Il Disciplinare

Vessels

If you have none of this, a mixing bowl, a plastic food box for the balls and a jam jar will do everything. What cannot be improvised is the scale and the two thermometers.

Covering

The enemy is a skin. An uncovered surface dries within twenty minutes, and the dry layer never rehydrates — it shows up as pale patches that refuse to colour, and as tearing when you open the ball.

1. A proper lid. Always the best answer. Not clipped down airtight; just resting closed.
2. Cling film across the rim, pulled taut and pressed to the outside of the container — not onto the dough itself, which tears the surface when you peel it off.
3. A damp cloth under a plate, for a 20–30 minute rest only. Over a night it dries and then wicks moisture out of the dough.
4. A dry tea towel is not a cover. It is a wick.

Two exceptions. The biga wants a small vent — lid ajar, or film pierced once. The poolish wants to be airtight, since its wet surface skins fast.

Oil is not a cover, but a thin film wiped round the inside of the bulk tub and over each ball stops sticking and buys a margin against drying. Wipe it on with a paper towel — a sheen, not a pool.

Finding your temperatures

The recipes ask for 20 °C and 17 °C, and most people guess. Take the probe thermometer round the house once, find the places, then use them every time.

Two readings matter and they are not the same. Where you mix sets the water temperature. Where the dough then sits sets the timings. In a heatwave the kitchen can be 8 °C above the cellar, and treating them as one number is enough to wreck a batch.

1 · Dough temperatureA1A2

Take the temperature of the dough the moment mixing finishes. Aim for 22 °C in a final dough, 18 °C in a biga. Adjust the water to hit it: multiply the target by three, then subtract the flour temperature, the prep room temperature and the friction of mixing.

Fermentation runs about twice as fast for every 8 °C. A dough that comes out at 26 °C instead of 22 °C is ready hours before the recipe says.

2 · The aliquot jar

At balling, press 40 g of the same dough into a narrow straight-sided jar, flatten the top, and mark the level with a rubber band. Stand it beside the proofing box. The jar rises exactly as the balls do, and the percentage reads off the glass.

Bake when it reads 50–75 %. Not doubled — a ball taken to double has spent the gas it needs for oven spring.

How far to let the bulk rise

30–50 %. Not double — and a tub with room to double is the right size, because you want headroom you never use.

Gas made during the bulk is gas you are about to press out. Dividing and balling degasses the dough, redistributes the yeast into fresh food and builds new surface tension, so anything inflated before that point is spent for nothing. Bulk is where flavour and extensibility develop; the rise that has to be right is the one in the balls.

Put a rubber band on the bulk tub at the starting level, the same trick as the jar. Then read three things:

• Level against the band — 30–50 % up
• Feel — two fingers pressed in meet almost no resistance. Firm and springy means not yet
• Look — domed rather than flat, bubbles visible where the dough meets the wall

Relaxation outranks volume. If the dough has gone soft and slack but the level says only 25 %, ball it anyway. A dough that is still tight will fight you at balling and give loose, badly formed balls, which no amount of proofing afterwards will fix. The reverse also holds: at 50 % but still springy, give it another half hour.

3 · The dimple

Flour a fingertip and press 1 cm into the side of a ball.

• Springs back fast and completely — not yet. Give it 30–45 minutes.
• Fills slowly and not quite all the way — ready.
• Doesn't fill, ball spread flat, smells boozy — past it. Bake anyway; it will be paler and flatter.

4 · The open test

Opening is stretching a ball out into a flat disc — stendere in Italian. It is done entirely by hand, and it is where a proofing fault shows up first.

A ready ball opens without resisting: you stretch it, and it stays stretched. If the disc pulls back at you, contracts after you let go, or bunches up rather than spreading, it needs more time. Tenacious dough is under-proofed dough until proven otherwise.

The full technique is in Six.

Ripeness, stage by stage

FlourA5

Match strength to time. Too strong for the schedule and the rim comes out chewy and rubbery; too weak and the dough slackens and tears.

In Lausanne: L'Épicerie Fine Sainte Lucie, or Galaxus online.

Hydration

Start at 62 %. Move to 65 % once you can open a ball without tearing it, and to 68 % when 65 % feels easy. Higher hydration buys a lighter, more open crumb and costs handling difficulty.

WaterA4

Lausanne’s water is hard — 295 ppm against an ideal of 100–150 — and calcium tightens the gluten. To soften it, dilute: 41 % tap to 59 % distilled lands at 120 ppm. Adding extra water instead does not remove minerals; it only makes a wetter dough.

Change the water last. Every other cause of tight dough is larger.

Salt

2.5 % of total flour, fine sea salt, added with the final water once the flour is hydrated.

YeastA3

Fresh yeast is the default here — it is what Italian formulas are written in, it disperses readily, and the doses land at weighable sizes. Keep the block wrapped in the fridge for about two weeks; never freeze it. Before committing a batch, check it is firm, pale cream and crumbles cleanly. Tan edges or a sharp smell mean it has lost activity, which is the commonest reason a dough never moves.

Quantities depend on time and temperature. Below are the doses for the three recipes; for any other schedule, room or preferment length, use the calculator.

Size and the ovenA8

The Arc Lite is rated to 12 inches — 30 cm — on a cooking floor 32.5 cm wide, through a mouth 32.5 cm across and 8.5 cm high. At a full 30 cm the pizza leaves barely a centimetre either side, which is not enough room to get a turning peel under it cleanly.

Work at 28 cm. It gives you 2 cm of clearance all round, turns easily, and launches without catching the sides.

Finished pizza runs about 0.40 g per cm² of surface, so any diameter sets its own ball weight.

The two jobsA11

Mixing wets the flour. Kneading links the proteins into a network. They are separate, and doing the first properly makes the second much shorter — a dough left to sit after wetting builds a surprising amount of gluten on its own, with no work from you.

So every method here follows the same shape: combine roughly, wait, then work. The waiting is not idleness; it is the cheapest gluten development available.

The two hand techniques

You only need these two. Both are for after the rest.

Slap and foldA12 — for the bench, and the faster of the two. Slide both hands under the far edge of the dough and lift it. Slap the hanging half onto the bench in front of you, then fold the part still in your hands over the top, away from you. Turn the dough 90° and repeat. Aim for about one cycle a second and keep going for 8–10 minutes. It is sticky and hopeless for the first two minutes, then abruptly starts holding together. Do not add flour through that stage — it always passes.

Stretch and fold — for the bowl, slower in clock time but almost no effort. Wet one hand, reach under one side of the dough, lift it until it stretches, and fold it over the centre. Turn the bowl 90° and repeat four to six times; that is one set. Do four sets, 20 minutes apart. Between sets the dough relaxes and does the work for you.

Direct dough — by hand

1. Hold back 50 g of the water. Dissolve the yeast in the rest.
2. Add the flour. Mix with one hand or a spoon for 2 minutes, to a shaggy mass with no dry flour left at the bottom of the bowl. It will look rough. That is correct.
3. Rest 20 minutes, covered. Nothing to do. The flour finishes absorbing and the gluten begins forming by itself.
4. Add the salt and the reserved 50 g of water. Squeeze the dough repeatedly through your fingers until the water disappears and there are no wet streaks — 2 minutes.
5. Slap and fold 8–10 minutes, or four sets of stretch and fold.
6. Rest 10 minutes, then shape into a tight smooth ball: drag it toward you on an unfloured bench, turning as you go, until the surface is taut.
7. Windowpane, then take the temperature. Target 22 °C.

Poolish dough

The poolish itself is not kneaded. Whisk flour, water and yeast solution for 30 seconds — just until no dry lumps remain. It should pour like a thick batter. Nothing more.

The final dough needs noticeably less work than a direct dough, because the poolish arrives with its gluten already built.

1. Loosen the mature poolish with the new water first — stir until it slackens into a milky liquid. This is the step people skip, and skipping it leaves lumps of poolish that never disperse.
2. Add the flour. Mix 2 minutes to a shaggy mass.
3. Rest 20 minutes, covered.
4. Add the salt. Squeeze through until absorbed.
5. Slap and fold 6–8 minutes. It comes together faster than a direct dough and feels smoother earlier — stop when it does, rather than working to the clock.
6. Rest 30 minutes, then divide and ball.

Biga — day one

This is the one step in the manual that is not kneading in any sense, and the instinct to knead it must be resisted. You are damping flour, not making dough.

1. Pour the yeast water over the flour in stages, tossing with your fingertips as if rubbing butter into pastry.
2. 3–4 minutes maximum. The result is dry, lumpy and looks like a failure: irregular clumps from pea to walnut size, holding together only when squeezed.
3. The single thing to check is that no dry flour remains at the bottom of the bowl. Dig down and look.

If it forms a coherent dough, you have overworked it. It will still make pizza, but with less of the volume the biga is for.

Biga — day two, the refresh

The hardest mixing in this manual: forcing 200 g of cold water into 1.45 kg of stiff, fully developed, seventeen-hour-old preferment. Use a mixer if you have one.

1. Break the biga into walnut-sized pieces into the bowl. Do not tip it in whole.
2. Add 150 g of the water. Mix on the lowest speed for 5 minutes. For the first three it will look like a bowl of wet gravel that will never combine. It combines.
3. Add the salt. Raise to medium and mix 4–5 minutes, until the dough clears the sides of the bowl.
4. Add the last 50 g of water in three additions, waiting for each to be fully taken up before the next. Rushing this is what turns a biga dough into a slurry.
5. Turn out and fold by hand a few times to smooth. Rest 20 minutes, then divide and ball.

Watch the temperature, not the clock. A stiff dough heats fast in a mixer — 6 °C or more across those ten minutes. Check at the halfway point and stop early if it is climbing past 22 °C.

By hand it takes 12–15 minutes of genuinely hard work. Use the pincer method: squeeze the dough flat between thumb and fingers to cut through it, then fold it over, repeatedly. Expect to feel it is going nowhere for the first five minutes.

Knowing when to stop

The windowpane. Pinch off a piece the size of a walnut and stretch it slowly between the fingers of both hands. Ready dough thins into a translucent membrane you can see light through before it tears. Nuvola at 65 % should do this easily.

Hour 0 · Mise en place

1. Take two temperatures first: the kitchen you are standing in, and the flour itself. Put both into the calculator as the prep room and flour figures — the storage room is a separate setting and does not belong here.
2. Weigh 1000 g flour into the mixing bowl and 650 g water into a jug. Adjust the water with hot or cold until it reads what the calculator asked for. If that is below about 14 °C, use fridge water or ice, and weigh what you actually pour.
3. Weigh 25 g salt into a small dish.
4. Make the yeast solution: crumble 1 g fresh yeast into 100 g water, stir, wait ten minutes. Weigh out 140 g for a 1.4 g dose, and subtract it from the 650 g — so 510 g plain water plus 140 g solution.
5. Pour 50 g of the plain water into a separate cup and set it aside. This gets held back.

Hour 0 · The mix

1. Pour the solution and the remaining water into the bowl with the flour.
2. Mix with one cupped hand, turning the bowl with the other, for 2 minutes. Scrape the sides down. Dig to the bottom and check no dry flour is hiding there.
3. It will be rough, lumpy and unpromising. Correct.
4. Cover and leave 20 minutes on the bench.

Hour 0:20 · Salt and knead

1. Scatter the salt over the dough and pour on the reserved 50 g of water.
2. Squeeze the dough through your fingers for about 2 minutes, until no wet streaks or salt grains remain.
3. Tip onto an unfloured bench. Slap and fold 8–10 minutes. It sticks badly for the first two. Do not add flour — scrape your hands with the bench scraper and carry on.
4. Rest 10 minutes under the upturned bowl, then shape into a tight ball by dragging it toward you across the bench until the surface goes taut.
5. Windowpane: stretch a walnut-sized piece thin enough to see light through. If it tears, 3 minutes more.
6. Take the temperature and write it down. Target 22 °C.
7. If it reads above 24 °C, put the covered bowl in the fridge for one hour before it goes to storage. A dough that starts hot stays hot for hours and ferments far ahead of the schedule. This one hour is the cheapest insurance in the whole process.

Hour 0:35 · Into bulk

1. Wipe the inside of the bulk tub with olive oil on a paper towel.
2. Put the dough in seam down and press it flat to the corners so the surface is level. This is what makes the rise readable.
3. Lid on, resting closed.
4. Stand it in your 20 °C spot. Not beside the oven, not in sun, not on a cold tiled floor.
5. Put a rubber band round the tub at the level of the dough.
6. Write the time and the dough temperature on tape on the lid.

Hour 18 · Divide and ball

Start checking at 16 hours. Ready means risen 30–50 % against the band, domed, bubbles visible through the side of the tub, and — the part that decides it — relaxed and soft under the hand. If it is still springy, wait, whatever the level says.

1. Dust the bench lightly. Invert the tub and let the dough fall out under its own weight. Do not pull it — that tears the structure you spent the night building.
2. Cut 7 pieces of 240 g with the bench scraper, weighing each. Cut straight down. Do not saw or tear.
3. Ball each oneA12: fold the edges into the centre four or five times to make a parcel, turn it seam down, then cup both hands round it and drag it in small circles on the unfloured bench until the surface is taut and smooth. About 15 seconds each. A tight ball holds gas; a loose one spreads.
4. Pinch the seam closed underneath.
5. Press 40 g of dough into the aliquot jar. Push out the air pockets, flatten the top, mark the level with the rubber band. Stand it beside the box.
6. Set the balls in the oiled box seam down, at least 4 cm apart — they roughly double their footprint.
7. Lid on. Back to the 20 °C spot.

Hour 23 · Ready

Start checking at 4 hours. Three things must all be true:

• Jar at 50–75 % above the band
• A finger pressed into the side of a ball leaves a dimple that fills slowly and incompletely
• A test ball opens without pulling back

If the first two say yes and the third says no, give it another 30 minutes. The third one wins.

Light the oven 45 minutes before you want to eat. The balls carry on proofing while it heats — expected, and already accounted for.

Opening the ballA12

Two stages: press the gas outward to build the rim, then stretch the middle. Never a rolling pin — it crushes the gas out of the cornicione, and no oven heat brings it back.

Work fast. A disc left standing sticks to the bench and starts to dry.

Stage one — the press. Builds the cornicione and sets the base thickness.

1. Lift the ball with a floured scraper onto a bed of semolina. Turn it once so both faces are lightly coated, then shake the excess off.
2. Place the pads of three fingers of each hand about 2 cm in from the edge. Press down firmly and push outward, driving the gas from the centre into the rim.
3. Rotate a quarter turn, press again. Go round two or three times until you have a disc of about 15 cm with a visibly thick, puffy rim.
4. Flip it over and repeat once on the other side.
5. Never touch the outer 2 cm. Every finger that lands there costs you cornicione.

Stage two — the stretch. Takes it from 15 cm to 28. Three ways; use whichever you can do without tearing.

• Knuckles and gravity — the easiest to learn. Drape the disc over the backs of both closed hands, lift it clear of the bench, and let its own weight pull it down. Rotate steadily. Use knuckles, never fingertips, which punch holes.
• The steering wheel — hold the disc vertically by the rim, as if gripping the top of a steering wheel, and pass it hand to hand round the edge. Gravity does the stretching while the rim stays untouched.
• The slap (schiaffo) — the Neapolitan method, fastest once learned. Hold the disc by the rim in one hand with the other half hanging. Slap the hanging half onto the bench, pulling gently toward you as it lands, then rotate a quarter turn and repeat. A skilled pizzaiolo takes a ball to 30 cm in under thirty seconds.

When to stop: 28 cm across, centre 2.5 mm, rim 15–20 mm. Hold it up against the light — the centre should glow evenly. Bright patches are thin spots and they will tear on launch.

Faults to avoid. Too much flour on the disc burns black on the stone — brush it off before topping. Do not stretch the pizza on the peel; open it on the bench, then transfer. And top it only once it is on the peel, working quickly, because a topped pizza left standing welds itself down.

Where the other two differ

Poolish. The night before, whisk 300 g flour, 300 g water and the yeast solution for 30 seconds in a tall airtight container, and stand it at 20 °C. Next day, when it is domed and just dimpling in the centre, tip it into the bowl and stir the new water into it first, until it slackens to a milky liquid. Then add the flour and pick up at Hour 0 · The mix, step 2. Bulk is only 30 minutes; ball as above and proof 4 hours.

Biga. The night before, toss 1000 g flour with 450 g of 15 °C yeast water using fingertips only, 3–4 minutes, to damp clumps. Lid ajar, at 17 °C. Next day break it into walnut pieces, mix with 150 g water on the lowest mixer speed 5 minutes, add the salt, medium 4–5 minutes, then the last 50 g of water in three additions. Rest 20 minutes, ball as above, proof 2 hours.

Tomato

San Marzano DOP, crushed by hand or through a food mill. Never a blade — shearing separates the water from the pectin holding it, and the sauce floods the base. Salt at 1–1.5 % by weight. Do not cook it; it cooks on the pizza.

CheeseA9

Fior di latte, ideally Agerola. Cut into batons 2–3 mm thick and 1–2 cm wide — cubes have too little surface to shed water and too little mass to survive the heat. Drain in a colander 45–60 minutes, and use at room temperature. Cold cheese chills the surface and forces a longer bake.

Mozzarella di bufala works but is wetter and fattier: tear it, drain on a rack for two hours, use a third less, and add half in the last twenty seconds.

In Lausanne: Aligro for professional formats, or a specialist cheesemonger.

Basil and oil

Tuck the leaves under the cheese before launching, or add them in the last ten seconds — bare on top for a full bake they turn to ash. Weigh the oil at 5 g in a thin spiral, and add a final thread once the pizza is out.

Topping

Open the ball on the bench — the technique is in Six — then transfer it to the peel and top it there. Sauce first, in a spiral from the centre, leaving the rim bare. Cheese, then basil tucked under it, then the oil. Work quickly and launch straight away.

Scaling a batch

Halve or double everything, yeast included. Nothing about the method changes. Below 800 g of total dough a planetary mixer may not engage the hook properly — hand-kneading is easier at that size in any case.

Ball weight follows diameter, so a mixed table is simply a matter of dividing differently.

Small pizzas bake the same way — same thickness, same stone, roughly ten seconds less. They are also easier to turn, which is worth something in an oven this size.

Freezing dough ballsA10

Freeze immediately after balling, before any proof. The dough then proofs after thawing, so the yeast lost to freezing is repaid in time rather than guesswork.

1. Ball as normal. Oil lightly and wrap each one airtight.
2. Spread them apart on a tray in the coldest part of the freezer. Bag them together once solid.
3. Freeze at 62–65 % hydration, not 68.
4. Best within a month; usable to three.

Thaw 12–24 hours in the fridge, then 3–5 hours at 20 °C — longer than a fresh dough, because fewer yeast cells survive. Freeze a 40 g aliquot in its own small jar alongside the balls and read 50–75 % off the glass exactly as usual.

Expect roughly 10–15 % less rise and a slightly tighter crumb. Poolish and biga doughs freeze better than direct dough, because their flavour is already built into the preferment rather than waiting on the final proof. Never freeze the preferment itself.

Freezing par-baked bases

The better option for weeknights, and it costs almost nothing in quality.

1. Open a ball as normal. No toppings.
2. Bake 35–45 seconds — until the base is set and barely coloured.
3. Cool completely on a rack, stack with parchment between, bag and freeze.
4. Top from frozen and bake 60–75 seconds.

The crumb comes out marginally drier, since the oven spring has already happened. In exchange the structure is locked in before freezing, so nothing at all is lost to ice.