The Last Minute Pizza Recipe

Last updated on November 12th, 2023 at 07:11 pm

I thought about this easy pizza dough recipe having in mind how busy we all are. Often we are completely absorbed by the job and life events. Until the point that is hard to enjoy some good home made pizza. If this is your case then the last minute pizza recipe is all you need. A pizza easy recipe that everybody can do. No need of special flours, processes and particular attention. You can simply go to supermarket, buy the ingredients and spend a few minutes to mix, shape and cook.

This is incredibly easy neapolitan pizza dough recipe!! Really, I am not exaggerating when I say that you only need few minutes. Of course plus the time to have the maturation of the pizza dough. But you will see that this variable is not too much and is pretty flexible. The most important aspect is that the actual time you spend doing something is very low.

So let me introduce you the pizza topic of the days:

• Ingredients and last minute neapolitan pizza recipe
• Mixing and first fermentation
• Second fermentation
• Shaping
• Cooking the last minute pizza
• Schedule for the last minute pizza recipe

If you read the article until the end I will provide a clear schedule with timings to show you how fast you can do this pizza while making sure that the dough maturation is happening.

Ingredients and last minute neapolitan pizza recipe

For the last minute pizza recipe we want to reduce time spent in every activity involved in making pizza. So also when selecting ingredients I respected this principle.

All ingredients I am using are coming from supermarket. You can just go to your local shop and find whatever you need following a few recommendations. So, here is what I bought for this recipe:

For the last minute pizza recipe we want to reduce time spent in every activity involved in making pizza

• Generic Type 00 Flour
  • Pastry/Patent or all-purpose/plain flour with 12% of proteins will be perfect
• Peeled tomatoes
• Mozzarella
• Cherry tomatoes (to make a variation)
• Fresh yeast

I assume that you have already at home salt and… water 🙂

The specific recipe for neapolitan pizza is derived from the calculator on this website. With the following ingredients we will prepare 4 pizza dough balls of ~255 grams each. Perfect for a pizza dinner with family members or with friends. In coming days I will release an updated version of my calculator that will be specific for this pizza recipe, so stay tuned!

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Mixing and first fermentation

This is probably the most exciting part for me. We will knead neapolitan pizza by hand, completely. Actually we will not really knead. We will only mix ingredients. In fact what we are going to do is to facilitate the chemical processes that will create the gluten mesh without creating it mixing. At the same time the first fermentation will start. You will find this method sometimes called as no knead pizza dough.

What we need to do is:

1. put all flour in a bowl
2. Dissolve salt in water at room temperature
3. Put yeast in the bowl
4. add all water in the bowl
5. start mixing

Our goal is to make sure that the flour absorbed all water. So we are not going to knead for long time as we normally do, but just 2 or 3 minutes. The dough will result like the one in pictures:

At this point, let’s cover the bowl. We can use a wet kitchen towel or cling film or silicone lid. I go for the latter. Whatever you use it’s important to cover the bowl to avoid that the dough goes dry.

It’s important to cover the bowl to avoid that the dough goes dry

Then wait between 20 and 40 minutes, depending on room temperature. During winter better to wait 30-40 minutes. During summer 20 minutes will be more than enough. After this time put the bowl in fridge.

Now, the best in my experience is to keep the dough in fridge for 8/9 hours. I don’t recommend less amount of time. But in theory you can reduce this phase to 6 hours. Then move to the next second fermentation.

Second fermentation

After the first fermentation take the bowl out of the fridge. You will immediately notice that the pizza dough changed. Now you should have a gluten mesh created by itself. Isn’t that amazing?

Without loosing too much time, with the dough still cold, take it out of the bowl and make folding for 3 or 4 times at a distance of 15/20 minutes.

If you are jumping between meetings or going out and have no way to manage folding every 15 minutes you can adapt the process. In fact you can put the dough in fridge between folding. Important is to repeat the folding process for a few times. Our intent is to make the gluten mesh much stronger. Especially if the flour is not very strong (low proteins).

After folding the dough goes back in the bowl and in fridge. Now you have a choice. If you need your pizza ready in few hours then you can reduce the time of the second fermentation to just a few hours. Even 3 or 4 will be enough. If you can wait more, even better. Keep the dough in fridge taking in consideration what I am sharing in the next phase: shaping.

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Shaping

This is the last phase of my last second pizza recipe.

Take again the bowl out of the fridge and without waiting move the pizza dough to a table. It’s time to prepare the dough balls. We want 255 grams each.

Now take the dough balls and put them in a recipient where they have enough space between each others. Ideally you can use a pizza box. Finally let them have last fermentation at room temperature.

You need to wait from 4 to 6 hours before you can stretch the pizza dough balls and make them as… pizza 🙂 It depends on the room temperature as well as how much tension you created on the dough ball surface during the shaping. To understand if the dough balls are ready just use the finger: try to create a small hole in the dough and if the dough does not come back then it’s ready. Also try to avoid a too long fermentation. When you see small air bubbles on top of the dough it means they are going over their ideal fermentation.

Cooking the last minute pizza

Before turning on the oven, prepare your ingredients. I strongly recommend to cut mozzarella in strips of about 1 cm and let them dry for a couple of hours in a colander.

Then prepare the peeled tomatoes as described in my previous article.

Finally, turn on your oven, get to 430 celsius degrees and you are ready to go! Here are my pizzas:

Schedule for the last minute pizza recipe

To make this neapolitan pizza dough recipe easier I want to also recommend a couple of schedules you can use. I will not consider the time you spend to go to the shop to buy ingredients though 🙂

This is the first recommended schedule. You will wait about 24 hours from the start to the end:

This is a second schedule, much faster. It is ideal if you decide to prepare pizza on Saturday morning and eat it during the evening. There is an important difference in this second schedule: you don’t use the fridge!

Let me tell you however, that the last schedule is bit less reliable when it comes to times. In fact they can change according to the room temperatures. So you can have some fluctuations in amount of time that each phase requires between summer and winter. Consider that I managed to repeat the process at around 22/23 Celsius degrees. But I honestly prefer to use the fridge for a better control of the entire process. Therefore I think that the first schedule is a bit more reliable.

Do you want to keep doping the original italian pizza with no efforts? Subscribe to my newsletter!
It’s free, you will get access to the recipe notebook I created for you and and you will never lose my tips & tricks around the world of Italian pizza. I hate spam too, so no worries, subscribe with confidence: