Pizza Napoletana

There are as many kinds of pizza as there are as many subtle shades of color in the rainbow.  And I’m talking about only what would be called classic Italian pizza.  Beyond that the list gets endless as restaurants who mean well add more and more non-traditional items to their “gourmet” pizzas and charge $20, $30 and more for a pie.


Back before it all, even before I decided my personal version of a “classic” pizza was a good tomato sauce, pepperoni, mozzarella cheese and maybe sausage and/or mushrooms in Italy there was Neapolitan pizza, made with a bread crust, fresh tomatoes and cheese and very little else.
 
Here is a personalized version of that original Neapolitan style with a couple of little things I added on my own:
 
INGREDIENTS: 

• Enough pizza dough to make the size pizza you want.  The dough can be from any source, or course homemade is best.  I am fortunate that one of my local supermarkets sells about a pound of fresh raw pizza dough for about $1.50.  I use about half of that to make a pizza for four.
• 4-6 fresh tomato, sliced thin
• 4-6 slices of a good fresh (not cured) mozzarella
• About 1/3 of a small jar of marinated artichokes.  The pizza needs the oiliness of marinated artichokes to help keep from being dry.
• 2-3 tablespoons of crushed dried basil.  If  you are lucky enough to have access to fresh leaves, still use some dried and then add a few springs of fresh leaves in the last 5 minutes of cooking
• 1 tablespoon of crushed dried oregano
• About 2 tablespoons of Ragu/Prego or similar white spaghetti sauce with roasted garlic

 
PREPARATION:
 
Roll out the dough as thin as you can make it without being able to see through it.  It does NOT have to be perfectly round, perfectly round pizzas are boring.  Stretch it the way the dough wants to go, not the way you want to make it to go.

 

Brush it very lightly with olive oil and place it on a flat pan in a 375 degree oven (350 degree if convection) for about 3 minutes.  Flip it over onto your pizza pan and brush the reverse (now up) side very lightly with olive oil.  Ladle a thin layer (about half of the amount of red pizza sauce you would use) of the store-bought roasted garlic white sauce and brush to the edges.  Evenly spread the separated leaves of the marinated artichokes, not the whole cloves.  Cover with a few slices of fresh tomato (just a few, don’t cover your whole pizza).  At this point sprinkle with the oregano and basil.  Reserve the fresh basil (if you have it) for later.

 

Next place the slices of fresh mozzarella, trying to alternate with where you placed the fresh tomatoes.  If you are using a good cheese it will melt more like ice cream than cheese, covering much of the top of the pizza.  Add a little more dried basil on top of the cheese.
Bake at the temperatures above for 15 minutes, check and you will probably need to go 6-8 minutes more depending on your oven, altitude and ingredients.  The cheese should be fully melted and starting to bubble and turn a golden brown and the crust edges should start to look just a little charred.
 
If you are using fresh basil, spread a few leaves over the pizza about 5 minutes before you plan to remove it from the oven.

 

Let cool about 5 minutes and enjoy.
 
QUOTE FOR THE DAY:
 
"Ideas are like pizza dough, made to be tossed around"
 
- Anna Quindlen

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