Neapolitan Ham and Mushroom Pizza | Pizza Prosciutto e Funghi

Name: Neapolitan Ham and Mushroom Pizza (Pizza Prosciutto e Funghi)
Prep time: 30 min
Cook time: 8 min
Total time: 38 min
Yield: 4 pizzas, one per person
Cuisine: Italian, Campania
Ingredients: Tipo 00 flour, 3 1/3 cups (500 g); Water, room temperature, 1 1/3 cups (325 ml); Fine sea salt, 2 tsp (10 g); Instant dry yeast, 1/4 tsp (1 g); Semolina or flour, for dusting; Cremini mushrooms, sliced 1/4 inch (6 mm) thick, 1 lb (450 g); Extra virgin olive oil, 2 tbsp (30 ml); Garlic clove, smashed, 1; Fine sea salt, 1/4 tsp (1.5 g), added only at the end; Freshly ground black pepper, to taste; Flat leaf parsley, chopped, 1 tbsp; Canned San Marzano tomatoes, crushed by hand, 1 cup (240 g); Fine sea salt, 1/2 tsp (3 g); Fior di latte, torn and well drained, 10 oz (280 g); Prosciutto cotto, sliced thin, 6 oz (170 g); Semolina, for the peel, 2 tbsp (20 g); Extra virgin olive oil, 1 tbsp (15 ml); Freshly ground black pepper, a few turns

Sep 29

11 min read

Updated: Oct 24

Pizza Prosciutto e Funghi (Italian Neapolitan Ham and Mushroom Pizza)

Pizza prosciutto e funghi is the quiet classic of the Neapolitan pizzeria, and it usually fails in two ways: a wet, soft centre and a dry, leathery ham. Both have the same cause, which is cooking the wrong ingredient at the wrong moment.

This version solves them at the stove and at the pass. The mushrooms are sautéed hard and cooled before they touch the dough, and the ham never sees the oven at all.

Yield: 4 pizzas, one per person. Prep: 30 minutes. Ferment: 8 to 10 hours. Cook: 90 seconds to 8 minutes depending on the oven. Difficulty: intermediate.

The Story

Naples gave the world the pizza, and the city still defines what a pizzeria is. The Margherita of 1889 fixed tomato and fior di latte as the base of everything, and in 2017 UNESCO recognised the art of the pizzaiuolo as intangible heritage. Around that base the pizzerie built a short list of toppings that regulars order by shorthand, and prosciutto e funghi is one of the most asked for, two words at the counter with no menu in sight.

Its two toppings come from two different Italian traditions that met at the pizza oven. Mushrooms have always mattered in Campania, where the chestnut woods of the Monti Lattari and the Irpinia hills feed a seasonal habit of foraging, while the cultivated champignon arrived in the pizzeria as the practical, year round cousin of the porcino. Prosciutto cotto is the other half. It is not the raw cured leg of Parma or San Daniele but a brined pork leg cooked gently in moulds, sliced pink and mild, a staple of the Italian delicatessen counter and of the toasted panino.

What makes the pairing Neapolitan rather than merely Italian is the way the pizzaiuolo thinks about heat. A wood fired oven burns at around 900°F (485°C) and finishes a pizza in 90 seconds, a tempo that punishes anything wet and anything already cooked. A raw mushroom in that window drops its water into the tomato and the mozzarella before the dough has set, and a slice of cooked ham shrivels in the flame. The old pizzerie learned to manage both by instinct, and this recipe simply writes the instinct down.

Ask a pizzaiuolo why the ham goes on last and the answer is usually a shrug and a phrase about respect for the product. Prosciutto cotto is made to be eaten as it is, and every degree of heat past warming takes something from it. The mushrooms, by contrast, are a raw material that needs finishing. That difference, between an ingredient that is ready and one that is not, is the whole logic of this pizza, and it shows how the Neapolitan kitchen treats each ingredient on its own terms rather than by a fixed template.

As pizza spread beyond Campania during the twentieth century, this combination travelled with it and became a fixture of pizzerie from Turin to Palermo. A home oven is gentler than a wood fired one, which forgives some mistakes and exposes others, so the method below matters even more in a domestic kitchen than in Naples.

Ingredients

For the dough

Tipo 00 flour, 3 1/3 cups (500 g)
Water, room temperature, 1 1/3 cups (325 ml)
Fine sea salt, 2 tsp (10 g)
Instant dry yeast, 1/4 tsp (1 g)
Semolina or flour, for dusting

For the mushrooms

Cremini mushrooms, sliced 1/4 inch (6 mm) thick, 1 lb (450 g)
Extra virgin olive oil, 2 tbsp (30 ml)
Garlic clove, smashed, 1
Fine sea salt, 1/4 tsp (1.5 g), added only at the end
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
Flat leaf parsley, chopped, 1 tbsp

For the pizzas

Canned San Marzano tomatoes, crushed by hand, 1 cup (240 g)
Fine sea salt, 1/2 tsp (3 g)
Fior di latte, torn and well drained, 10 oz (280 g)
Prosciutto cotto, sliced thin, 6 oz (170 g)
Semolina, for the peel, 2 tbsp (20 g)

For finishing

Extra virgin olive oil, 1 tbsp (15 ml)
Freshly ground black pepper, a few turns

Choose firm, closed cap cremini or white champignon with dry surfaces. The prosciutto cotto should be pale pink and sliced to order. Fior di latte suits this pizza better than buffalo mozzarella, which carries even more whey. Canned San Marzano tomatoes from the Agro Sarnese Nocerino area should list only tomato, salt and a basil leaf on the label.

Preparation

Mix and ferment the dough

Portioning fermented pizza dough into smooth balls.

Stir the yeast into the water, add the flour and mix until no dry flour remains, then rest 20 minutes. Add the salt, knead 8 minutes until smooth and elastic, and leave the dough covered at 68°F (20°C) for 8 to 10 hours, until roughly doubled. Divide into four balls of about 7 oz (210 g), tuck each one under to form a taut skin, and rest them covered on a floured tray for 2 hours. They are ready when a fingertip dent springs back slowly and the dough feels airy and slack.

Cook the mushrooms dry

Sautéing sliced cremini mushrooms until golden and dry.

Heat a wide skillet over high heat until it smokes lightly, then add the oil and the garlic. Add the mushrooms in a single crowded layer without salt and leave them alone for 2 minutes. Toss, and keep cooking for 6 to 8 minutes total, until the pan is dry, the liquid has gone and the slices are deep golden and springy. Moisture first floods the pan, then evaporates, and only then does browning begin, so do not stop early.

Cool and season the mushrooms

Cooling browned mushrooms on a tray with parsley and seasoning.

Remove the garlic, tip the mushrooms onto a tray and spread them thin. Season with the 1/4 teaspoon of salt, the pepper and the parsley only now. Cool them fully, at least 20 minutes. Warm mushrooms would melt the mozzarella and steam the dough before it reaches the oven.

Make the tomato sauce

Stirring salt into hand-crushed tomatoes for uncooked pizza sauce.

Stir the salt into the crushed tomatoes and nothing else. No cooking, no sugar, no garlic. The sauce cooks on the pizza, and a raw sauce keeps the bright acidity that balances the milky cheese and the ham. If the tomatoes look watery, drain them in a sieve for 10 minutes first.

Preheat the oven

Preheating a pizza baking steel in the oven.

Place a pizza steel or stone on the top rack and heat the oven to its maximum, 500 to 550°F (260 to 290°C), for a full 45 minutes. A wood fired oven should sit near 900°F (485°C). The deck must be saturated with heat or the underside stays pale, and a short preheat is the most common reason a home pizza disappoints.

Shape the dough

Shaping pizza dough by hand while preserving an airy rim.

Dust a bench with semolina. Press each ball from the centre outward with your fingertips, leaving a rim of 1/2 inch (1.25 cm), then stretch over your knuckles to about 10 inches (25 cm). Never use a rolling pin: it crushes the gas that gives the edge its lift. If the dough springs back, rest it for 5 minutes and stretch again. A dough that tears has been stretched too thin in one spot, so pinch the tear closed with a little flour and move on.

Dress and bake

Baking tomato, mozzarella and mushroom pizza before adding ham.

Spread 3 tablespoons of sauce, leaving the rim bare. Scatter one quarter of the fior di latte, then the cooled mushrooms. Slide onto the steel and bake 6 to 8 minutes at home, or 90 seconds in a wood fired oven, until the rim blisters and the cheese bubbles in patches. Rotate the pizza halfway through if your oven has hot spots.

Finish with the ham

Draping soft prosciutto cotto over the freshly baked pizza.

Pull the pizza out and lay the ham on immediately, in loose folds. The residual heat warms it through in about 30 seconds without cooking it. Add a thread of olive oil and serve at once.

Plating

Serve each pizza whole on a warmed round plate or a wooden board, never pre cut in the kitchen unless it is for sharing. The ham should read as soft pink ribbons draped over the golden mushrooms, with the white islands of mozzarella showing through and the blistered cornicione framing everything.

A few drops of extra virgin olive oil over the ham give it a gloss and a fruity note. Eat within two minutes, folded or with knife and fork, while the base is still crisp and the ham is still warm. A crisp green salad dressed with lemon and a little oil is the natural companion, since its acidity resets the palate between slices.

Professional Technique

The whole pizza rests on one rule: the mushrooms are cooked before, the ham is cooked never. A raw cremini is roughly 90 percent water, and on a pizza that water has nowhere to go. It leaks into the tomato and the mozzarella and leaves a soft, grey centre. So the mushrooms go into a skillet first, over high heat, and stay there until they lose about half of their weight, and often closer to 60 percent. A pound (450 g) of sliced mushrooms should finish near 7 ounces (200 g). You judge it by sight and sound: the hissing quiets, the pan turns dry, and the slices take on golden colour and a springy bite. Then they are cooled completely on a tray, spread thin, so they stop cooking and shed any last steam.

They are never salted first. Salt pulls water from the cells, so early salting makes the mushrooms stew in their own liquid, turn grey and rubbery, and lose the browning. Season only after the water is gone and the colour is made, when a pinch is enough to sharpen the flavour.

The ham is the opposite case. Prosciutto cotto is already cooked and brined, so oven heat has nothing left to do for it. It only dries the slices into stiff, salty, leathery sheets. The ham goes on after baking, where the heat of the crust and the cheese warms it through without cooking it.

The order of dressing follows from this: raw tomato sauce, then cheese, then cooled mushrooms, then the bake, then the ham straight from the oven, and the oil last.

Texture and Moisture Control

The dough here is at 65 percent hydration, which gives an open, tender crumb yet still lets the base crisp under strong heat. A wetter dough would sag under the toppings. Flour the peel with semolina, which rolls like tiny ball bearings and lets the pizza slide without sticking or burning.

Fior di latte carries a lot of whey. Tear it, drain it in a colander for 30 minutes, and blot it with kitchen paper. Fresh mozzarella that goes onto the dough straight from the bag makes a puddle in the middle of the pizza. Do not add more than one quarter of the cheese per pizza.

Heat is the last variable. A hot steel cooks the underside in minutes and sets the structure before the moisture in the sauce can soak in, which is how the base stays crisp on the outside and tender within. The mushrooms add savoury depth, not liquid, and the ham stays soft and supple because it never sees the oven. Let the pizza stand for 30 seconds after baking before cutting, so the cheese settles and the steam escapes from the crust instead of softening it.

Professional Mise en Place

Equipment and tools

Pizza steel or stone, and a wooden or metal peel
Wide skillet, colander and a rimmed tray for cooling
Sharp knife for slicing the mushrooms evenly
Dough scraper, bench flour and a bowl of semolina
Pizza wheel and a warmed round plate for each guest

Prepared ahead

Dough balls, fermented and portioned on the day
Mushrooms cooked, seasoned and cooled, up to 1 day ahead in the fridge
Sauce mixed and mozzarella torn and draining
Ham kept cold and sliced thin on paper, covered with film
Semolina and bench flour at hand, tomatoes drained if watery

Service setup

Oven and steel at full heat for 45 minutes
Toppings lined up in the order of dressing
Ham within reach of the oven door, olive oil in a small jug
Only one pizza dressed at a time, because the dough sticks to the peel within minutes
Plates warm and a cloth ready to wipe the peel between bakes
A timer for the bake and a tray for the finished pizzas, so nothing waits on the bench

Chef Tips

Slice the mushrooms 1/4 inch (6 mm) thick. Thinner slices burn before they lose their water and thicker ones release it in the oven.

Cook the mushrooms in two batches if your skillet is small. Crowding is good, but a pile deeper than two slices steams instead of browning. Let the pan recover its heat between batches.

Buy ham sliced to order, as thin as paper. Thick slices stay cold at the centre and taste of brine, while paper thin ones warm instantly from the crust and melt on the tongue. Keep them cold until the moment they go on.

If your oven tops out at 475°F (245°C), bake a minute or two longer and lower the steel by one rack level so the top does not dry out. Watch the rim rather than the clock, and pull the pizza when the blisters turn deep brown.

Common Mistakes

Putting raw mushrooms on the pizza. They release water in the oven, and the centre turns soft and grey. Sauté until dry and golden first, and cool them before dressing the pizza.

Salting the mushrooms at the start. Early salt draws out water and the slices stew instead of browning. Season at the end, once the pan is dry and the colour is made.

Baking the ham. It dries into salty, stiff leather. Lay it on the finished pizza and let the crust warm it.

Using wet mozzarella. Whey turns the sauce watery. Tear the cheese, drain it for 30 minutes and blot it with kitchen paper.

Skipping the oven preheat. A steel that has not soaked up heat for 45 minutes leaves the base pale and floppy under the toppings. Wait for the full time.

Cutting the mushrooms unevenly. Thick and thin slices finish at different moments, so some stay wet while others scorch. Use a sharp knife and aim for slices of the same thickness.

Overloading the pizza. More toppings mean more moisture and a base that cannot crisp. Keep to the amounts given, because a Neapolitan pizza is judged by balance, not by quantity.

Wine Pairing

Falanghina del Sannio DOC: The Campanian classic for pizza. Its citrus and green apple acidity cuts through the mozzarella and the olive oil, while a gentle bitter almond finish echoes the browned mushrooms. Light in body, it refreshes without hiding the ham, and its mineral finish keeps the whole slice tasting clean. It is the bottle most Neapolitans would open without thinking.

Lacryma Christi del Vesuvio DOC: A dry volcanic wine, whether white or red. The white has a saline, mineral edge that flatters the cured savoury notes of the ham, and the red has soft tannin and red cherry that meet the tomato without overpowering the mushrooms. Serve the white cold and the red slightly cool, and both reflect the volcanic soil of the Vesuvius slopes, which is why they suit the food of the same coast.

Lambrusco di Sorbara DOC: Choose the dry, secco style. Its fine bubbles and high acidity scrub the palate of cheese fat, and its light tannin and wild strawberry fruit lift the ham. Serve it well chilled, at about 46°F (8°C). The acidity keeps the pairing lively through the last slice, and the gentle foam prevents the fat from lingering on the tongue.

Bardolino DOC: A light, peppery red with low tannin and bright cherry acidity. It supports the earthy mushrooms and the tomato without adding weight, and it stays fresh against the salt of the cured ham. Its modest alcohol and easy drinkability make it the wine for a relaxed table, poured lightly chilled from the fridge.

Storage & Reheating

Baked pizza is best eaten within minutes. Leftover slices keep in the fridge in an airtight container for up to 2 days, with the ham peeled off and stored separately. Reheat on a hot skillet, covered for 2 minutes, or on a 450°F (230°C) steel for 4 minutes, and add the ham after. The microwave makes the base rubbery and should be avoided. If the slices have softened, a few minutes on a dry hot pan restores the crust surprisingly well.

The cooked mushrooms keep for 3 days in the fridge in a sealed container. Dough balls can be frozen after fermentation for up to 1 month and thawed overnight. Do not freeze the assembled pizza, because the cheese and mushrooms release water on thawing. Keep the ham wrapped tightly and use it within 3 days.