How to Make Pizza Margherita | Homemade Pizza (VIDEO)

5 oz pizza dough, Â_” inch thick 2 tbsp olive oil 1/3 c. tomato sauce Â_ ball mozzarella Handful basil 3 tbsp Parmesan Reggiano Preheat stone & oven to 500F. Brush dough w. olive oil; season with salt and pepper. Evenly spread the tomato sauce around the dough. Dot the mozzarella, basil and parmesan around the pizza and bake on the stone for about 7-8 minutes or until the crust is crispy and the top is brown. Let the pizza sit for at least 2 minutes and finish with olive oil and sea salt.

So margherita pizza is by far the most popular pizza in the world. It’s got to be super easy to make. Three main ingredients, basil, mozzarella, and of course, some great home-made tomato sauce.

So I have pizza dough shaped here. I love rustic, just misshaped pizza doughs that are like clouds. They are all different shapes to me. I always decide what they look like. This is like the head of a bear, I don’t know why. But they always look more home-made that way.

I always start with just a little bit of olive oil right on the bottom. This just builds a really great crust, all right? I’m just going to rub that through all the way to the end, get a little sloppy with this. You don’t want to just miss a spot, every inch counts here, often.

Then from up high, some Kosher salt, perfect. Then this is really, really important, especially in America. We tend to overdress our pizzas, and in Italy it’s like a salad, right? You’ve had really soggy salads? You can have a really soggy pizza too, so you just want enough of that sauce to kiss the pizza, just evenly go throughout.

It’s not so much about the sauce. I mean, we work so hard on that dough, so a little bit more about the dough and what’s on top of it.

So, some really good buffalo mozzarella, I just like to tear it. Again, we love cheese, but just use it sparingly. Dot that around, awesome, every inch. What you want to think of is that every bite, you have a little bit of everything.

Some basil, big ones, I like to tear up, and just let them fall where they will. Small ones, leave whole. It looks absolutely gorgeous, just tear it right off. This is not the time to bust out the dry basil, by the way. You have to use fresh basil for this.

The reason why everyone loves this in Italy and they’re so proud of it, is look at the colors. You’ve got the red, the green and the white. What does that remind you of? The Italian flag. Genius.

Okay. I always build it on a piece of parchment like this, because that way I don’t have to worry about it sticking to the counter. No cornmeal, no extra flour, I like it just the way it is. I take my pizza peel, it slides right on, and before I take it to the oven, just a drizzle of olive oil.

My oven is at 500 degrees, it’s as high as it goes. I have a pizza stone that’s been in there maybe an hour, two hours, a long, long time. I’m just going to open that up, slide it in on the paper, and let that pizza do its thing.

All right, the oven’s been on full whack, it’s been about seven minutes. I’m going to check my pizza. Oh, yeah, beautiful. You can tell by underneath, that’s what you’re looking for, that nice golden crust.

So, you can see the paper didn’t burn, it just kind of browned a little bit. I’m just going to hold it with my thumb and let the pizza just fall off. Then wow, it’s hot. This is my favorite moment. It’s finishing up this margherita. I’m just going to paint with really good olive oil around the outside, just to give it this nice sheen. All right.

Then, we don’t have brick oven pizza ovens in our home, so I have a little smoked salt, which is really nice around the end. It kind of makes the whole thing smell a little bit more authentic. Then you cannot serve a pizza without a little bit of that salty, creamy parmesan reggiano, right over the top. Look at that. Just let it fall over, not too much, just enough. If you like Margherita pizza, nothing will beat that.