Easy Margherita Pizza
- PREP 30min
- COOK 10min
- TOTAL 40min
This is our family’s favorite way to make Margherita pizza at home! We use our favorite homemade pizza dough, an authentic no-cook pizza sauce, mozzarella, and basil. We highly recommend our recipe for homemade pizza dough, but store-bought dough works. Use fresh mozzarella instead of the shredded mozzarella cheese in our recipe for classic Italian pizza. We love fresh mozzarella on pizza but sometimes find that when cooked in home ovens, it doesn’t melt and brown as quickly and instead releases too much liquid. Shredded mozzarella doesn’t have the same problem, so that’s what we end up using instead.
You Will Need
1 batch homemade pizza dough or use store-bought dough
1/2 cup San Marzano whole peeled tomatoes from a can
2 teaspoons olive oil
Pinch fine sea salt
1 cup (57g) shredded whole milk mozzarella or use fresh mozzarella
Handful fresh basil leaves
All-purpose flour, for forming dough disc
Semolina flour, for dusting pan
Directions
At least 30 minutes before you plan to bake your pizza, preheat the oven to 450° Fahrenheit (232°C). If you have one, place a pizza steel or pizza stone into the oven before preheating. Personally, we use a higher temperature, see the tips section for our thoughts on what temperature is best for baking pizza at home.
If your pizza dough is cold, allow it to warm at room temperature for 20 to 30 minutes.
While the oven preheats, make the sauce. In a bowl, crush the tomatoes with the olive oil and a pinch of salt. Taste, and then season with more salt as necessary.
When ready to bake your pizza, prepare a pizza peel or pizza pan by dusting it with semolina flour.
Dust a clean work surface with all-purpose flour, and then form your pizza dough into a round, large enough to fit your pizza peel or pan. To stretch the dough, avoid rolling it out, as this can flatten the bubbles that have formed. Instead, use your fingers to make dimples in the dough, starting from the center and working outwards. Carefully stretch and push the dough to fit your pizza pan or peel. Use a light touch to maintain as many air pockets in the dough as possible.
Transfer the dough round to your pizza peel or pan, and reform it if it shrinks back a bit.
Spread a light layer of pizza sauce over the pizza, leaving a thin edge untouched for the crust. Scatter the cheese and basil over the sauce.
Bake until the crust is set and golden brown and the cheese has melted with golden spots all over, 6 to 15 minutes, depending on oven temperature. Remove from the oven, scatter over some more fresh basil, cut, and serve.
Adam and Joanne's Tips
- Oven temperature: We recommend 450° Fahrenheit (232°C) in the recipe, but if you are comfortable with it, increasing the temperature to 550° Fahrenheit (288°C) will provide even better results. If you have a vented hood above your oven, turn it on high. When our oven is heated to such a high temperature, the fire alarm occasionally goes off due to the hot air that escapes when we open our oven door. It’s not a problem, other than the noise, and in our experience, it is remedied with a few fans of a dish towel near the alarm, but it is something to consider. If 550° Fahrenheit (288°C) is too high for you, feel free to use a lower temperature. However, keep in mind that this pizza bakes best between 425° Fahrenheit and 550° Fahrenheit (218°C to 288°C). The lower the temperature, the longer it will take to bake and the less bubbly it will be.
- The nutrition facts provided below are estimates.