How to Make Neapolitan Pizza and Roman Pizza at Home Using the Same Dough

I have a friend who likes thin crust pizza. My other friend only likes Neapolitan pizza. How do I please them? I can make one dough and please both my friends. This dough recipe will make exactly a perfect Neapolitan pizza and a perfect Roman thin crust pizza. One single step can change the outcome of the pizza you're making. So make sure you watch the video carefully because you don't want to miss that step. It's going to be amazing. Ingredients to make about eight to If you want to make less pizzas, just divide it into half. You can make four to five pizza balls. We need one kilo of zero zero flour. Yes, you can use all-purpose flour. If you can use zero zero flour with at least 11 grams of protein, you're going to get a better pizza. One teaspoon of dry yeast, 20 grams of table salt, and extra virgin olive oil. You use as much as you want. We need 600 millimeters of cold tap water. The original Neapolitan pizza is made with 60 percent hydration. Okay, of course you can find 70, 80, 90 percent hydration in these days, but the original one is 60 percent. The Roman crust pizza, the thin crust pizza, is between 55 and 65 percent. So this 60 percent hydration though will create Neapolitan and Roman. This is just one important detail that can make the difference. We're going to start from the dry ingredients. So let's put the flour in the bowl. Now we add the salt, one teaspoon of dry yeast, and let's just mix the dry ingredients together first. Here we go. Seriously, you can use the cheapest stand mixer available or the most expensive up to you, but both of them will work. It doesn't matter how good your stand mixer is, okay? Now we're going to add the water a little bit at a time. As we mix, we add the water slowly, slowly as we go. And we are kneading the dough at the moment on a medium speed. See I'm adding the water a little bit at a time, not adding too much water. Now the ingredients are combining together. At this point I also want to start adding some extra virgin olive oil. The Neapolitan pizza doesn't require any extra virgin olive oil. Roman pizza does. It probably adds some elasticity, probably adds some flavors. All right, let's go back on medium heat and let's add the rest of the water. Now we move back to go as fast as possible. Stand mixer is dancing! All right. Okay, I think we're done and I want to show you this, okay? Look how amazing this is, okay? See we have a beautiful dough done in five minutes and look how clean it's inside. See? This is what you want. You want your bowl to be clean. All right, let's play with the dough now a little bit, okay? It's a beautiful dough. It's a beautiful dough already. Let's knead it just like this. So as you can see, I use the palm of my hands, push forward and back, forward and back. This is not a hydration pizza, so don't expect the dough to be extremely moist. All right, look. I'm just going to reinforce just like that. This is such an easy dough. A crowd pleaser. Okay, look. We have the dough. The dough is done. Look at that. What we're going to do now, we cover the dough for about 20 minutes. We want to let it cover to let the dough rest for about 20 minutes at room temperature. It is very important that we let the pizza dough rest at the moment before we place it in the fridge. So give it 20 minutes, even half an hour if you want to. We have two options. We can make the pizza balls today and then place them in plastic containers, okay, airtight plastic containers. Or we can keep the dough together and we'll make the pizza balls tomorrow before we want to stretch the pizzas. If you want to make the pizza balls the day before, just because it's easier, just put some extra virgin olive oil in the container, not too much. Spray with your hands. This way the pizza ball doesn't get stuck. And then we're going to place the pizza ball inside, okay. All you need to put extra virgin olive oil at the bottom and then spread it. It's been about half an hour and look at that. Look how much this dough grew and the smell. Oh, so good. Such a beautiful smell. What we can do now are two things. We can get the pizza dough and place it in a bowl. Put glove wrap around. We let it ferment in the fridge between 16 and 24 hours. If you want to make the pizza on the same day, you can. All you need to do is to keep the dough at room temperature, not in the fridge. This is the most important detail. The pizza balls for Neapolitan pizza goes between 250 grams and 270 grams. So we're making 250 grams pizza balls for Neapolitan. I'm going to place my Neapolitan pizzas in these containers and in the fridge for 16 to 24 hours. And I'm going to take this dough out of the fridge four hours before I want to stretch them. The Roman style pizza, the thin crust pizza, needs pizza balls of 180 grams each. So it's not 250 like the Neapolitan. 180 grams is because we need to get that thin crust. We need to get a crunchy crust. So if you use too much dough, you're not going to get that. So 180 grams is the right amount of pizza balls for your Roman crust pizza. We let it rest in the plastic container. And we now put the container in the fridge between 16 and 24 hours. When you want to take this pizza ball out of the fridge, one hour before you want to stretch the Roman pizza, you just want to make sure you use a plastic container big enough for the dough to grow. Keep in mind it will grow at least double in size. Roman pizza, again, is different to Neapolitan. The tomato sauce on top, you could use anything, but normally it's more like a passata, the tomato sauce you put on top. You can still use peeled tomatoes, of course, and blend it very, very fine, your blender. You can use tomato pulp. When you make Neapolitan pizza, normally you use San Marzano or peeled tomatoes and you crush it by hand or gently crush it with a potato masher. So what we're going to do here now, I've got the passata. We just want to put a little bit of salt in the tomatoes, okay? Here we go, just as much as you like. I've got about a tablespoon. I'm not adding anything else. You can put some pepper if you want. It smells so good. So, so good. For Roman pizzas, I recommend you to cut fresh mozzarella in small pieces, just like small cubes, okay? That will be easier and quicker to cook. What you do is, you cut them and then you put them on a colander and you want to get rid of the milk, right? So you want to put the mozzarella back in the fridge and let it rest. So we kind of want to dry up the fresh mozzarella a little bit, so we don't get the water on the pizza. If you leave the milk on the mozzarella, basically, and it will make the pizza too soggy, in my opinion, so I think it's very important to remove the milk from your mozzarella. Let the milk come out naturally. So if you do this a few hours before you make the pizza, it will be beneficial. We made a beautiful dough. We made the pizza balls. We don't need the Roman pizza balls to grow too much because we don't need the airy crust. It's not a Neapolitan pizza, okay? So we're really going to make the pizza dough flat before we cook it. And this is how you spread the Roman pizza, which is completely different to the Neapolitan. It's because we're actually starting by pressing from the edges and then we press in the middle. And there are two techniques used in Rome. One using the rolling pin, yeah? Something you cannot do in Naples. Or the other one is just using your hands and then you flip the pizza around. Let's get the timber pizza peel. So let's put the tomato sauce, but don't put too much tomato sauce, please. Generous, but not too enough. We're going to spread the tomato sauce everywhere, even on the edges. We're going to part bake it without any cheese on top. If you want, and this is optional, because we're cooking this in a pizza oven, I do like to add a little bit of oil. When I cook the pizza in the pizza oven, I do like to add the olive oil on the edges to give the extra beautiful color. All right, let's go and cook it in the pizza oven. Make sure it's not stuck. Always do the test. The pizza is moving. Great, let's cook it. Another important detail to make the two pizza different is the cooking time and temperature. The Roman style pizza, the crunchy one, cooks at temperatures of between 300 and 320 degrees Celsius. It takes a little bit longer, might take about three minutes to cook. You can also cook it in your normal oven at the maximum temperature that you can get and it will come out beautiful. All right, let's take out the pizza. If you look at the pizza, the bottom, it's cooked. It's going to cook a little bit more. The edges are cooked. Only this side is not as cooked as the other one. So we're going to put the pizza back in and this side will face that flame. Okay, now what we're going to do is we're going to put the cheese. Cheese everywhere. I forgot to add the pecorino. Here we go with the pecorino. Let's put another touch of extra virgin olive oil in the middle. Now, back in the oven until the cheese melts. Look at this wonderful pizza. Look at that. The crunch is perfect. Look how perfectly cooked. Look at that. The cooking process is between three and three and a half minutes. Okay, it's also got to do with the mozzarella that you're using. Some mozzarella cooks faster, some cooks slower. It really depends the type of mozzarella you use. Look how beautiful. Right, let's try one slice. As you can see, it's very thin. It's cooked. It's not floppy. This is what you are expecting from a Roman style pizza, which is crunchy, crunchy, crunchy pizza. Let's do the crunchy test. Listen, listen to the sound, okay? That's what you want. Crunchy, soft in the middle. Simplicity at its best. Delicious, simple, easy to eat, easy to make. Do you hear that? Now let's make the Neapolitan pizza. The difference with the Neapolitan pizza is that we are going to stretch the pizza ball with the semolina, fine semolina. It's a lot easier to stretch than the Neapolitan pizza, which is a pizza that we want to create the crust, you know, puffy crust. And we want to make sure that we have a soft and crunchy pizza at the same time. But it's a more lighter, more fluffier pizza. With the Neapolitan pizza, we're not touching the edges, okay? Because the edges, they're going to puff up and they're going to become beautiful, beautiful crust. And that's how you see how good the Neapolitan pizza is. So instead, what we're going to do is we're going to press in the middle towards the edges, okay? So in the middle, push the gases to the crust. Okay, let's get the semolina off. And what we can do to stretch, we can do the Neapolitan style stretching, which is like this, which might look difficult, but it's not. The other technique you can use, which is not really Neapolitan, but it helps for you to stretch the pizza is by doing this gently and make sure your hands are like this, not like this. Otherwise, your nails can cut the pizza. So just do this. And the pizza is so elastic that it will easily stretch. See? Look at that. We have a beautiful pizza. Let's put the pizza back on the pizza peel. With the Neapolitan pizza, I normally like to have the rough side facing the bottom and the smoother side facing the top. Now we're going to put the tomato on the pizza and go like this, but not on the edges because we want the edges to grow, okay? Now this is Neapolitan pizza, so we must add some basil. We put basil first and then we cover the basil with the cheeses. Beautiful smell of basil. You cannot make a Neapolitan pizza without basil. It is a must, especially when you make a Neapolitan margherita. Now we put the pecorino on top. Make sure you cover the basil with the pecorino and the mozzarella cheese. First, put it on top of the basil. That way, the basil is not going to burn in the pizza oven. The cheese protects the basil and keeps it fresher. With the extra virgin olive oil, be generous. We're going to cook the Neapolitan pizza in the pizza oven at 400 degrees Celsius. It needs to be an aggressive cooking, and that's the only way for you to get a beautiful puff crust. Let's quickly give it a little stretch. See how easy it is to do it? So easy. Now I'm going to cook it. Pizza goes in and here we go. Let's see if the same dough that we used for the Roman pizza can create a Neapolitan pizza. We're going to cook this pizza for about 90 seconds, no more. See how the beautiful crust is growing on the side? Let's wait for the side to cook. We probably have about between 20 and 30 seconds left until the pizza is ready. And look how beautiful this Neapolitan pizza is. With the same dough, we created a Neapolitan pizza. Listen to the crunch. The cheese melted perfectly. The tomatoes reacted very well. The bottom cooked to perfection. Look at this. Look how it's perfectly cooked. What we're going to do now, we're going to add some extra basil on top. Some fresh basil, another drizzle of extra virgin olive oil and we serve this wonderful pizza Neapolitan. Listen to the crust. Come here. Now we want to look into the crust. So let's get the scissors. So this way we don't ruin the crust with the scissors. Look at the inside here guys. Look at this beautiful crust that we did. 60% hydration and we have a very nice Neapolitan pizza. See? The beautiful crust that we have. I can't wait to eat it. Come on, let's have it. God, I love Neapolitan pizza. How can I pick between Neapolitan pizza and Roman pizza? It's too hard. Both of them are fantastic. One day I feel crunchy. One day I feel Neapolitan. This is so good. Takes me all the way back to Naples. I think it's too hard for me to choose the winner. I leave this up to you. Your comments will decide who is the winner, the Neapolitan or the crunchy Roman pizza. The more comments you write, the more we can see who the winner is. And it's going to be a very fascinating challenge because both pizzas are great. So who are you going to choose? I know it's very hard for you to choose. Please write a comment below and let me know what is best, Neapolitan or Roman. Guys, thank you so much for watching this episode. I will see you in the next Vincenzo's Plate video recipe. E ora si mangia. Vincenzo's Plate.