4 pizzas
Cosacca
- 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
- Peeled San Marzano tomatoes, crushed by hand
- 80 g
- Pecorino romano, grated salty cheese, go easy
- 15 g
- Fresh basil
- 2.0 g
- Extra virgin olive oil
- 7.0 g
- Sea salt less than usual, the cheese is salty
- 0.5 g
Total dough355 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.
- Spread the sauce and sprinkle the pecorino evenly over the whole surface, right out to the rim.
- Drizzle the oil last – without mozzarella, it is the oil that gives the pizza its sheen.
- Slide the pizza in and bake for 60–90 seconds. Turn it two or three times so the crust colours evenly.
- Let the pizza rest for a few seconds, add anything meant to go on after the oven, and serve straight away.
Cosacca is Margherita's poorer, older relative: tomato, grated hard cheese and oil. Without mozzarella the flavour is saltier and the base drier, which makes it an excellent home-oven pizza.
Neapolitan tradition – a classic Neapolitan pizza, but not named in the AVPN disciplinare.
Topping order
- Tomato sauce
- Pecorino
- Basil
- Olive oil
Common mistakes
- Salting the sauce as usual even though the pecorino is already salty.
- Coarsely grated cheese, which turns into hard islands instead of a blanket.
Tips
- Mix pecorino and parmigiano half and half if you find pecorino too sharp.
- Cosacca can take 30 seconds longer in a home oven than a Margherita because it is drier.
Variations
- With a pinch of chilli flakes in the oil.
- Cosacca bianca – no tomato, just cheese, oil and black pepper.
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 Cosacca settings
Read more
- Neapolitan pizza dough – the full recipe and the why behind it
- Tomatoes for pizza – San Marzano and the alternatives
- Tomato sauce – three ingredients and no cooking
- Margherita
