Neapolitan pizza with a poolish

Method

1. Mix the poolish, 12 hours ahead. Combine the 350 g flour, the yeast, and the 350 ml water and stir until no dry flour is left. It is a loose batter, not a dough. Cover it in an airtight container and leave it 12 hours at room temperature.
2. Mix the dough. Put the 280 ml water and all of the poolish into the bowl of a stand mixer. Mix the 700 g flour and the salt together in a separate bowl, add that to the liquid, and mix on medium-low for about 4 minutes, until it comes together as a dough. Without a machine, bring it together with a wooden spoon or your hands and then knead by hand for about 15 minutes, until smooth.
3. Rest, then divide. Leave the dough 2 hours. The batch weighs about 1712 g, so divide it with a scraper and scale into six balls of about 285 g. Keep them covered overnight in the fridge. To bake the same day instead, leave the balls at room temperature for 4 to 6 hours, until doubled.
4. Heat the oven. Fire it and give it 15 to 20 minutes. You are aiming for 450 to 500°C on the stone. Check it with an infrared thermometer from a distance rather than putting a hand near it.
5. Stretch. Put a ball on a lightly floured surface, flour your hands, and press it into a small flat disc with your fingertips. Work outward from the centre, spreading your fingers as you push. Then pick it up and pinch gently around the rim, turning it and letting gravity draw it into a circle. A Neapolitan base is thin enough to see light through when you hold it up. It is also thin enough to tear, so go carefully.
6. Use the topping selector. Flour the peel lightly and lay the base on it. Pinch any small holes shut. The topping selector below supplies exact quantities and before-bake and after-bake steps. Apply a Neapolitan-compatible preset lightly and quickly so the delicate centre still slides and bakes through.
7. Bake. Launch it and bake 1 to 2 minutes, turning every 20 seconds so it colours evenly.
8. Finish. Follow the selected topping’s after-bake steps, then cut and serve immediately while the centre is tender and the rim is inflated.

Notes

• You need a stone or a steel, and this recipe has no pan. The dough is baked directly on a preheated surface, so there is no tin to scale the recipe against. A pizza oven with a stone floor is what it was written for. A baking steel or a thick stone in a domestic oven is the substitute, preheated at the oven’s maximum for at least 45 minutes, on the top rack where the roof of the oven radiates back down onto the pizza.
• In a domestic oven the bake is 5 to 8 minutes, not 90 seconds. A household oven stops around 250 to 300°C, so the base sets slowly, the water leaves the dough instead of flashing off, and you get a good thin-crust pizza rather than a Neapolitan one. That is a fair trade and worth knowing before you blame the dough. What you cannot get below 450°C is the puffed, blistered rim.
• 00 flour is the one substitution not worth making. It is milled finer and its protein behaves differently under high heat, which is what gives the base its softness with the very short bake. Plain flour will work if that is what you have, but the texture is not the same recipe.
• Yeast conversions. 2 g instant dried yeast is 3 g active dry yeast is 5 g fresh yeast. The poolish is the only place yeast appears.
• Baker’s percentages and arithmetic. Total flour is 1050 g or 100%, water 630 g or 60%, salt 30 g or 2.86%, and instant yeast 2 g or 0.19%. The 1712 g batch divides into six 285 g balls with about 2 g handling loss.
• The topping selector owns the finish. It supplies the topping load, safe preparation, assembly sequence, and any additions after the bake. This page owns only the poolish dough, shaping, and heat management.
• Timing. Poolish in the evening, dough the following morning, balls into the fridge that afternoon, pizza the next evening. The overnight cold rest is not only convenience; it firms the balls up enough to handle and improves the flavour.
• Salt goes in with the flour, never straight into the poolish. Mixing it with the dry flour before it meets the liquid keeps it off the yeast until the fermentation has already done its work.

Sources consulted

• Ooni: Our Best Poolish Dough