Easy Margherita Pizza

Steps

1. Pull the dough early. Take a ball of Overnight Pizza Dough out of the fridge 30–45 minutes before baking so it relaxes and comes to room temperature. Cold dough fights you when you stretch it.
2. Preheat hot. Crank the oven as high as it goes (260°C / 500°F) with a steel, stone, or an upside-down heavy baking sheet inside. Let it heat for at least 45 minutes — this is what gives you a blistered, fast-baking crust.
3. Mix the sauce — no cooking. Stir the passata, a pinch of fine salt, and the olive oil together in a small bowl. Taste: a tiny pinch of sugar fixes sharpness, more salt fixes flat. That’s it. Cooking it now only mutes the flavour since it cooks again on the pizza.
4. Stretch the dough. On a floured or semolina-dusted surface (or a piece of parchment), stretch the dough by hand into an oval or rectangle — easier and more forgiving than chasing a perfect circle. Don’t roll it; you’ll knock out the air. If you don’t have a stone, stretch it right onto parchment so you can slide the whole thing onto the back of the hot baking sheet.
5. Sauce thin. Spread a thin layer with the back of a spoon, leaving a 2 cm border. Use less than you think — too much sauce makes the centre soggy.
6. Cheese. Scatter the mozzarella, then the parm. Fresh torn mozzarella is Cezar’s favourite here; shredded low-moisture melts more evenly and browns better. Either works, or use both.
7. Bake 6–9 minutes until the crust is blistered and the cheese is bubbling with brown spots. On parchment, slide it (paper and all) onto the preheated sheet.
8. Finish out of the oven. Tear the fresh basil over the top so it doesn’t burn, add a little more parm, a crack of black pepper, a drizzle of good olive oil, and a pinch of flaky salt on the crust — the chef’s-kiss move.

Notes

• Sprucing the sauce is optional. Plain seasoned passata is genuinely good. For a deeper, restaurant-style sauce, blend in a small spoonful of tomato paste — adds body without cooking. If the passata is watery, strain it through a fine sieve for 10–15 minutes first.
• Keep it a true margherita: skip garlic, onion, oregano, and Italian seasoning in the sauce — let the tomato, basil, mozzarella, and olive oil speak.
• Want garlic anyway? Gently warm 3 tbsp olive oil with 3–4 cloves minced or sliced garlic over low heat for 2–3 minutes until just fragrant (don’t let it brown — it goes bitter). Either spread a little of this garlic oil over the passata, or stir a spoonful straight into the sauce before topping. Fresh cloves beat the jarred minced here.
• Skip the cheddar. It weeps oil on pizza. If you must, only a small handful mixed into the mozz.
• No tomato at all? Brush the stretched dough with that garlic oil instead of sauce, top with the same cheese blend, and bake — a quick white pizza off the same dough.
• Total time from pulling the dough to eating is about 50 minutes, most of it hands-off while the oven heats.

My Notes

(your own tweaks go here)