The dough
Seventy-two hours
This is the only page on the site that talks technique. It is also the only one that explains why the pizza tastes the way it does.
- 01
The flour
Type 00, finely milled. It drinks slowly and it holds for three days without collapsing. That is all we ask of it.
- 02
The water
Sixty-five per cent. Enough for the dough to be alive, not so much that it becomes impossible to handle by hand.
- 03
The cold
Seventy-two hours at 4 °C. Time does the work yeast would do too fast and too loudly: the flavour comes from here, not from the oven.
- 04
The hand
Stretched with fingers, centre outwards. Never a rolling pin — a pin drives the gas out of the rim, and the rim is half the pizza.
- 05
The fire
Four hundred and fifty degrees, stone floor, wood flame. Sixty to ninety seconds, one at a time, and we watch it.
Why it takes so long
Dough made in the morning for the evening rises, but it does not mature. It bakes pale, it sits heavy, and the next day you don’t know why you slept badly. Three days in the cold is just patience — and it is the one thing you cannot buy in.
