Serious home pizza
Neapolitan principles, Swedish flour and a calculator that gets the maths right – so you don't have to guess, whether you bake in a wood-fired oven or a regular oven at 250 degrees.
01 · Starting pointWe tailor the advice to your heat
The same dough behaves completely differently at 250 and 485 degrees. Choose your oven and we'll adjust hydration, baking time and which guides to read first.
Selected oven
—
02 · ToolsOpen model · no accounts
Number of pizzas, ball weight, hydration and how much time you have. The calculator works out flour, water, salt and — the hard part — exactly how little yeast you need for your time and temperature.
Guide values for 48-hour cold fermentation. Open the calculator for a schedule and your oven.
03 · Dough SchoolEight steps · three days
Follow a single dough ball from dry flour to a leopard-spotted rim. Every step has a purpose, a target value and a mistake that undoes the step before it.
0110 min
Dissolve the salt in the water before the flour goes in. That way it spreads evenly and you avoid grains of salt burning the yeast locally. The yeast goes in with the first tenth of the flour — never straight into the salt water.
0220–40 min
Flour and water form gluten all by themselves if they are left alone. Twenty minutes' rest halves the kneading time and gives a dough that stretches instead of tearing. Nothing here is mandatory — but it is the cheapest improvement there is.
0312–18 min
Stretch a piece of dough between your fingers. If it turns translucent without tearing, the gluten is ready. The dough should be smooth, taut and come away from the sides of the bowl — not stick to them.
042 h
Two hours at room temperature, covered. The yeast gets going, the gluten network relaxes and the dough starts to taste of something. It should get airier — not necessarily double in size.
0515 min
250 grams gives a pizza of about 30 centimetres. A twenty-gram difference shows straight away in the rim. Tighten the surface by tucking the edges under the ball — a smooth surface holds the gas better.
0624–72 h
At four degrees the yeast is idling while enzymes break starch down into sugar. That is why a cold-fermented dough gets deeper colour and more flavour. After 72 hours most everyday flours start to give up — the gluten goes too slack.
072 min
Take the balls out 2–3 hours before baking so they come up to room temperature. Press from the centre outwards with your fingertips and leave two centimetres of rim completely untouched. That is where the gas should be when it meets the heat.
0860–90 s
In a wood-fired oven it is over before you have time to hesitate. In a regular oven at 250 degrees with a pizza steel and grill mode it takes 4–6 minutes — and the dough needs a little less water so it doesn't turn chewy. Exactly how much less is one of the things we are measuring.
04 · TestedSame dough · one variable at a time
Every test uses the same base dough and changes a single thing. We publish the plan before the test is run and the full protocol – equipment, temperatures, times and photos – once the results are in, so you can repeat it at home.
Can you freeze Neapolitan pizza dough without losing the rim? The plan for comparing frozen and fresh dough balls, and how they will be thawed.
Which mozzarella makes a pizza wet? The test plan: five cheeses weighed before and after draining and baking, on the same dough and in the same oven.
Switching on the grill for the last minute is common advice for pizza in a home oven. Our test plan: does it give a better top, and what happens to the base?
05 · GuidesCurated · not chronological
Teknik
Sauce, cheese, meat, herbs – in the wrong order the basil burns and the salami swims. Here is the order, how much to use and what goes on after the oven.
Read the guide
Teknik · 2 min
Teknik · 2 min
Teknik · 1 min
Teknik · 2 min
Teknik · 2 min
06 · RecipesSame dough · different toppings
Every recipe starts from the house dough. We give the grams of sauce and cheese to use — not "a handful".
07 · TroubleshootingSymptom → cause → fix
Pick what happened. Each page shows the most likely cause first, how to tell the causes apart and exactly what to change next time.
08 · Ovens & equipmentGuides, not adverts
Heat-up time, recovery between pizzas and how the oven behaves on a cold evening – what actually matters in practice but rarely makes it into the brochure.
Wood, gas, electric or indoor – how to choose the right type.
6, 8 or 10 mm – and why it matters.
Fuses, placement and what to expect.
The easiest route to 450 degrees – without a burnt base.
