A basic Neapolitan pizza dough is simple: combine flour, water, salt, and yeast, knead it a bit, let it rise at least overnight, form into balls, allow to rise, stretch, and top. Taking the weight of the flour as 100%, I add 60% water, 2% salt, and 1% yeast.
The Neapolitan pizza recipe involves making a direct dough, meaning a dough in which the ingredients are all added at the same time, without making pre-mixes such as biga or poolish. The only technique that can be used to strengthen the gluten base of the dough is that of autolysis, although many Neapolitan pizza makers do without this too.
Pizza is all about the crust. And the crust is all about the flour. To capture the uniquely crispy-chewy texture of Neapolitan pizza at home, you’ll need to turn to '00' Pizza Flour.
Stand mixer with dough hook, fine mesh strainer, blender, 12-inch ovenproof cast iron or stainless steel skillet Antimo Caputo Tipo "00" Italian bread flour (in the red and white bag with the name ‘Cuoco’ on the front) helps improve the dough texture, but is not necessary.