... as the Italian flag

From the alleys of Naples the pizza soon conquered the Royal Court. By the legend, though the information we have are really opposite, Ferdinando IV, King of Naples, often attended the pizzerias of his city, even if this meant to transgress the Court ceremonial. His wife, the Queen Maria Carolina d'Asburgo Lorena, she too greedy of pizzas, built a special oven in the Capodimonte's royal palace, to cook and to serve herself pizzas to guests. Towards 1830, another King of Naples, Ferdinando Il, called up at his Court, for a party, Domenico Testa the pizzaiolo, the owner of a shop, charging him to prepare his famous pizzas. By the success Testa obtained the very desired title of "monzù", that is monsieur, which was awarded only to worthy people. According to the chronicles of the time, we can find Alexander Dumas quoting the pizza in the pages he wrote in 1835 while travelling:" The pizza has a circular shape and it is obtained by working the same bread's dough". And still: " The pizza can be with oil, pork fat, cheese, tomato, little fishes". Towards the half of the XIX century, in the De Boucards's work "Usi e costumi di Napoli", the pizza appeared as one of the most popular Neapolitan specialty, worked out different varieties: with garlic and oil, with grated cheese and basil, with fish and, at least, with mozzarella.  There is to say, yet, the most famous episode about the birth of the pizza Margherita, even if this already existed, named in different ways, previously.  In 1889, Umberto I, King of Italy, and the Queen Margherita di Savoia, in Naples on holiday, called up at their Palace the most popular of the pizzaioli, named Raffaele Esposito, to taste his specialties. The cooker prepared three kind of pizzas: one with pork fat, cheese and basil, one with garlic, oil and tomatoes and another with mozzarella, basil and tomatoes, to honour the Italian flag. The Queen liked this last kind of pizza so much that she sent to the pizzaiolo a letter to thank him: "I assure you that the three pizzas you have prepared were very delicious".  Raffaele Esposito dedicated his specialty to the Queen and so this is the way the pizza Margherita born.

How to prepare the dough

400g of white flour
20g of yeast
a spoon of salt
a glass of warm water

Melt the yeast in a half glass of warm water.
Let it settle for ten minutes at room temperature, until it makes the foam.
Combine the flour with the other ingredients in a bowl or on the table.
Create a cavity in the centre and pour a half glass of salted warm water. Start to work into dough the ingredients with the tiptoes, until the flour has absorbed the water. Add little by little the melted yeast and begin to work delicately the compound.
On the floured table work the dough for ten minutes unitl it may form a bread roll, which has to result homogeneous and consistent.
Put the bread roll in a floured bowl, cover all with a transparent sheet or with a clean dish-cloth and let the whole rise in a warm place for an hour.
The dough will be ready when the volume will be doubled.
Overthrow the dough on the floured table and flatten it soon, to break the leavening. The dough is ready when the hole that forms pushing it with the finger disappears immediately.
You can give the dough the shape you want leveling it with the rolling pin or with the hands, moving from inside towards the border and then turning it around every now and then. To obtain a thin and crispy pizza, level the dough until it reaches the thickness of 5 mm; for a more tender pizza, instead, the thickness should be 1 cm tall.
With the tiptoes form a border along the edge of the dough, to avoid that the stuff could flow out during the cooking.
Put the pizza on a baker's paddle or in a baking-pan, cover it with a clean dishcloth and e let it rise for about 20 minutes, until its volume will be doubled.
The pizza is now ready to be filled and to be put into the oven