24-hour Neapolitan pizza dough

This is the dough you will keep coming back to. It uses only flour, water, salt and yeast, and time does the rest: 24 hours, mostly in the fridge, give you flavor, a light crust and a dough that stretches without tearing.

Tipo 00 and tipo 0 are Italian flour grades: they describe how finely the flour is milled, not how strong it is. For strength, look at the W value.

Method

1. Dissolve the salt in 360 g of cold water (8–12 °C / 46–54 °F). Crumble the yeast into the remaining water.
2. Add half the flour to the salted water and mix. Add the yeasted water and the rest of the flour a little at a time.
3. Knead for 10–15 minutes by hand (or 8 minutes in a stand mixer on low speed) until the dough is smooth and no longer sticky.
4. Cover and let it rest for 1 hour at room temperature. This is the puntata, the first bulk rest.
5. Divide into 4 balls of 260 g. Shape each one by tucking the edges underneath until the surface is smooth, without tearing it.
6. Place the balls in a lightly oiled container with a lid, spaced apart. Refrigerate at 4 °C (39 °F) for 18–20 hours.
7. Take them out 3 to 5 hours before baking and leave them covered at room temperature. The balls should be soft, puffy and dotted with small bubbles.
8. Stretch with your fingers from the center outward without touching the rim, top it and bake in the hottest oven you can manage.

Signs it went well

• The ball has grown by about 50–100%, and when you press it with a finger the dent springs back slowly.
• It stretches to 30–33 cm (12–13 in) without tearing or shrinking back.
• In the oven, the rim puffs up in the first few seconds.

Want to use a different flour, more or less water, or a 48-hour fermentation? The calculator adjusts everything, including the yeast for your fridge temperature.

Common questions

Keep going

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