Neapolitan pizza in Quebec: the dough, the oven, and what is really possible at home

The short answer

The codified Neapolitan dough is simple: flour, water, salt, yeast. No oil, no sugar. Hydration between 55 and 62 %, salt between 2.8 and 3.4 % of the flour, fermentation of 8 to 24 hours, 200 to 280 g balls stretched by hand to 22–35 cm, a bake of about 60 to 90 seconds in a wood-fired oven at 430–485 °C. At home two things change: the bake lasts 4 to 7 minutes instead of 90 seconds, and the dough has to tolerate that time without drying out. A steel plate preheated 45 minutes under the broiler, and a hydration at the top of the window, do most of the work.

What the regulations fix, and why

"Pizza Napoletana" has been a traditional speciality guaranteed of the European Union since 2010, and the Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana publishes detailed regulations. The key figures they give: 1 litre of water for 1.6 to 1.8 kg of flour and 50 to 55 g of salt, which, converted to baker's percentage, puts hydration between 55 and 62 % and salt between 2.8 and 3.4 %. Fornello stores the converted windows and says so, rather than reprinting an Italian number in a different unit system.

Zero oil is not an oversight: at 450 °C the dough bakes before it dries, and oil would only weigh it down. Nor is zero sugar: the colour comes from heat and from sugars released by fermentation. That is exactly what no longer holds at 285 °C, and that is where adaptation begins.

Why 285 °C on steel is worth far more than 285 °C on a stone

What browns or burns the base of a pizza is not the oven setting, it is how fast the material under the dough hands over its heat. That speed depends on the material's thermal effusivity, the square root of the product of its conductivity, density and heat capacity. Steel's effusivity is several times that of a cordierite stone: at the same temperature it pushes heat into the dough much faster. Fornello models the dough-to-deck contact as two semi-infinite bodies and derives an interface temperature from it: a steel at 285 °C gives the base what a stone would give at a markedly higher temperature. That is also why the biscotto deck of a Neapolitan oven, with low effusivity, holds 450 °C without carbonising the base in 90 seconds.

Adapting the dough to a home oven without betraying it

• Hydration: aim for 60 to 62 %, the top of the window. A 5-minute bake evaporates more water than a 90-second one; the margin is there.
• Flour: an Italian 00 or a Canadian all-purpose cut with 20 to 30 % 00, W 260 to 300. See the guide to Canadian flours.
• Fermentation: 24 hours, including a night in the cold, to free the sugars that will colour at a lower temperature. At 8 hours the dough stays pale at 285 °C.
• Ball: 250 g for 30 cm. Smaller, the centre dries before the rim browns.
• Oil and sugar: always zero if you want to stay within the style. If your crust stays pale, it is the fermentation or the deck that needs fixing, not the recipe. Fornello will tell you: a pinch of sugar takes you out of the Neapolitan window and it shows which style you now resemble.

The calculator below is set on the Neapolitan TSG, with the windows of the regulations. Enter your number of pizzas and your diameter; at the advanced level the oven model gives you your deck's interface temperature and the expected bake time.

Backyard ovens: what really changes

A portable gas or pellet oven reaches 400 to 500 °C on the deck in 20 minutes: the bake becomes Naples' again, 60 to 90 seconds, and the codified dough makes full sense once more. Two traps: a deck too hot for a 62 % dough (burnt base, raw top) and a flame that heats the roof of the oven more than the stone. In both cases the fix is to let the stone recover between pizzas and to measure its temperature with an infrared thermometer, not by eye. Fornello shows each style's deck window (400 to 485 °C for the Neapolitan TSG) and warns when the base will carbonise before the top is done.