The Only Neapolitan Pizza Dough Tutorial You Need

In this Neapolitan pizza dough tutorial, join master pizzaiolos Leo Spizzirri and Enzo Coccia as they guide you through the authentic, hands-on process of making perfect Neapolitan pizza dough. Forget the stand mixer – this video is all about traditional hand-kneading techniques that result in an incredibly airy, flavorful crust.

Whether you’re an aspiring pizzaiolo, a home cook looking to elevate your pizza nights, or a professional chef seeking to refine your skills, Chef Leo and Enzo share invaluable tips and secrets passed down through generations. Learn about hydration, fermentation, and how to properly work the dough to achieve that signature chew and beautiful char.

Link to this Nepolitan Pizza 101 on demand class: https://pizzau.gumroad.com/l/asztvi

[Music] are we ready to start i’m Leo Spitzeri and today I’m super excited because we have something that’s very near and dear to my heart a class surrounded around the art of Neapolitan pizza now for all of you that have received a packet like this with a set of instructions to mix dough and making a marinara pizza sauce and a margarita pizza sauce and all this other stuff this is great but what I’m going to give you is a super special experience that’s probably once in a lifetime for most of you but before I start I’d like to thank all of our collaborators here at the Pizza University and Culinary Arts Center i’d like to thank all of you who are joining us from all around the world we have people joining us on this feed from literally all over not only the United States North America South America and someone even from Australia how amazing is that so what are we doing here i’ve got a very special guest that’s here all the way from Napoli this is totally unannounced totally unexpected you may have seen him on CNN you may have seen him on a show called Searching Italy with a guy named Stanley Tui i’m here with my very good friend Mastro Enzo Kocha enzo Kocha the Napoli i don’t speak English i don’t speak Italian only Napoli only now Louis interpreter so what I’m what I’m going to be doing is I’m going to be doing our class but I’m going to have some assistance from Masroenzo so the first thing I’m going to do is I want to talk to you all about the dough that we’re going to make today if Farina Fina the point here is the flour itself we’re looking at something that’s a little lighter in protein the Neapolitan pizza this dates back thousands years but more recently let’s say in the past 300 years there wouldn’t have been refrigeration available to make this dough so the dough traditionally would have sat ambiently okay the dough formula that you received was with this intention and if you decided to refrigerate your dough the best thing that I can tell you is that make the dough let it rise after it rises for let’s say maybe about uh 12 hours take the dough put it in a container sealed container hopefully it’s in sealed containers at that point and then put it in the refrigerator overnight next day if you need to take it out 24 hours later it should still be at an amazing point now along with mrozo I’m going to show you the proper method to hand mix pizza we’re going to do a dough that’s considered direct method meaning that we’re going to use all the ingredients in an order and then mix them together at a certain method right and continue forward we’re not going to be using any kind of pre-ferments or starters or anything like this we’re going to be using fresh yeast all our ingredients in a certain order of mixing procedure and then we’re going to continue and this is the true Neapolitan dough [Music] what are the What are What are the elements to make a perfect Neapolitan dough these are them we’re going to go through them right now vina we need flour we’re using double zero flour sal this is salt but not only salt this is fine sea salt levito leto which is our yeast we’re using fresh compressed yeast and we’re going to talk about this variation if you can’t find fresh yeast where you’re from I’m going to give you instructions on how to use dry yeast kosamanka aqua aqua we need water the last one is water okay okay okay so what he’s saying is take the water but don’t add all the water okay we’re not going to put all the water in this perfect boy now we’re going to put the salt the idea here is that when I start to mix he’s saying dissolve the ye the salt all right I’m going to use my hand he’s telling me to hold hold them both okay so in this process I’m going to dissolve the water and salt together right so dissolve the salt into the water and the reason that we’re going to do this is because of this next step the reason why we’re not putting the salt together in any other method is because if we were to mix the salt and the yeast together he’s saying that the yeast would die because of the interaction with the salt okay he asked me if I dissolved the salt well at this point we’re going to put a little bit of flour into this and the reason we’re doing this is because as soon as flour and water touch they create gluten so this little bit of flour I would say even up to 10% if you wanted to put this on the scale but what I’m trying to do is create something that’s the consistency of maybe pancake batter and that layer of gluten as fine as it is is going to create a barrier between the salt and the yeast when we start working no he asked me “What am I going to do with this water drink it?” No the reason why he had us hold some water is because now he’s going to dissolve the yeast into this little bit of extra water so we have a total amount of water right which was 500 ml that little bit of water that we kept to the side he’s dissolving the yeast inside the fresh yeast if you were going to use dry yeast you would do the same process you’re going to need a very fine weight uh scale like a jewelry scale because you’re going to need to take the amount of yeast and divide it by three for dry yeast because it’s a third of the amount water should be cold tap cold is fine tap water cold which usually most people’s houses the water comes out of the tap at about 50 55° i’ve created something that looks like pancake batter or maybe paperiermâché or something right he’s going to put the uh the rest of the water bye he’s going to put the rest of the water with the yeast any little bit of yeast that’s still remaining in here we want to make sure that we get it all out this is such a small amount that we can’t afford not to have it all in there at this point now the rest the rest of the proa the rest of the process is to get this flour aio apioja means he’s going to kind of let it rain on top right a snowflower and the reason why is because we’re trying to separate the granulars let’s call it of the we’re trying to loa he wants me to turn clockwise because I’m using my right hand in like a watch all right we want to separate the granulars of this double zero flour because this came all the way from Italy and it’s compressed right i’m squeezing with my fingers as I’m doing this process right and he keeps telling me to go right-handed or clockwise with my mix because he feels that this is going to make some difference he said “The reason why we’re not putting salt later is because we always risk that we’re not going to be able to dissolve the salt.” Well if the aqua if we were going to do the salt later in the process we would want to dissolve it in some water just like we did the yeast now you’ll notice that this is getting thicker and thicker as I proceed liquid though it’s still liquid however as I’m mixing here I’m turning this bowl because I want to also use the side of my hand to scrape it down and I think he’s getting more flour on my hand than in the bowl i think what work oh my gosh this is so great now I know there’s probably people out there saying “Chef Leo how come we’re using such a dry dough i’m not using enough water blah blah blah.” You have to remember this dough because it’s not going to be refrigerated we need to restrict it and withhold it we don’t want to use this dough before let’s say 12 hours 12 to 16 hours is generally the range of when this dough would be held ambiently and then finally used in the process as we continue on and Marenzo is going to describe he’s telling me to clean my hands but I’m not ready to clean my hands okay now I made this all dirty go quick okay okay now if you’re baking with your home oven okay the uh the the home oven unfortunately doesn’t get hot enough to bake this pizza so you’re going to be at the the mercy of how hot you can get that oven now we have some hacks on how to adjusting and make your oven work closer to a neopl all the flowers finished he’s saying now work the the the the oven setting if you can get the oven set so that you have two pizza stones inside of your oven the bottom pizza stone what I’d like you to do is set your oven so that the bottom pizza stone is on the oven rack set to about the halfway point inside of your oven right maybe like the the kind of middle the middle portion right so kind of here and then the second rack I want you to go in the top portion each rack having a pizza stone on top what I’d like you to do is set the oven as hot as it goes so maybe it’s 500 or 550° when we start the pizza we’re actually going to stretch the dough and I want you to turn on the broiler of your oven if you have a broiler I want you to put the broiler of your oven on right and at that point when you’re ready to launch the pizza we’re going to launch it on the top stone hopefully where the broiler is right if you have one of those ovens with the drawer and the broiler underneath unfortunately it’s a little more difficult because you’re not going to be able to do this method unless you’re maybe on your hands and knees and watching from here i don’t know it’s very comfortable so what I would say is if you have an oven that’s got a broiler on top set the pizza stone on the top rack okay as you launch that pizza we’re going to start it under under the broiler which now will get you up to a temperature of maybe 650 700 and then we’re going to hold it there for maybe a minute and a half 2 minutes right at that point once the crust is set and it’s firm enough to move we’ll transfer it to the bottom stone and finish it there and you should have a beautiful color and with any luck you get some leopard spots as well tell me work clean now the dough is in a bowl is finished it’s clean as you’re hand mixing dough this is the art of Neapolitan pizza and mixing this dough enzo is taking this dough and you’ll notice that he’s kind of slamming it on the counter as he’s working with it that slamming of the dough is physical work and it’s actually forming the gluten the second part that’s important is this kneading step he’s going hand over fist he’s taking the dough he’s rolling it towards himself and then stretching it into another like long piece at this point you see how he’s elongating it it’s already the gluten is already starting to show strength at this point you see he’s still kind of kneading and turning it he’s almost to the point though where he’s going to start checking it for development inside meaning how is the dough finishing right he’s saying the dough feels soft elast elastic resist and it’s resisting meaning that the gluten is and the reason why he’s doing this movement he’s saying the reason he’s moving his fist like that is because he’s allowing air to go inside of this dough that we’re changing the the structure where we’re trapping air inside the structure and as we start to add air into this the dough is changing even in color right so all these things together are the principles of basically a dough uh being made at a time without machinery or electricity right at this point when we finish this process this is going to be one of the most beautiful doughs you’ve seen worked by hand because there’s no way you can overwork this dough you’ll be overworked before the dough ever will be what we need to do is give this time to rest sometimes we refer refer to this as bulk fermentation this process can happen in up to 2 hours depending on ambient temperature the idea is that we’ve got enough time to allow the water to absorb into the flour and then up to two hours once that happens we’re ready to go ahead and divide the dough what I want to do is I’m actually going to do this backwards now while this is happening if you haven’t seen what we do here at the Pizza University and Culinary Arts Center you can go to pizzauniversity.org and check us out today