The oven
Everything on the menu is those two numbers. What follows is the dough, the fire, where each ingredient comes from, and a log of what changed in the kitchen this year.
24
hours
The dough waits.
Caputo 00, water, Trapani salt at 2.8 percent, and a gram of yeast per kilo. Mixed at five in the afternoon, it is not touched again until five the next day. Twenty-four hours at eighteen degrees is what makes the crust taste of wheat and not of yeast.
250
grams
One ball, one pizza.
Each ball weighs two hundred and fifty grams. Opened by hand from the centre out, never rolled, so the air the dough spent a day making stays at the rim. Thirty centimetres, three millimetres at the middle.
485
degrees
Turned twice, and out.
Beech and oak, the floor at four hundred and eighty-five, the dome higher. The pizza is turned twice with the peel and out in sixty to seventy seconds. Longer and the fior di latte splits. Shorter and the base is bread.
Where it comes from
Eight ingredients, eight places.
Every tin, sack and crate in the kitchen has a name on it. These are the names.
Flour
Napoli
Mulino Caputo, tipo 00 Pizzeria
Milled ten minutes from the oven. W 260 to 270, which is what a twenty-four hour dough wants.
Tomato
Agro Sarnese-Nocerino
San Marzano DOP, whole peeled
Crushed by hand each afternoon. Salt, nothing else. The DOP seal is on every tin in the kitchen.
Fior di latte
Monti Lattari
Caseificio in Agerola
Arrives every morning, cut and left to drain for four hours so the pizza does not swim.
Mozzarella di bufala
Piana del Sele
Caseificio in Paestum
Made the same day. Torn, never sliced, and added in the last ten seconds.
Olive oil
Irpinia
Single estate, Ravece olives
Finished on every pizza after the fire. Green and peppery, changes with the harvest.
Wood
Matese
Beech and oak, seasoned two years
Beech for heat, oak for a longer burn. Never fruitwood: it smokes sweet and fights the tomato.
Salt
Trapani
Sea salt
In the dough at 2.8 percent, in the tomato by taste.
Basil
Vico della Cenere
Grown on the roof
Picked at five. It goes on after the fire or it goes black.
Fire log
What changed this year.
Not a blog. A short record of the kitchen, written when something actually changes.
12 to 14 October
Relining the oven
The floor of the oven is replaced every six years. Three days closed. The first bake after a relining is always a Marinara, and it is always for the staff.
September
New flour lot
Caputo changed lot. Hydration up one percent to 63 for the first week while the dough settles.
August
Tomato season
This year's San Marzano arrived on the 28th. The 2025 tins come off the shelf the same day.
July
Heat
The room reached 31 degrees on the 19th. We closed the oven side of the room and served thirty covers instead of forty.