Neapolitan Pizza on a skillet (Courtesy of Serious Eats)

Love the taste of homemade Neapolitan pizza but don't have a brick oven that can breach the 700 degree mark in your backyard?

The good people at Serious Eats (my favourite food blog) have a suggested solution... and it works!

Here is the link to their page that has easy step by step instructions for the pizza dough, cooking procedure, and ingredients. I've summarized the process (and what I did) below for those who are already pretty comfortable with dough.

Basic Neapolitan dough of water, salt, sugar, all-purposed flour (00 Italian Bread Flour if you're an Italian Grandmother), yeast, and like all things best in the food world: time - Once kneeded, let the dough rest for 2-3 days covered in the fridge and 2 hour at room temperature before tossing it (spinning it, not throwing away).

 Use whatever toppings you like. I went with the traditional  Margharita or as close as I could get without living under Mt. Vesuvius:

-Tomatoes (sauce)
- Mozzarella
- Basil
- Olive Oil

Yes thats store bought pasta sauce, and its not buffalo mozzarella. I imagine if you're an Italian Grandma and didn't already throw you're grandchildren's computers out the window, you will have now for not using San Marzano tomatoes.

Its cold outside and I'm not leaving the house. Whadda gonna do?


Now for the fun part:

Stretch the dough out on a floured surface until its a bit wider than your hand. At this point, I started to tossing/spinning in from hand to hand.

I learned that 1) this is easier (and cooler) than you would think, and 2) it actually has a practical purpose: By spinning the dough, you get a nice thin center, with a nice thick dough at the edge as the centrifugal force sends the dough outwards.

Now for the cool part:

Heat an oven-proof skillet with a good glug of oil on near high until its almost smoking.

Carefully place the stretched out dough on the skillet. Make sure your hands are dry and take cover, its hots oil. Immediately put the tomato sauce on and ingredients.

Place under broiler for 2-3 minutes, or until you start to see a bit of char forming on the crust.

Finish on the stove top checking the bottom of the pizza occasionally until its the colour you want and serve.