Bufalina pizza — the recipe
The margherita's richer cousin: the same tomato, basil and olive oil, but the cheese is promoted to mozzarella di bufala — buffalo milk, double the fat, a lactic tang the cow can't do. All that luxury arrives with one bill attached: water, and plenty of it.
The grams below are per ball and scale with your dough size, and the cheese dose deliberately runs lighter than the margherita's — bufala brings more of everything, including whey, so a smaller amount lands richer while the center stays bakeable.
What goes on top
Per pizza, on the default 260 g ball — in layering order:
a thin spiral over everything
Stretching bigger or smaller? The model rescales with the dough:
| Topping | 200 g ball | 260 g ball | 320 g ball |
|---|---|---|---|
| Crushed tomatoes | 55 g | 70 g | 85 g |
| Buffalo mozzarella | 55 g | 70 g | 85 g |
| Extra-virgin olive oil | 3 g | 4 g | 5 g |
| Fresh basil | 4 leaves | 5 leaves | 6 leaves |
The dough
Bufalina is built on Neapolitan dough. Soft, leopard-spotted cornicione. Flour, water, salt, yeast — nothing else. For 4 × 260 g balls:
| Ingredient | Baker's % | For 4 pizzas |
|---|---|---|
| Flour | 100% | 630 g |
| Water | 62% | 391 g |
| Salt | 2.8% | 18 g |
| Yeast | 0.23% | 1.4 g |
The yeast is weighed for an example 8 h rise at 21°C — your kitchen disagrees, and that’s the point: set your real schedule in the calculator and it reweighs the pinch.
How it’s done
- Make the dough: 4 × 260 g Neapolitan balls — the calculator weighs the flour, water, salt and yeast for your schedule.
- Stretch each ball on a little flour, pressing the air from the middle out to the rim.
- Top with 70 g crushed tomatoes (crushed by hand — a lighter coat, the bufala brings its own moisture).
- Top with 70 g buffalo mozzarella (torn and drained hard — twice as long as fior di latte).
- Top with 4 g extra-virgin olive oil (a thin spiral over everything).
- Bake at 450 °C / 842 °F — that is pizza-oven territory; at home, run the oven at full blast on a steel or stone and give it an extra minute or two.
- After the bake: 5 fresh basil leaves — torn over the hot pizza — a home oven would burn it.
Questions from the counter
What's actually different from a margherita?
One ingredient and the whole mood. Mozzarella di bufala has roughly twice the fat of cow's-milk fior di latte and a lactic tang, so it melts into soft cream pools instead of an even quilt. The build is otherwise the margherita's — which is why the doses run a touch lighter: richer cheese, wetter cheese, same size pizza.
How do I stop the middle going soupy?
Water management is the whole craft of this pizza. Tear the bufala an hour ahead, drain it in a sieve in the fridge, pat it dry, and trust the dose in the table. In a fast, blistering bake it goes on from the start; in a slower home oven, add it halfway through so it melts without stewing — or even after the bake, over the hot tomato, the way some pizzerias serve it.
Does it have to be DOP buffalo mozzarella?
Mozzarella di Bufala Campana DOP is the protected original and tastes like the reason this pizza exists — buy it when you see it fresh. A non-DOP buffalo ball still makes the point; just check the date, because bufala ages in days, not weeks. Whatever you buy, let it come up to room temperature before it goes near the dough.
Get the dough
The Neapolitan preset weighs the balls and writes the schedule — mix, rise, ball, stretch, bake.
The clock is a suggestion. The dough is the boss. In bocca al lupo!
Impasto is a free pizza dough calculator for Neapolitan, New York, Roman, Sicilian, Detroit, thin crust and focaccia doughs — flour, water, salt and yeast weighed in baker's percentages, with the fermentation schedule written for you.