Published: 2026-04-25 | 15
Neapolitan is the original. Wood-fired at 900°F for 90 seconds. Soft, chewy cornicione. Simple toppings. Fresh mozzarella bubbling over crushed San Marzano. It's the pizza every home cook eventually wants to make, and the one most give up on because "you need a real pizza oven."
You don't. I make legitimately great Neapolitan-style pizza in a regular 550°F home oven every week. Here's the full method, the dough, the broiler trick that lets you fake 900°F, the toppings, the common mistakes. It won't be AVPN-certified by the Italians, but it'll be fantastic. And if you eventually buy an Ooni or a Gozney, this same dough translates straight over.
The Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana (AVPN) sets the official rules for true Neapolitan pizza. The key characteristics:
In a home oven you can't hit 900°F, so you're not making "authentic" Neapolitan by AVPN standards. What you can make is a home-oven Neapolitan-style pizza that nails the texture (soft, airy, chewy with a slight char) using the broiler trick below.
Makes 3 × 10-12 inch pies. The recipe uses my slightly-modified home-oven version, slightly higher hydration than strict AVPN (65% vs 60%) plus a tiny bit of olive oil to help the dough survive the longer bake time. If you have a real pizza oven, drop the oil and hydration to 62%.
This is the key move. Your oven maxes at 550°F on the bake setting. But the broiler is a direct infrared heat element that hits 900°F+ at close range. The trick is using both simultaneously.
Warning: This is aggressive cooking. Your oven will get HOT. The pizza can go from perfect to black in 30 seconds. Stay at the oven the entire time. Have a metal peel ready.
If you have two Baking Steels, keep one on the top rack (broiler heat) and one on the bottom rack (ambient oven heat). Start the pizza on the bottom steel to cook the base, then move it to the top steel after 60 seconds for broiler finishing. This gives you independent top and bottom heat control, the closest home-oven approximation of a wood oven's all-around radiant heat.
The two-steel method is what Andris Lagsdin (inventor of the Baking Steel) teaches. It works.
Both are minimal by design. Neapolitan pizza is about perfect dough and great ingredients, not 15 toppings. If you're loading it up, you're making a different pizza.
Fresh mozz is 50%+ water. If you don't drain it, it floods your pizza. Tear the ball into rough chunks, lay on 3 layers of paper towels, wait 15 minutes, then pat the top dry with more paper towels. You'll see the towels come out soaked. That water was going onto your crust otherwise.
For Neapolitan specifically: fior di latte (cow's milk fresh mozz) is standard. Buffalo mozz (mozzarella di bufala) is richer and traditional for Margherita DOP, but releases even more water, so double the drain time.
A pizza stone works but is ~60% as good. The lower thermal conductivity means the bottom crust won't brown as fast, so you'll get a paler base and a longer bake time (which means less of that signature puffy-soft cornicione).
A cast iron skillet preheated under the broiler is the poor-man's version. Stretch the pizza onto parchment, drop the parchment into the screaming-hot skillet, slide it into the oven. Works for personal-size pies. Not ideal but workable.
Not "AVPN-certified" Neapolitan, that requires a wood-fired oven at 900°F. But you can make excellent Neapolitan-style pizza in a home oven using the broiler trick: Baking Steel on top rack, broiler on, 4-5 minute bake. The texture gets remarkably close to wood-fired.
Caputo Pizzeria (blue bag) is the industry standard. It's a 00 Italian flour at 11.5-12% protein, engineered for Neapolitan-style pizza. King Arthur 00 also works well if you can't find Caputo.
You can, but it won't be Neapolitan. The soft, milky fresh mozz that melts into pools is a defining characteristic. Low-moisture mozz makes it taste like a NY-style pie, not Neapolitan.
Most likely the mozz wasn't drained enough, or there was too much sauce. Drain fresh mozz for 15 full minutes, use only 3 tablespoons of sauce per 12-inch pie, and keep the bake short (4-5 min under broiler).
Margherita is a TYPE of pizza (tomato, fresh mozz, basil). Neapolitan is a STYLE of pizza (specific dough, bake method, shape). A Margherita is almost always Neapolitan-style, but a Neapolitan can be a Marinara (no cheese) or other topping.
At 1g yeast / 65% hydration, the dough is best at 24-48 hours. Push to 72 and it starts losing structure. Past 72 hours the gluten breaks down too far and the dough goes slack.