Recipe

Total quantities and how they split between preferment and final dough.

Ingredient	%	Total	PrefermentPref.	Final doughFinal
Caputo Pizzeria 00 flour	100	800 g	400 g	400 g
Filtered water	64	512 g	400 g	112 g
Active dry yeast	0.1	0.8 g	0.8 g	—
Salt	2.88	23 g	—	23 g
Extra virgin olive oil	1.5	12 g	—	12 g
Dough		1,348 g	801 g	—

Final dough water

Hand-mixing split

Initial mix69 g
To dissolve the salt25 g
Bassinage18 g

Division

Panetti

Main5 × 270 g
Alternative4 × 270 g + test 268 g
Target pizza30–32 cm

Toppings

For 5 pizzas

Mutti Pelati 400 g1 can(s)
Total sauce325 g
Drained mozzarella350 g

Schedule

Tell it when you want to bake. The plan is worked out backwards; treat the times as a guide.

Bake at

Preferment in fridge

Dough balls in fridge

Out before baking

Step by step

Tick each step when done. Tags show the source: base recipe, adaptation for home baking, or a lesson from the first bake.

Day 1

evening

STEP 01

Make the preferment

10 min + 1 h at room tempBase recipeAdapted

Dry-mix 400 g of flour with 0.8 g of yeast.
Add 400 g of water and stir into a rough paste with no dry flour left.
Cover. Leave 1 h at room temperature.
Refrigerate (7 °C) for about 20 h.

The original recipe calls for 12–16 h at 12 °C. In a colder fridge, the longer time makes up for it. Ready when it's bubbly, has internal structure and shows no sign of collapse.

Day 2

mixing and dividing

STEP 02

Initial mix

~10 min + restAdapted

Use the preferment straight from the fridge, without a long warm-up.
Add 400 g of flour and 69 g of water.
Mix until all the flour is hydrated. It doesn't need to be smooth.
Cover and rest. Time develops the gluten for you.

STEP 03

Add the salt

~10 minAdapted

Dissolve 23 g of salt in 25 g of water.
Add the solution little by little, using pincer movements and folds.
Wait for each portion to be absorbed before the next.

Salt always goes in before the oil.

STEP 04

Bassinage

~10 minBase recipeAdapted

Add the remaining 18 g of water in small portions.
Only add more once the dough has absorbed the previous one.
If the dough gets sticky, don't add flour.

STEP 05

Develop the gluten

cycles of rest + foldsAdapted1st bake lesson

Alternate rests and sets of folds, without aggressive kneading.
Stop when the dough is smooth, rounded, elastic and has surface tension.

On the first bake, time and rest did most of the work. Don't chase a perfectly smooth dough with non-stop kneading.

STEP 06

Oil last

~10 minBase recipe

With the dough already structured, add 12 g of olive oil a little at a time.
Work it in with pincers and folds until fully absorbed.

The dough turns slippery and shiny and seems weaker. That's normal. Don't add flour.

STEP 07

Post-oil rest and lamination

~1 h 30Base recipeAdapted

Rest 3–5 min.
Lamination: gently stretch the dough into a rectangle on the bench and fold it over itself. No rolling pin, no tearing.
Shape into a ball. Rest 15 min.
Do gentle folds and rest for about 1 h.

STEP 08

Divide and ball

~15 minBase recipe

Divide into 5 dough balls of 270 g (total dough 1,348 g).
Ball with surface tension and seal the base well.
Covered container, in the fridge for about 24 h.

Base recipe: 24–36 h at 5 °C. At 7 °C fermentation moves faster; judge by appearance.

Day 3

oven

STEP 09

Temper the dough balls

~4 h outBase recipe1st bake lesson

Take them out of the fridge about 4 h before baking (reference: ~26 °C).
Ready when: risen, lots of small bubbles and a few bigger ones, airy sides, holds its shape, no collapse, relaxed.
In a 1 L tub, the reference is the dough reaching halfway.

Don't re-ball. It knocks out the fermentation gas.

STEP 10

Prepare sauce and cheese

~15 min1st bake lesson

Crush 1 can(s) of peeled tomatoes by hand (no blender, no cooking).
Season with 4–5 g of salt per can. No sugar.
Cut 350 g of mozzarella into small pieces and let it drain.

STEP 11

Preheat the BIG HORN

30–40 min1st bake lesson

Top element at 450 °C, bottom element at 380 °C.
If you have an infrared thermometer, measure the centre of the stone and note it down.

On the first bake (bottom ~390–410 °C) the base charred before the top was done. That's why the bottom was lowered.

STEP 12

Stretch the dough

~1 min per pizza1st bake lesson

One dough ball at a time. Dip it lightly in flour.
Press from the centre outwards with your fingertips, pushing the gas towards the rim.
Leave a 1–1.5 cm rim unpressed. On the first bake, 2 cm made the cornicione too thick.
Finish by hand to ~30–32 cm. No rolling pin.

Knock the excess flour off the base. Loose flour on the stone burns and turns bitter.

STEP 13

Top and launch

30–60 s on the peel1st bake lesson

65 g of sauce, 70 g of mozzarella spaced out, basil and a drizzle of olive oil.
Leave patches of tomato showing.
Before launching, give it a small sideways shake: the whole pizza must slide.
Prosciutto and rocket go on after the oven.

STEP 14

Bake and turn

70–120 s1st bake lesson

At 25–30 s, check whether it has enough structure to turn 180°.
Then make small turns until the colour is even.
The first pizza calibrates the oven. Use the diagnosis below.
Let the stone recover before the next pizza.

Look for small dark spots spread across the cornicione, not black patches.

BIG HORN oven

Bench timer and diagnosis by result. The first pizza of each session calibrates the oven.

Bake timer

0 s

0306090120150 s

Launch the pizza and start.

Orange band: 25–30 s, check whether it can be turned 180°. Green band: 70–120 s, the expected window for this oven.

Diagnosis by result

Pick what you saw on the pizza.

Version 1.0 rules

The bottleneck right now isn't the dough. It's heat calibration and the technique for stretching and topping.

Don't raise the hydration yet.
Don't swap out the Caputo Pizzeria flour.
Don't over-knead. Use rest and folds.
Salt before oil.
Use bassinage for the last of the water.
Oil always goes in last.
Sticky dough during mixing gets no extra flour.
Don't re-ball the dough before stretching.
Don't use a rolling pin.
Don't press the cornicione.
Knock excess flour off the base.
Light on sauce, light on cheese.
A topped pizza doesn't wait on the peel.
Check that it slides before launching.
Control top and stone separately.
The first pizza calibrates the session.
Let the stone recover between pizzas.
Watch the dough more than the clock.
Change one relevant variable at a time.
Next session: less heat underneath, same recipe.

Bassinage: Holding back part of the water and working it in gradually once the gluten has started to form.
Panetto: Each individual dough ball. It becomes one pizza. Plural: panetti.
Cornicione: The raised, airy rim. Preserved by pushing the gas from the centre outwards.
Lamination: Stretching the dough into a rectangle on the bench and folding it. No rolling pin.
Leopard spotting: Small dark spots spread across the cornicione. Not the same as charred patches.
Preferment: Flour, the same weight of water and all the yeast. 100% hydration, close to a poolish.

About NapoliProtocol

What this site is, and where the pizza it teaches comes from.

1889the Margherita is born

430–480 °Ctraditional oven

2010EU Traditional Speciality

2017the pizzaiuolo's art at UNESCO

The project

An open bench notebook

NapoliProtocol is the record of a real process: the pursuit of a true Neapolitan pizza made at home, without a wood-fired oven. Every number in the recipe, every step and every rule came from bakes that were tested, logged and corrected.

Instead of a fixed recipe, the page works as a tool. You enter the flour or number of pizzas, your fridge temperature and when you want to bake, and it recalculates quantities, schedule and instructions. The tags on each step show what comes from the base recipe, what was adapted and what was learned the hard way.

Created by Jhonathan Sousa. It's an independent project with no sponsorship: the brands mentioned (flour, tomatoes, oven) are simply the ones used in testing.

Neapolitan pizza

A heritage of Naples

Neapolitan pizza was born on the streets of Naples between the 18th and 19th centuries as cheap, popular food ready in minutes. Tradition says that in 1889 the pizzaiolo Raffaele Esposito honoured Queen Margherita with a pizza in the colours of Italy: tomato, mozzarella and basil. The Margherita was born.

What defines Neapolitan pizza is the dough: just wheat flour, water, salt and yeast, stretched by hand with no rolling pin. Baked for 60 to 90 seconds in a very hot oven, around 430–480 °C, it stays soft and elastic in the centre, with a tall, airy cornicione marked by small dark spots.

In 2010 the European Union registered it as a Traditional Speciality Guaranteed (TSG), and in 2017 UNESCO inscribed the art of the Neapolitan pizzaiuolo as Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. At home, ovens rarely reach those temperatures, and closing that gap is exactly what this protocol is about.