Most pizza dough guides tell you that serious pizza requires 00 flour — the finely milled, soft Italian flour that Neapolitan pizzerias have used for generations. This is not wrong for Neapolitan pizza, which bakes in a 900°F wood-fired oven for 60 to 90 seconds and produces a very soft, slightly charred crust.

Roberta’s does not make exactly Neapolitan pizza. What they make is their own thing — Brooklyn style, wood-fired, but with a crust that has more structure than a classic Neapolitan, an edge that holds its shape under toppings, and a bottom that crisps rather than just chars. The way they achieve this is the 50/50 blend: half 00 flour, half all-purpose flour.

The reason matters for home baking specifically. 00 flour alone produces a very extensible, elastic dough that is easy to over-stretch and difficult to manage. It also bakes more softly at the temperatures a home oven reaches — 500 to 550°F instead of 900°F. All-purpose flour has more protein than 00 — roughly 10 to 12 percent versus 00’s 8 to 9 percent — which builds the gluten structure the crust needs to hold shape and produce a crumb with some chew. The 50/50 blend gives you the fine texture and open crumb that 00 provides alongside the backbone that AP delivers. The result is a dough that stretches without fighting back and bakes into something with real texture rather than soft flatbread.

The hydration is 66 percent — 202 grams of water for 306 grams of total flour. This is wetter than many home pizza doughs, which produces a more open crumb but requires flouring your hands and the peel generously when you work with it.

The 48 to 72 hour refrigerator rest is where the flavor develops. At refrigerator temperature, yeast activity slows to nearly nothing — but does not stop. Over two to three days, the small amount of yeast converts flour sugars to carbon dioxide and ethanol and produces flavor compounds that a same-day room-temperature rise cannot generate. The dough also develops a slight acidity from bacteria in the flour, which contributes the faint tang that distinguishes Roberta’s crust from a bland, wheaty base.

The cold rest also changes the dough structurally. The gluten relaxes and aligns over the long fermentation period, making the dough more extensible when you eventually stretch it — easier to work into a 12-inch round without tearing. Cold-fermented dough is also more tolerant: it will not over-proof the way a warm-risen dough can if you leave it an extra hour.

One limit: do not go past 72 hours. Overfermented dough loses its gas-retaining structure and bakes flat and dense, without the oven spring that creates the cornicione. 48 to 72 hours is the window; most people who make this regularly use the full 72.

The leopard-spot charring on Roberta’s crust — the dark, irregular patches on the rim — comes from sugar in the dough surface caramelizing and carbonizing rapidly when it hits a very hot surface. In a wood-fired oven operating at 800 to 900°F, this happens in 60 to 90 seconds. In a home oven at 550°F, you need the thermal mass of a preheated pizza steel or thick stone and more time — 6 to 8 minutes.

The error most home cooks make is underpredicting preheat time. A pizza steel on a rack in a 550°F oven needs a minimum of 45 minutes — ideally 60 — before it has the thermal mass to bake pizza correctly. The oven itself may reach 550°F in 20 minutes, but the steel has not. When you lay cold dough on an insufficiently preheated steel, the dough surface absorbs the steel’s heat too quickly and the temperature drops; the crust sets without the rapid surface caramelization that creates char and crunch. Fully preheated steel holds its temperature through the first contact with cold dough and gives the bottom of the crust the burst it needs.

A pizza steel is the better tool over a stone. Steel conducts heat roughly 20 times faster than ceramic or cordierite stone, which means it transfers heat into the pizza crust more efficiently. It also does not crack from thermal stress the way a stone can. A ¼-inch steel retains heat well enough for home use. Set it on the top rack, closest to the broiler.

Roberta’s tomato sauce for the Bee Sting is pelati: whole peeled San Marzano tomatoes, drained of excess liquid, crushed by hand, and seasoned with salt and olive oil. That is the full preparation. It does not get cooked before it goes on the pizza.

The logic is simple: the pizza bakes at maximum heat for 6 to 8 minutes, which is plenty of time to cook the sauce on the pizza itself. A pre-cooked sauce would overcook, losing brightness and turning sweet and flat. Raw crushed tomatoes applied at room temperature bake into something fresher than any sauce that has spent 20 minutes on the stove.

Use D.O.P.-certified San Marzano whole peeled tomatoes if you can find them — the same tomatoes that carry a restrained, uncooked sauce like Scarpetta’s spaghetti pomodoro. The D.O.P. certification means they are grown in the volcanic soil near Salerno and processed according to regulated standards. They are consistently lower in acidity, meatier in texture, and more complex in flavor than generic crushed canned tomatoes. Cento, Mutti, and La Valle are the most widely distributed. Do not use pre-seasoned tomatoes or crushed tomatoes — the texture is already processed and the sauce will be thin.

Drain about a third of the liquid before crushing. The sauce on the pizza should be thick enough that it does not run into the cornicione and steam it — a wet sauce makes a soft, undercharred rim.

The Bee Sting goes together in a specific sequence for reasons that are not arbitrary.

Sauce first, thin. Three to four tablespoons for a 12-inch pizza, spread to the inner edge of the rim. Too much sauce makes a wet, floppy center. You should see the dough surface through gaps in the sauce.

Torn mozzarella, not shredded. Use fior di latte — the firmer, lower-moisture style of fresh mozzarella made from cow’s milk rather than buffalo milk. Tear it into rough pieces and place them in gaps, leaving sauce visible between pieces. The imperfect shapes melt differently than uniform rounds, creating an uneven, bubbled surface that looks like restaurant pizza. The mozzarella goes on in pieces, not slices.

Sopressata, thin. Lay 6 to 8 thin slices across the surface. The thin slices will curl into cup shapes as the pizza bakes — this is intentional. The cups catch rendered fat and the fat runs onto the cheese beneath, basting it. If your sopressata is pre-sliced thick, press it thinner between two sheets of plastic wrap with a rolling pin.

Chili oil last, before it goes in. A drizzle over the assembled pizza before it bakes. The oil works into the cheese and sauce as they cook.

Honey after slicing, always. Not before baking, not while the pizza is still whole. The honey goes on the sliced pizza, warm from the oven, in the last step before serving. Honey burns in seconds at 550°F — applied before baking, it produces bitter carbon and a sticky cutter. Applied after slicing, it stays raw and floral, with the sweetness completely intact.

Roberta’s cornicione — the outer rim of the crust — puffs and chars in the oven because it is untouched by sauce, cheese, or toppings. The dry dough edge is free to rise and caramelize. If sauce reaches the rim, it creates a steam barrier that suppresses rise and prevents charring. Leave a clean 1-inch border when you apply the sauce. This is not about aesthetics — it is the mechanism by which the edge becomes the most interesting part of the pizza.

The Bee Sting should not require hot sauce on the side. The heat is in the pizza.