Neo-Neopolitan Pizza Dough

Pizzerias have long known the value of overnight, delayed fermentation, and I’ve written about this extensively in American Pie: My Search for the Perfect Pizza, as well as in other books. After teaching hundreds of pizza and focaccia classes around the country and assessing the relative benefits of the many versions of pizza dough that I wrote about in other books, I’m including and updating the most popular versions here. This recipe is a variation of the neo-Neapolitan dough I introduced in Amercian Pie. I recommend making individual size pizzas, because the heat in home ovens simply isn’t sufficient to do a good job on larger pizzas. This dough will keep for up to 4 days in the refrigerator or for months in the freezer; just be sure to move it from the freezer to the refrigerator the day before you need it, so it can thaw slowly, then treat it like refrigerated dough. Both the sugar and the oil in this formula are optional. If you leave them out, you have a Napoletana dough (though not a true pizza Napoletana dough unless you use Italian “00” flour, which is softer and more extensible than American flour and does not require as much water). However, in my pizza classes across the country, this version, which is similar to the dough used at some of the top American pizzerias (such as Frank Pepe’s, Sally’s, Totonno’s, and Lombardi’s), always gets the most votes for favorite.