10 tips for next level margherita pizza

Recreate the traditional tastes and textures of an authentic margherita pizza in your own kitchen at home. This simple recipe requires only a handful of ingredients and a few tricks to deliver a truly special result, and will soon become a family favourite.

For the base, we used a bread-making technique of staggered mixing, which cuts out kneading and produces a light, stretchy dough. By mixing flour and water together and leaving it before you add the yeast and salt, you ‘activate’ the flour to make the gluten work – so there’s no need to knead the dough. Also, rather than using a rolling pin, we found that you get the best, most puffed-up results by gently stretching the dough into a circle with your fingers.

For the topping, we tried lots of different tomato sauces, but the one which delivered the most vibrant flavour was an uncooked, seasoned sauce infused with basil and oregano. We topped this with a few chunks of mozzarella cheese and a sprinkling of parmesan to help hold everything together.

The stone floor of a professional pizza oven can reach 400C. As such temperatures cannot be achieved with a conventional home oven, we found the only way to replicate the results was by starting the pizza in a very hot pan then popping it under the grill. This melts the cheese and gives the crust a slightly charred finish.

See the full margherita pizza recipe or find more tips in our guide on how to make next level margherita pizza.

For more on pizza, read our round-up of the best pizza ovens and browse our pizza recipe collection for more inspiration.

Which ingredients make your perfect margherita pizza? Leave a comment below...