Marinara (No Cheese)
The oldest pizza in Naples — just tomato, garlic, oregano, and olive oil. No cheese. Simple perfection.
Recipe by ThePizzaPlanet.com · Published
Essential tool for this bake
We make marinara when we want to know if our dough is actually any good. With no cheese to soften the bake and no toppings to distract, you taste the crust unfiltered. The first time you nail a marinara — garlic just-toasted, oregano blooming in the oil, crust shatter-crisp at the edge and pillowy in the rim — you'll understand why this is the older sister to the Margherita. Splurge on the olive oil. Use the most fragrant dried oregano you can find. Slice the garlic paper-thin or it won't cook through in 90 seconds. With no cheese to hide behind, the sauce is half the pie — if it tastes sharp or thin, start with why raw sauce falls flat.
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
- Garlic4 cloves, thinly sliced
- Dried oregano1 g
- Extra virgin olive oilgenerous drizzle
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
Crush tomatoes and season with salt.
- 3
Preheat oven to 480-510°C (900-950°F).
- 4
Stretch dough, add sauce, distribute garlic slices, sprinkle oregano, drizzle oil.
- 5
Bake 60-90 seconds in pizza oven. Home oven: 5-6 min at max.
- 6
Finish with another drizzle of your best olive oil.
Tips
- →Hands-on time is about 17 minutes; allow the dough its full ferment — see the calculator schedule
- →Use the best olive oil you have — it's the star here
- →Thin garlic slices toast quickly — watch they don't burn
- →This pizza is the purest test of your dough quality
Video by Food Talks · 3.8K views · 13 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
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
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.
Pizza sauce tastes flat or too acidic
Flat almost always means under-salted — a Neapolitan sauce is raw crushed tomatoes and about 1% salt by weight, so 4 g in a 400 g can. Sharp usually means the brand, not your technique, and cooking it down concentrates the acid rather than removing it.
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