Marinara pizza — the recipe
The oldest pizza in the book and still the cheapest masterclass: tomato, garlic, oregano, olive oil. No cheese — which means nowhere to hide, and nothing to soften a clumsy hand with the garlic.
Quantities below are per pizza and scale with your ball size. The dough is the standard Neapolitan — get it from the calculator and the toppings cost you three minutes.
What goes on top
Per pizza, on the default 260 g ball — in layering order:
a generous pinch
it carries the garlic — don't skimp
Stretching bigger or smaller? The model rescales with the dough:
| Topping | 200 g ball | 260 g ball | 320 g ball |
|---|---|---|---|
| Crushed tomatoes | 70 g | 90 g | 110 g |
| Garlic | 1 clove | 2 cloves | 2 cloves |
| Dried oregano | 1 g | 1 g | 1 g |
| Extra-virgin olive oil | 5 g | 6 g | 7 g |
The dough
Marinara 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 90 g crushed tomatoes (a little more than the margherita gets).
- Top with 2 garlic cloves (sliced paper-thin).
- Top with 1 g dried oregano (a generous pinch).
- Top with 6 g extra-virgin olive oil (it carries the garlic — don't skimp).
- 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
No cheese — really?
Really. The marinara predates the margherita and stands on the quality of the tomato and the nerve of the garlic. Add cheese and it becomes a different (fine, but different) pizza.
Raw garlic or cooked?
Sliced raw and paper-thin, before the oven — it cooks in the tomato during the bake. The thin slices matter: thick coins come out raw and angry.
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.