Diavola (Spicy Salami)
Neapolitan heat — spicy salami piccante on a Margherita base. The salami cups curl up and collect little pools of spicy oil.
Recipe by ThePizzaPlanet.com · Published
Essential tool for this bake
Honey on pizza confuses people right up until they try it. The drizzle isn't sweetness for its own sake — it's there to balance the chili heat and salt of the salami, the way a great glaze finishes a pork shoulder. Thick-cut domestic pepperoni and natural-casing imported salami piccante behave nothing alike here. Reach for the thin-sliced natural-casing: it cups, it crisps, it pools a tiny bit of spicy oil in the center of each disc. That oil mixing with the honey on the way down is the whole point of the pie. We build the dough on the blue-bag Caputo Chef's, which holds a long ferment and gives the rim enough structure to carry all that salami fat.
Flour: Caputo "00" Chef's Flour (blue bag) (13% protein) — read the review
Dough Formula
| Ingredient | Grams | Baker's % |
|---|---|---|
| Flour (13% protein) | 596 g | 100.0% |
| Water | 388 g | 65.1% |
| Salt | 14.9 g | 2.5% |
| Yeast | 1.2 g | 0.2% |
Makes 4 balls of ≈250 g
Ingredients
Dough
- Pizza dough (see formula above)4 balls
Sauce
- San Marzano tomatoes400g
- Salt3 g
Toppings
- Fresh mozzarella200g
- Spicy salami piccante100g, sliced thin
- Calabrian chili paste — Optional1 g
- Honey — After bakingdrizzle
Instructions
- 1
Make the dough: mix per the formula above, then follow the calculator schedule for Neapolitan — 29 h bulk/cold ferment before shaping (hands-on 20 min).
- 2
Prepare sauce — crush tomatoes with salt.
- 3
Stretch dough, add sauce and torn mozzarella.
- 4
Distribute salami slices evenly — they'll curl and crisp in the oven.
- 5
Bake at 480-510°C (900-950°F) for 60-90 seconds.
- 6
Finish with honey drizzle and optional chili paste.
Tips
- →Hands-on time is about 22 minutes; allow the dough its full ferment — see the calculator schedule
- →Thin-sliced salami curls up better than thick slices
- →The honey drizzle is non-negotiable — sweet + spicy + salty is perfection
- →Natural-casing pepperoni curls up more reliably
Video by Food Talks · 30K views · 4 min · on YouTube
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Flour
Caputo "00" Chef's Flour (blue bag)
Buy the blue bag if you cold-ferment 24–72 hours. It is the 00 that survives a long ferment, which is also what lets it brown in a home oven.
$19.92· as of Nov 5, 2026, 03:49 UTCCheck price on Amazon →Read the review →i
Product prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on Amazon.com at the time of purchase will apply to the purchase of this product.Ingredient
La Valle San Marzano D.O.P. Whole Peeled Tomatoes
The consortium's protected-origin mark: variety and ground audited. The catch is that La Valle publishes no product page, so the mark is read off the tin and the listing, not a maker's record.
$31.60· as of Nov 5, 2026, 03:49 UTCCheck price on Amazon →Read the buying guide →i
Product prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on Amazon.com at the time of purchase will apply to the purchase of this product.Ingredient
BelGioioso Fresh Mozzarella Ball
Fresh mozzarella, the wetter style by definition: right for a 60-to-90-second bake, wrong for a home oven, where it weeps onto the base instead of flashing off.
$3.18· as of Nov 5, 2026, 03:49 UTCCheck price on Amazon →Read the buying guide →i
Product prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on Amazon.com at the time of purchase will apply to the purchase of this product.Ingredient
SAF Instant Yeast
Instant, so it goes in dry with the flour: no warm-water step means no step at which the yeast can be cooked, which is where an active-dry dough most often dies.
Check price on Amazon →Read the review →Equipment
Original Baking Steel
6.4 mm is the home compromise: enough stored heat to bake two pies back to back, in a slab that will never crack the way a cordierite stone eventually does.
$139.00· as of Nov 5, 2026, 03:49 UTCCheck price on Amazon →Read the review →i
Product prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on Amazon.com at the time of purchase will apply to the purchase of this product.Equipment
Skyflame Aluminium Pizza Peel (14 × 16 in)
The single peel to own if you own one: thin enough to launch from, rigid enough to turn and retrieve with, at the size a home oven door takes.
$27.99· as of Nov 5, 2026, 03:49 UTCCheck price on Amazon →Read the review →i
Product prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on Amazon.com at the time of purchase will apply to the purchase of this product.
If this goes wrong
Watery pizza from fresh mozzarella
Fresh mozzarella runs 52–60% water against 45–52% for low-moisture, and most of it leaves in the first two minutes of the bake. Tear it and drain it 30–60 minutes ahead, use less of it, and put it on in cubes rather than slices.
No leopard-spotting on the cornicione
Leopard spots are charred bubble tops, not browning, and charring needs a floor around 400 °C (750 °F) plus a well-fermented dough. In a home oven you can approximate it with a steel on the top rack and the grill flat out — true leoparding needs a pizza oven.
Pizza dough won't stretch (springs back)
The gluten is tensioned, not broken. Cover the ball and rest it — 20 minutes if it is already at room temperature, 1–2 hours if it came out of the fridge — then stretch again in stages.
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