🇮🇹 How to Make Margherita Pizza

Craving Margherita Pizza? On FoodNeverComes the food never actually comes — so here's how to make real Margherita Pizza at home, in about 30 min, with stuff you probably already have.

🛒 Ingredients

Tap ingredients to tick them off as you shop or cook ✔️

• 400g pizza dough (store-bought is fine — but it MUST be at room temperature)
• ½ cup passata
• 1 clove garlic, grated + a pinch of salt + 1 tsp olive oil
• 125g fresh mozzarella, torn and drained on paper towel
• fresh basil leaves
• olive oil + semolina or flour for dusting

👩‍🍳 Method

1. Put a pizza stone or an upside-down baking tray on the top shelf and crank the oven to its absolute maximum (250°C+) for a full 30 min. A cold surface is why home pizza disappoints.
2. Stir the garlic, salt and olive oil into the passata. That's the whole sauce — no cooking.
3. Stretch the room-temperature dough by hand on a floured surface, pressing from the centre outwards. Leave the edge fat. Never use a rolling pin — it kills the bubbles.
4. Sauce in a thin layer — 3 tbsp maximum. Too much sauce = soggy middle. Scatter the drained mozzarella. Nothing else yet.
5. Slide it onto the screaming-hot tray and bake 7–10 min until the crust is leopard-spotted and the cheese bubbles.
6. Basil and a swirl of olive oil go on AFTER the oven (basil burns black inside). Slice, and accept that you'll be making this weekly now.