Capricciosa pizza — the recipe
Capricciosa means capricious — the pizza for the night you refuse to choose. Ham, mushrooms, artichokes and olives all pile onto the tomato and mozzarella, and somehow, on a good one, nobody elbows anybody.
That balance is the whole craft: a loaded pizza fails by flooding, never by famine. The grams below are weighed per ball and scale with your dough — trust them, especially when they look stingy.
What goes on top
Per pizza, on the default 260 g ball — in layering order:
torn and well drained
torn into ribbons
sliced thin; raw is traditional
oil-packed hearts, drained well and quartered
pitted — nobody bites a stone twice
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 |
| Fresh mozzarella | 55 g | 70 g | 85 g |
| Cooked ham | 30 g | 40 g | 50 g |
| Mushrooms | 30 g | 40 g | 50 g |
| Artichoke hearts | 2 hearts | 3 hearts | 3 hearts |
| Black olives | 5 olives | 7 olives | 8 olives |
The dough
Capricciosa 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.
- Top with 70 g fresh mozzarella (torn and well drained).
- Top with 40 g cooked ham (torn into ribbons).
- Top with 40 g mushrooms (sliced thin; raw is traditional).
- Top with 3 artichoke hearts hearts (oil-packed hearts, drained well and quartered).
- Top with 7 black olives olives (pitted — nobody bites a stone twice).
- 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.
Questions from the counter
Capricciosa or quattro stagioni — what's the difference?
Same cast, different staging. The capricciosa mixes everything across the pizza; the quattro stagioni separates the very same toppings into four quadrants, one per season. Taste-wise they converge by the second slice — choose with your eyes.
Artichokes from a jar — really?
Really. Oil-packed artichoke hearts are the standard even in Italy: drain them well, quarter them, and they roast sweetly in the oven's heat. Cleaning fresh artichokes is a noble hobby, but it's a different recipe's problem.
Where does the egg go?
Ah, you've met the Roman cousin. Some capricciose carry a fried or baked egg in the middle — if that's your house style, crack it on for the last two minutes of the bake so the white sets and the yolk stays in conversation.
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.