Baked and breads
Pizza Margherita
The Neapolitan pizza of tomato, mozzarella and basil, baked in minutes in a very hot wood oven.
Pizza Margherita is a round of soft, blistered Neapolitan dough topped with crushed tomato, slices of mozzarella, fresh basil and olive oil, baked for about a minute or two in a wood-fired oven. Its red, white and green echo the Italian flag. It is the pizza by which Neapolitan pizzerias are judged.
What goes in
- Fior di latte or buffalo mozzarella422%, Torn or sliced, well drained.
- Pizza dough844%, Long-risen, hand-stretched.
- Crushed tomatoes422%, Raw, lightly salted.
- Basil16%, Fresh leaves.
- Olive oil16%, A thread over the top.
Rough parts by weight. The ring shows each ingredient's share of the dish.
Made step by step
Each drawing shows the operation for that step. Quantities and timings differ from house to house; this is one traditional way, in outline.
Step 1: Knead Mix and knead a soft dough of flour, water, salt and yeast. Step 2: Rest Let it rise slowly, then divide into balls and rise again. Step 3: Knead Stretch each ball by hand into a thin round with a raised rim. Step 4: Layer Spread crushed tomato and add mozzarella, basil and oil. Step 5: Bake Bake in a very hot wood oven for a minute or two until blistered. Step 6: Serve Serve whole, to be eaten with knife and fork or folded. Finished Pizza Margherita, by share.
The queen and the legend
The usual story says that in 1889 a Naples pizzaiolo made this pizza for Queen Margherita of Savoy and named it after her. Historians have questioned the account, since similar pizzas existed earlier and some documents behind the story are disputed. Either way, the name stuck. The art of the Neapolitan pizzaiolo was inscribed on UNESCO's intangible heritage list in 2017.
Which mozzarella
Neapolitan rules allow either fior di latte, mozzarella made from cow's milk, or mozzarella di bufala, from water buffalo milk. Some pizzerias call the buffalo version a margherita di bufala or add the cheese after baking. The cheese should be fresh and well drained, so it melts into patches rather than flooding the dough. A little grated hard cheese is sometimes added too.
Where it is used
The cheeses in it
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Sources and further reading
Original text and drawings by the EveryCheese desk, written with AI assistance and checked against the sources above. The shares are a rough, illustrative ratio, not a recipe: every family and kitchen makes it differently. If we have something wrong, tell us.
Photo credits on this page
The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.
- Buffalo mozzarella: Luigi Versaggi, CC BY-SA 2.0, source
- Mozzarella: Popo le Chien, CC BY-SA 3.0, source