Margherita pizza — the recipe
Tomato, mozzarella, basil — the tricolore on a plate, named for a queen and unimproved since 1889. A margherita hides nothing: four ingredients on a thin Neapolitan base, so the only thing that saves you is proportion.
This page weighs the toppings the way the calculator weighs the dough: per ball, scaled to the size you actually stretch. Get the dough from the Neapolitan preset and the rest is a five-minute assembly.
What goes on top
Per pizza, on the default 260 g ball — in layering order:
crushed by hand, never cooked
torn and well drained
a thin spiral over everything
tradition bakes it; home ovens burn it — tear it over the hot pizza
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 | 60 g | 80 g | 100 g |
| Extra-virgin olive oil | 3 g | 4 g | 5 g |
| Fresh basil | 4 leaves | 5 leaves | 6 leaves |
The dough
Margherita 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 (crushed by hand, never cooked).
- Top with 80 g fresh mozzarella (torn and well drained).
- 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 — tradition bakes it; home ovens burn it — tear it over the hot pizza.
Questions from the counter
Fresh mozzarella makes my pizza watery — what am I doing wrong?
Nothing — fior di latte is full of whey. Tear it an hour ahead, let it drain in a sieve in the fridge, and pat it dry before it goes on. In a slower home oven, use a little less than the table says.
Can I use buffalo mozzarella?
Yes, but it's even wetter than fior di latte: drain it longer, add it halfway through the bake, or accept a soupier center. The flavor argument wins either way.
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.