Your first pizza – seven steps from flour to plate
Never baked pizza before? Start here. Seven steps, a shopping list and a timeline that works even in a completely ordinary home oven. No guesswork involved.
Quick answer: Seven steps is all it takes: weigh the ingredients, mix and knead the dough, let it ferment, ball and stretch it, make a simple tomato sauce, top it lightly and bake it hot. Here is a timeline that works even with a completely ordinary oven.
The shopping list
Flour (see which flour for which oven if you want to pick the right kind), fresh or dried yeast, salt, good-quality crushed tomatoes, mozzarella and ideally a baking steel or pizza stone (see pizza in a home oven) – that last item makes the biggest difference of all for a beginner.
The seven steps
1) Mix flour, water, salt and yeast following the basic recipe. 2) Knead until the windowpane test passes (see kneading). 3) Ferment – choose a timeline that fits your day, from three hours to a day of cold fermentation. 4) Ball the dough (see balling). 5) Stretch it by hand (see stretching) – no rolling pin. 6) Top lightly: sauce, cheese, anything else optional (see margherita for the proportions). 7) Bake as hot as your oven will go, on a stone or steel.
Keep it simple the first time
Make a classic margherita before you start experimenting – fewer variables make it easier to see what actually went wrong, if something does. Work out exact quantities with the calculator, and head to troubleshooting if something didn’t turn out the way you hoped.
