Pizza Margherita
Author:
Thomas Sixt is a chef, food photographer, cookbook author and blogger.
Here he shares recipes, answers cooking questions and helps with cooking.
You can find my Pizza Margherita recipe in this post.
The classic from Italy consists of pizza dough with a topping of tomatoes, mozzarella and basil.
The “Margherita” is originally a Neapolitan pizza, it was invented in Napoli and documented there for the first time.
For a perfect result in the home oven, I have summarized many tips and new ideas for you:
➽ Prepare the perfect pizza dough for Margherita Pizza
➽ New and well-known ideas for Pizza Margherita cheese topping
➽ Select and prepare the right tomatoes for Margherita Pizza
➽ Bake pizza twice for perfect taste
So, what are you waiting for?
Be sure to try this pizza for yourself and let its unique taste convince you!
The following article provides plenty of information for interesting variants and a fine result.
Table of Contents
- 1. Recipe Pizza Margherita
- 2. Calories And Nutritional Values
- 3. Pizza Dough For Pizza Margherita
- 4. Cheese For Pizza Margherita
- 5. Tomatoes For Pizza Margherita
- 6. Bake Twice: Pizza Margherita Perfect
- 7. Thick Or Thin Margherita Pizza
- 8. Pizza Stone Or Baking Tray For Pizza Margherita
- 9. FAQ Pizza Margherita
- 10. More Pizza Recipes
1. Recipe Pizza Margherita
Please deal with the pizza dough first.
For an excellent Pizza Margherita from your own oven, I recommend a 24 or 48 hour dough.
Don’t worry: If you want it to go faster, you can also prepare a quick pizza dough .
After the recipe you will find further tips and ideas summarized.
You can send me cooking questions using the comment function at the bottom of the page.
Pizza Margherita
Baked, photographed and written down by chef Thomas Sixt
Bake and prepare simple instructions for Pizza Margherita yourself.
Ingredients
| 500 | g | yeast dough (Pizza dough) |
| 250 | g | canned tomatoes (Datterini or San Marzano tomatoes can) |
| primal salt | ||
| Pepper black, ground | ||
| brown cane sugar | ||
| 2 | Piece | Mozzarella (Alternatively stracciatella or buffalo mozzarella) |
| 1/2 | Bund | basil fresh |
Instruction
Pizza dough
Prepare the pizza dough according to the instructions.
Prepare the dough at room temperature 30 minutes before preparation.
Preheat oven
Preheat the oven to 280°C, lower and upper heat.
If you use a pizza stone, please insert it in the middle of the grid and preheat for at least an hour.
If you want to prepare the pizzas on the baking tray, remove the baking trays from the oven before heating them up.
Brush the baking sheets with olive oil and set aside.
Prepare tomatoes
Prepare a sieve with a bowl and let the tomatoes drain on the sieve.
Season the tomatoes with salt, pepper and a little sugar.
Cheese 1
Dry the Mozzarella di Bufala Campana DOP or Fior di latte.
Cheese 2
Optional Stracciatella on a sieve, with a bowl underneath, drain well and let dry.
Prepare basil
Pluck the basil leaves from the fresh bunch and set aside for serving.
Shape pizza
Shape the pizza dough with your hands using a little flour or ground durum wheat semolina.
Top pizza
Place the pizza dough on an oiled baking sheet and shape to fit.
pizza stone:
Alternatively sprinkle the pizza peel with durum wheat semolina.
Place the preformed dough on the pizza peel.
Cover the pizza dough with the tomatoes.
Pre-bake pizza
Bake the pizza for about 8 minutes, then add the cheese.
The picture shows the baked pizza topped with Mozzarella di Bufala Campana.
Bake the pizza as desired, 2-4 minutes is usually sufficient.
Margherita 1
Arrange the Margherita with Mozzarella di Bufala Campana on a plate.
Scatter fresh basil leaves on top and serve drizzled with olive oil.
Margherita 2
Top the pizza, which has been baked for 8-10 minutes, with the drained stracciatella cream cheese.
Serve
Serve the pizza with the gently heated stracciatella cheese.
Sprinkle the pizza on the plate with basil leaves and drizzle with olive oil.
Serve quickly, bon appétit!
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2. Calories And Nutritional Values
The Pizza Margherita calories and nutritional values are clearly listed in the table below.
The amount of dough per pizza and the type of cheese cause the nutritional values to vary.
A pizza with a diameter of 30 cm has an average of 900-1,200 calories.
3. Pizza Dough For Pizza Margherita
In most internet pizza dough recipes you will only find one flour.
This is the wheat flour tipo 00 (W 260) or type 550.
Here in my test kitchen we have been preparing and testing pizza dough every day for two whole weeks.
During this baking orgy, I had personal conversations with various pizzaiolos.
My realization is that most recipes with one flour are just wrong and not original.
For a perfect result, I recommend using 50% flour (tipo 00) and 50% post-ground durum wheat semolina.
You can also try a variant with 75% wheat flour and 25% post-ground durum wheat semolina.
I’m fine with the 50/50 variant and consider this pizza dough variant to be the best.
The dough with durum wheat semolina is ideal for preparing pizza at temperatures of 220-350 °C.
If you are only preparing pizza dough from wheat flour, I recommend an oven temperature of 220°C.
The wheat dough rises better at this temperature and the consistency is better.
In general, the slow dough process is better:
Prepare the pizza dough two days before making the pizza and let it rise for 12-24 or 48 hours.
Once you’ve tried it, you won’t like any other pizza dough.
The “long-term” pizza dough is also more digestible and is good for the stomach.
Both variants are fully documented elsewhere:
4. Cheese For Pizza Margherita
Mozzarella is usually used to make the famous pizza flatbread.
The term mozzarella is not protected, the cream cheese originally comes from Italy, but is now produced worldwide.
The mozzarella overview helps when shopping:
Mozzarella di Bufala Campana DOP is the exact name for the “real”, EU-wide protected buffalo mozzarella.
Burrata is a special form of mozzarella and is mostly made from cow’s milk and rarely from buffalo milk. The cream cheese has the shape of a small bag, the inside consists of cream and fine strands of mozzarella.
Fior di latte is made from cow’s milk from special cattle breeds. The designation “Apennino meridionale” stands for southern Apennines and is protected by law.
Bocconcini are small mozzarella balls, these are mainly made from cow’s milk and are packaged and sold openly in brine.
Bufala Provola is a spherical filata cheese from Campania. It consists of matured buffalo mozzarella and is smoked in cylindrical vessels over straw.
Mozzarella affumicata is a firm, smoked mozzarella and is the first choice for original Neapolitan pizza among connoisseurs.
So that we don’t lose track…
Conclusion on the cheese topping and my chef’s recommendation:
The cheese used determines the taste of the pizza.
My first choice is Mozzarella Bufala DOP
This cheese is easy to get and you can’t go wrong with it.
The cheese also corresponds to the usual, tasteful and visual idea of cheese pizza with tomatoes and basil.
Mozzarella affumicata is a good idea for the experienced palate, but the cheese is not that easy to get in Germany.
I would particularly like to recommend Stracciatella di bufala .
My Italian retailer refers to this cream cheese as the inside of the burrata.
The taste is excellent, sweet, slightly sour and mild.
I put this cheese on the pre-baked pizza and only briefly heat or gratinate the cheese.
For me, the cheese is the best idea to conjure up a positive surprise on the plate.
Always dry pizza cheese, otherwise too much water will get on the pizza.
Pizza cheese tip from chef Thomas Sixt
Put the cheese on a sieve or dry the cheese in a boiled cloth.
I always let the cheese drain overnight in the refrigerator.
5. Tomatoes For Pizza Margherita
The special San Marzano tomatoes are considered the only true type of tomato for the preparation of Neapolitan pizza.
You buy the tomato variety in a can.
My Italian dealer also recommended Datterini tomatoes from Sicily.
Avoid strained tomatoes or tomato paste mixed with water and oil.
The latter variants make a tomato sauce a success, but they don’t taste nearly as delicious as the former.
Drain tomatoes well:
I have tried every variant of the preparation: with a little tomato juice, with a lot of tomato juice, almost dry.
I got the best result with strained, dried tomatoes, almost without tomato juice.
To do this, I place my fine hair sieve on a bowl and pour the tomatoes into the sieve.
I squeeze out the tomatoes with a spoon and leave them almost dry.
The less liquid on the pizza dough, the better.
6. Bake Twice: Pizza Margherita Perfect
We all know ready-made pizza…
All the ingredients are already on the pizza and the pizza goes straight into the oven and gets baked.
To be honest, I grew up with pizza that was only baked once.
The pizza dough was topped, the pizza in the oven, ready to be baked.
Today I do it completely differently:
My pizza always comes in the oven with tomato sauce on top.
In the first step I bake the pizza (dough 50% wheat flour and 50% durum wheat semolina) for about 8-10 minutes at 280°C.
A lower temperature increases the baking time.
Then I cover the already baked pizza with the mozzarella or stracciatella.
The pizza is then allowed to bake for a few more minutes.
The advantage of this method:
The cheese bakes exactly how I want it to.
Sometimes I just warm up the cheese, depending on how I feel on the day I let the cheese gratinate a bit more.
Each variant creates its own special taste experience.
Here are some tips for baking cheese:
Stacciatella: melted lukewarm on the crispy pizza, wonderfully fine, gratinated, the cheese tastes stronger on the palate and shows more character.
Mozzarella: When melted, the cheese tastes pleasantly fine, browned, the cream cheese gets more flavor and strength in combination with roasted aromas.
Camembert di Bufala: When melted, the cheese tastes pleasantly soft and, depending on the degree of ripeness, creamy to strong. Roasted aromas mix more strongly au gratin.
Smoked mozzarella varieties: I only let them melt slightly and avoid heavy browning or roasting. Otherwise the taste of the cheese will be too strong.
Try different cheeses for an exceptional tomato mozzarella basil pizza!
Cheese tip from chef Thomas Sixt
7. Thick Or Thin Margherita Pizza
In the original, the pizza dough, which has matured for 24-48 hours, is formed into a pizza by hand.
If you want to put a very thin pizza on the plate, you can use the rolling pin.
This is not a recommendation, but only an addition if very thin dough appeals to you.
You can also find thin dough in the supermarket. This is industrially prepared and rolled.
This dough does not rise as nicely as homemade dough and quickly becomes very crispy.
For thin pizza dough and pure wheat flour dough, I recommend an oven temperature of 220°C.
Adjust the baking time according to the browning of the pizza. You should not bake too dark, otherwise the dough will be too hard.
8. Pizza Stone Or Baking Tray For Pizza Margherita
The pizza stone is very popular.
I still remember the first show cooking at the Miele trade fairs in 2000.
Back then, Miele introduced the first unglazed pizza stone and we baked quite a few pizzas on it.
The stone in the current version was a bit too expensive for me, so I looked for a replacement in my hardware store.
I have the first tip for your shopping tour:
Buy a thick pizza stone, thin pizza stones don’t hold the temperature well and the baking result is worse.
The pizza stone has a big advantage and disadvantage:
Firstly, you feel like a real pizzaiolo, secondly, the stone has to preheat in the oven for a very long time.
My experience shows: I think preheating for 60-90 minutes is the best option.
You need a lot of electricity for that.
The pizza peel is another challenge:
The shorter the handle of the pizza pusher, the harder it is to transport the pizza from the pusher to the pizza stone.
Honestly, with a normal size pizza, I didn’t manage to get the pizza round on the stone.
You use wheat semolina as a lubricant here, flour would quickly burn on the stone.
Overall, the pizza stone has never convinced me 100%.
To be honest, the effort for the result is too great for me.
That’s why I usually prefer to bake pizza at home on the baking tray.
The oven is preheated at 280°C top and bottom heat for 30 minutes.
I remove the trays beforehand and put some olive oil on the trays.
I shape the pizza dough by hand with durum wheat semolina and finish it directly on the tray.
This way the oil is distributed on the tray and the pizza can bake perfectly.
9. FAQ Pizza Margherita
The most important, collected questions about the popular pizza can be found below:
Where does the name Pizza Margherita come from?
In 1889, an Italian pizza maker baked the pizza in honor of Queen Margherita. The colors of the pizza topping remind us of the Italian national colors.
How to make the perfect pizza Margherita at home?
Prepare a 24-48 hour pizza dough using 50% wheat flour (tipo 00) and 50% reground durum wheat semolina. Drain the canned tomatoes well and dry the cheese as well. Gently season the tomatoes with salt and pepper. Preheat the oven to 280°C top and bottom heat. Place the shaped pizza dough on a cold, oiled baking tray and shape it. Top the pizza dough with tomatoes and bake for about 8 minutes. Place dry-laid cheese in “little clouds” on top of pizza and final bake. Serve drizzled with basil leaves and olive oil.
With which pizza dough I bake an original pizza Margherita
Your pizza dough should contain 25-50% reground durum wheat semolina.
What tomatoes do you recommend for pizza Margherita
You can use San Marzano tomatoes or Datterini tomatoes from Sicily.
What unusual cheeses can you recommend me for pizza Margherita?
Mozzarella di Bufala Campana D.O.P. and Burrata, Fior di latte or Bufala Provola are good choices.
You can prepare an extraordinary Margherita with Camembert di Bufala or Stracciatella.
Should I bake the cheese right from the start with the Margherita pizza?
For a special taste experience I recommend you to bake the pizza without cheese, add the cheese later and enjoy the fine taste of each ingredient.
How much basil do I put on the pizza Margherita
Decorate your pizza with 8-12 leaves of fresh basil.
Welche Dekoration ist für Original Pizza Margherita richtig?
Just before serving, decorate with basil leaves and drizzle cold olive oil over the pizza.
Fits balsamic with pizza Margherita
Balsamico is not a typical ingredient for pizza, you can try few drops of Aceto Balsamico tradizionale with it. This tastes really delicious!
10. More Pizza Recipes
Pizza Diavola
Pizza Capricciosa
Cheese Pizza
Anchovy Pizza
Pizza Marinara
Pizza Margherita
Schnizza Recipe for Pizza Style Schnitzel Au Gratin
Pizza Dough Recipe For Fast and Slow Preparation
Pizza Prosciutto – Ham Pizza
Vegetable Pizza – Pizza Verdure
Tuna Pizza – Pizza al Tonno Recipe
Comments, Cooking Questions and Answers
Below you can write to me directly.
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