Pizza Margherita
The one that tells you whether your dough is any good. Three toppings, nowhere to hide.
Start cookingIn JD’s words
The Margherita is the test. There are three things on it and none of them can be hidden behind, so if the base is wrong you will know, and so will everyone else at the table. Get this one right and the rest of the list is just shopping.
Basil goes on twice — chopped underneath where it cooks into the cheese, and whole leaves on top at the end so you get the raw smell of it when the plate arrives. One decent leaf per slice.
The method
Cook it unhurried.
- 01
Oven, Hot
Get the oven as hot as it will go, and get it there early — an hour before you want to eat, with the stone or the steel already in it. Domestic ovens lie about being ready. If you are lighting the fire instead, you want the floor around 400°C and a flame licking the dome. This is the whole recipe, really: everything else is assembly.
- 02
Sauce, Raw
Crush the San Marzanos by hand, salt them, a dash of pepper, and the garlic only if you want it. Do not cook this sauce. It gets all the cooking it needs on the base, and a sauce that has been simmered first goes sweet and dull by the time it comes out.
- 03
Base, Stretch
Knuckles, not a rolling pin. A rolling pin drives the air out of the rim and you will never get it back. Work from the middle out, leave the outer two centimetres alone, and let gravity do the last of it — pick it up and let the weight of the dough pull it round. If it fights you, it is not rested. Walk away for ten minutes rather than force it.
- 04
Oil, First
Olive oil on the bare base before the sauce goes anywhere near it. It seals the dough so the sauce cannot soak in and make the middle sodden, and it is the difference between a crisp base and a wet one. Good Italian oil — you will taste it.
- 05
Sauce, Thin
A thin layer, spiralled out from the middle with the back of a spoon, and stop short of the rim. People drown a Margherita and then wonder why it is soup. You should still see dough through it in places.
- 06
Mozzarella, Drained
Tear the buffalo mozzarella rather than slicing it, and let it sit on paper for ten minutes first. Wet mozzarella is the second most common way to ruin this pizza. Scatter it — do not tile it. You want bare patches.
- 07
Tomatoes, Basil
Halved cherry tomatoes cut side up so they concentrate rather than leak, and the chopped basil underneath now, where the heat will get to it.
- 08
Bake
In it goes. Six to eight minutes in a domestic oven at full noise, ninety seconds in a fire. You are looking for leopard spotting on the rim and the cheese just gone to liquid — not browned. Browned mozzarella has gone.
- 09
Basil, After
Whole basil leaves on the moment it comes out, at least one to a slice, and the last drizzle of oil. Then cut it and eat it standing up, because a Margherita waits for nobody.
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