now.
 
Stretching the no-knead dough is challenging because it’s so wet. All I can say is: be gentle. Be patient. Use plenty of flour on your fingers.
 
Your first effort at the Margherita might not be pretty. But the pizza will be tasty even if it’s not perfect.
 
The amount of tomato and cheese I’m recommending are somewhat more than some experts recommend.
 
The problem with the experts is they are not us and they are not using our ingredients or our ovens.
 
If you can do this pizza the way I’m suggesting, and not you lose your mind while stretching the dough, you can end up with a pizza you don’t hate.
 
If you do hate it, feel free to tell me my recipe sucks by emailing me here.
 
Important note restated: I used King Arthur “00” Pizza Flour for this exercise, not the all-purpose flour specified in the recipe. If you can’t find King Arthur “00” Pizza Flour, use any good-quality all-purpose flour. Also know that your results will vary.  

ABOVE: Just for fun, this is the other pizza I was making that I thought would be better. It uses my standard low-hydration dough and did not even begin to meet the standard set by my "mistake" pizza. That said, it reheats really well and is nice when you get a little crunch on it. But it's not authentic. 
 
 
HERE NOW, YOUR RECIPE
 
Ingredients per pizza:
 
One dough ball from the Cheap The Pizza recipe (approx. 240g) made using King Arthur "00" Pizza Flour.
 
140g of hand-crushed tomatoes, salted (approx. 1/2 cup)
 
120g of one-inch chunks of fresh mozzarella (approx. 3/4 cup)
 
12 leaves of fresh basil, divided
 
High-quality, extra-virgin olive oil for drizzling (approx. 1 1/2 teaspoons)
 
Flour for dusting the work surface
 
Semolina for dusting the peel
 
 
Step One: Make dough as per the Cheap The Pizza recipe.
 
NOTE: This step requires about 5 minutes of your time and takes about three days to reach maturity.

Do not use this dough on day one. In a perfect world, you will make your dough three days ahead. That is where the flavor comes from. 
 
After the initial rise at room temp and dividing the batch into dough balls, please allow those dough balls to wait impatiently in your refrigerator.
 
One day for the initial rise and 48 hours to cold ferment is ideal.
 
 
 
Step Two: grappling with the tomatoes
 
NOTE: You may do this step ahead of time if you wish.

​Take one 24oz can of whole Bianco DiNapoli tomatoes.
 
Pour the entire contents of the can into a strainer over a bowl.
 
While the tomatoes drain, use your hands to break the tomatoes into small pieces.
 
The pieces you cannot break up are stems. Discard them. Or eat them.
 
Once the tomatoes are all broken up, place them into a bowl.
 
Add salt to taste. You want them to taste salty enough that you would take that bowl and a spoon and go sit somewhere and tell nobody about what you've done.
 
If the tomatoes seem too dry to spread, add back some of the strained juice. They need to be spreadable.
 
Note: these tomatoes will not spread like sauce. They are chunky and will spread as chunks. You will see some dough through the tomatoes when you spread them.
 
As for the remaining tomato juice, either put it into a container and save it, or else just drink it now. Feel free to add salt.
 
 
Step Three: oven prep
 
If you have two steels, use them both.
 
If not, no worries.
 
For two steels, put one steel on the rack in the top third of the oven, about 8 inches beneath the broiler. This is for helping to put some char on the top of the pizza.
 
Put the second steel on the rack in the bottom third of the oven, about 6 inches above the oven floor. This will be for crisping the bottom of the pizza.
 
If you have only one steel, place it in the top third of the oven, about 8 inches beneath the broiler.
 
We will be using the broiler strategically.
 
Turn on the oven and set it for bake at 550°.
 
When the oven reaches temp, preheat it for one hour.

This is a good time to take the dough out of the fridge. 
 
 
Step Four: pizza assembly
 
Remove the dough from the fridge at least one hour before baking.
 
Flour your work surface liberally. I find a small handful of flour sufficient for one small pizza made with this dough.
 
Dust your peel with semolina.
 
Place the dough ball on the work surface.
 
Using your fingertips, flatten the dough ball into a disc.
 
Carefully stretch the disc of dough to a diameter of 11 to 12 inches.
 
Transfer the dough to your dusted peel.
 
Spread the tomatoes around the pizza within 1 inch of the edge of the dough.
 
Place six basil leaves around the pizza on top of the tomato.
 
Distribute chunks of mozzarella evenly around the pizza. Be sure to place cheese on top of the basil leaves to keep the leaves from burning.
 
Launch the pizza onto the top steel.
 
If using two steels, turn the broiler on high.
 
After one minute, rotate the pizza 180 degrees.
 
After another minute, move the pizza to the bottom steel and switch the oven back to bake at 550 degrees.
 
If using only one steel, launch the pizza.

After one minute, turn on the broiler to high.
 
Monitor the progress of the char on top of the pizza as the broiler does its job.
 
Once the char is sufficient (probably about two minutes), turn off the broiler and return the oven to bake at 550 degrees.
 
In either case, the pizza should be ready after about 3 1/2 to 4 minutes.
 
However, this depends on your oven. It may take longer. Vigilance is necessary. I recommend watching through the window with the oven light on.
 
Once there are spots of char on top of the pizza and the bottom of the pizza is beginning to brown, remove the pizza from the oven and place it on a cooling rack.
 
Drizzle the pizza with olive oil in a spiral beginning at the center and working outward.
 
Place the remaining basil leaves evenly about the pizza so it looks pretty.
 
Slice the pizza.
 
Fall upon the pizza like a rabid hyena and devour it with abandon.
 
That is your recipe from my mistakes. My pizza was surprisingly good, which was a concurrence by all who were there and tasted it.
 
 
I admit the first couple of times I made this pizza, I did not love it.
 
What changed with this version is a) 48 hours cold fermentation time and b) greater quantities of tomato and cheese.
 
Even though I joke about doing it wrong so you don’t have to, we have no idea about the true degrees of wrongness.
 
Despite doing it differently than expert recommendations, we don’t really know how the experts’ situations are manifest.
 
Their pizzas are a mystery even if we are with them in the room—just as mine is a mystery to you. The best I can do is be truthful about that part of it and prepare you to exercise good judgment applied with purpose and intent.
 
As Steve Mims, the Director Of Photography on our documentary likes to say about his recommendations for movies and mixed drinks, “Money-back guarantee!”
 
This recipe is worth what you pay for it—until you bring your own purpose and intent.
 
That’s why pizza is practice. And if you’ve never done that before, you’re going to learn to love it.
 
Mangia!

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I live in a house full of pizza. There is so much pizza coming from my home oven that we finally had to enact a moratorium while we catch our breaths and eat a few carrots. Would you like to be so prolific with pizza? My weird little award-winning book is one way to make it so. It's less a cookbook than an entertaining guidebook about how to get from zero to pizza using the oven you already have. Besides learning to make great pizza, there’s not much else you can do with it. In fact, you can’t even use it to level a table leg if you buy the Kindle edition (which is less expensive than the print editions and has links to instructional videos and printable kitchen worksheets). To learn more about Free The Pizza: A Simple System For Making Great Pizza Whenever You Want With The Oven You Already Have, click here. ​