Diavola pizza — the recipe
The devil's margherita: tomato, mozzarella and enough spicy salami to make the oil run orange. In Naples it's the diavola; abroad it gets mistaken for pepperoni — close cousins, different accents.
Toppings below are weighed per ball and scale with your dough size. Lay the salame on top of the cheese, not under it, so it crisps instead of steaming.
What goes on top
Per pizza, on the default 260 g ball — in layering order:
torn and well drained
thin slices — they'll cup and crisp
optional, if the salame doesn't bite hard enough
Stretching bigger or smaller? The model rescales with the dough:
| Topping | 200 g ball | 260 g ball | 320 g ball |
|---|---|---|---|
| Crushed tomatoes | 60 g | 80 g | 100 g |
| Fresh mozzarella | 55 g | 70 g | 85 g |
| Spicy salami | 35 g | 45 g | 55 g |
| Chili oil | 4 g | 5 g | 6 g |
The dough
Diavola 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 80 g crushed tomatoes.
- Top with 70 g fresh mozzarella (torn and well drained).
- Top with 45 g spicy salami (thin slices — they'll cup and crisp).
- 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 g chili oil — optional, if the salame doesn't bite hard enough.
Questions from the counter
Salame piccante, 'nduja or pepperoni?
Any of them burns nicely. Salame piccante is the classic; 'nduja goes on in teaspoon-sized blobs after the cheese; American pepperoni turns it into a New York hybrid — see the pepperoni recipe for that one.
How do I keep the salami from going greasy?
Thin slices, on top of the cheese, hot oven. The fat should render and crisp the edges — pooled grease means the slices were thick or the oven was timid.
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.