Quattro formaggi pizza — the recipe
No tomato, four cheeses, zero apologies. The classic quartet is fresh mozzarella for the base, gorgonzola for the noise, fontina for the melt and Parmigiano for the salt — a white pizza that lives or dies on balance, not excess.
The grams below are per ball and scale with your dough size. Resist the urge to round everything up: a quattro formaggi fails by drowning, never by thirst.
What goes on top
Per pizza, on the default 260 g ball — in layering order:
the mild backbone
in small nuggets
diced small so it melts in time
grated over the rest
Stretching bigger or smaller? The model rescales with the dough:
| Topping | 200 g ball | 260 g ball | 320 g ball |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fresh mozzarella | 45 g | 60 g | 75 g |
| Gorgonzola | 25 g | 30 g | 35 g |
| Fontina | 20 g | 25 g | 30 g |
| Parmigiano Reggiano | 12 g | 15 g | 20 g |
The dough
Quattro formaggi 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 60 g fresh mozzarella (the mild backbone).
- Top with 30 g gorgonzola (in small nuggets).
- Top with 25 g fontina (diced small so it melts in time).
- Top with 15 g parmigiano reggiano (grated over the rest).
- 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
Can I swap one of the four?
Of course — it's a quartet, not a contract. Taleggio for fontina, pecorino for Parmigiano, smoked scamorza for the mozzarella. Keep the shape: one blue, one melter, one hard salty grater, and the fresh mozzarella backbone.
Honey on top: yes or no?
After the bake and only a thread, but yes — gorgonzola and honey is an old friendship. Purists may leave the room; more pizza for you.
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.