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Pizza fritta — deep-fried Neapolitan dough pockets

Naples's deep-fried answer to a working oven, born from post-war scarcity: the same Neapolitan dough base, opened, stuffed with ricotta and provola, sealed, and fried rather than baked. The only guide on this site that doesn't use an oven at all.

For Pizza fritta in Pan or stovetop-assisted method. 4-5 stuffed fried pockets from a batch of 200g dough balls.

Dough spec

Flour
Type 00 flour
Hydration
60%
Salt
2.8%

Scale this guide

Flour
491 g
Water
295 g
Salt
13.8 g
Total dough
800 g
Per ball
200 g × 4

Use the dough calculator with this hydration/salt and a 200g ball weight for any number of pockets — the calculator scales flour, water, and salt together; each ball becomes one filled, fried pocket. Open the full dough calculator for more control, or the fermentation schedule builder to work backwards from a target bake time using this guide’s room temperature long fermentation approach.

Steps

  1. MixMix flour, water, and salt to a smooth dough, similar to a standard Neapolitan mix.
  2. Bulk fermentBulk ferment at room temperature for 2-4 hours.
  3. Divide and ballDivide into 200g portions and ball.
  4. Final proofProof for a further 4-8 hours at room temperature.
  5. ShapeOpen each ball into a disc by hand, spoon ricotta, provola, and cured meat onto one half, then fold the other half over and seal the edge firmly — a poorly sealed edge is the main cause of filling leaking into the oil.
  6. BakeDeep-fry in oil at around 175-185C for 3-5 minutes, turning once, until deeply golden all over. This replaces baking entirely — there is no oven step in this guide.
  7. RestDrain briefly on a rack or paper towel — the filling stays very hot for a few minutes after frying.
  8. ServeServe hot, traditionally as street food, often folded in paper rather than plated.

Bake notes

Oil temperature matters more here than in any baked guide on this site: too cool and the result is greasy and undercooked rather than crisp; a thermometer is worth using rather than guessing.

This guide's oven slug (pan-or-stovetop-method) reflects that pizza fritta is fried, not baked — the bakeTemperature/duration figures describe frying oil conditions, not an oven setting, and the 'bake' stage in the steps below is a frying step by convention of this schema's fixed stage vocabulary.

Generally accepted · Historically documented practice

Show sources and evidence