4 pizzas
Caprese
- Hydration
- 65%
- Dough ball
- 250g
- Fermentation
- 49h
- Salt
- 2.8%
- Bake
- 60–90 sec
- Oven
- Wood-fired oven
- Makes
- 4pizzas
- Active time
- 30min
Ingredients
- Dough ball PizzaLovers house dough 65%, cold-fermented 48 h
- 250 g
- Fior di latte or mozzarella di bufala after baking, well drained
- 90 g
- Fresh beefsteak or cherry tomatoes salted and drained, after baking
- 90 g
- Fresh basil after baking
- 3.0 g
- Extra virgin olive oil
- 8.0 g
- Sea salt
- 1.0 g
- Grated pecorino in the oven
- 6.0 g
Total dough448 g
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Scale up or down — the yeast is recalculated automatically.
Method
- Take the dough balls out of the fridge 2–3 hours before baking and let them sit covered at room temperature.
- Preheat the oven well in advance: 45–60 minutes for a steel in a home oven, 20–30 minutes for a gas oven, longer for a wood oven. Measure the floor with an IR thermometer — you want around 450 °C (840 °F).
- Stretch the ball by hand from the centre outward on a semola-floured surface. Never touch the outer two centimetres.
- Bake the base with just oil, salt and a little pecorino until the crust has puffed up.
- Slide the pizza in and bake for 60–90 seconds. Turn it two or three times so the crust colours evenly.
- Salt the tomato slices, let them drain and lay them on the hot pizza together with the cheese and basil.
- Let the pizza rest for a few seconds, add anything meant to go on after the oven, and serve straight away.
Caprese is a salad, not a baked topping. Bake a simple white base and add the tomato, mozzarella and basil only once the pizza is out of the oven.
outside AVPN – a modern pizza with cold toppings; the disciplinare does not cover it.
Topping order
- Oil, salt and pecorino in the oven
- Tomato after the oven
- Mozzarella
- Basil
Common mistakes
- Tomato and fresh mozzarella in the oven, which gives you a wet pizza.
- Unsalted tomato straight from the fridge, which tastes of nothing.
- Assembling it too long before serving.
Tips
- Leave the tomatoes in salt for ten minutes – it concentrates the flavour.
- A drop of balsamic or lemon just before serving lifts the whole pizza.
Variations
- With burrata instead of mozzarella.
- With pesto instead of basil leaves.
Recalculate the recipe
Want a different number of pizzas, a different ball weight or a different time in the fridge? The calculator is prefilled with this recipe’s values.
Open the calculator with the Caprese settings
Read more
- Neapolitan pizza dough – the full recipe and the why behind it
- Mozzarella for pizza – choosing, drying and portioning
- Mozzarella di bufala – when it's worth it
- Burrata
- Wet pizza – water pooling in the middle
- Stretching – push the gas towards the rim, never out of it
