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DOUGHRISEFOUNDERS
Baking Tips
6 min read
Nduja, Roasted Pepper & Honey Sourdough Pizza
A bold, spicy sourdough pizza with nduja, roasted peppers and a drizzle of honey. Perfect for spring weekends when you want something a bit special.
baked pizzaSpring is finally doing its thing, the evenings are getting longer, and there is no better excuse to fire up your oven and make a sourdough pizza that actually has some personality to it. This one pairs the rich, spicy punch of nduja with sweet roasted peppers and a finishing drizzle of honey , bold flavours that work together in a way that feels a bit unexpected until you actually taste it. The sourdough base brings that slight tang and open crumb structure that a yeasted dough just cannot replicate, and it makes the whole thing feel genuinely earned.
Why This Sourdough Pizza Works
Nduja is that soft, spreadable Calabrian salumi made with pork and a serious amount of chilli. When it hits a hot oven, it melts into the base and releases its oils right into the dough , so you get this deep, spicy richness in every bite. Balancing that with honey and roasted pepper is not a trick, it is just good flavour logic. Sweet, spicy, a little smoky from the peppers. The sourdough base holds it all together without fighting for attention.
I made this on a Friday evening a couple of weeks back after getting in from a late one, and honestly it came together easier than I expected. If your starter is active and you plan ahead, the dough does most of the work while you get on with your day.
Ingredients
For the Sourdough Pizza Dough (makes 2 x 280g dough balls)
- 400g (about 3 cups) strong white bread flour, plus extra for shaping
- 80g active sourdough starter (fed and at peak activity)
- 260g (260ml) lukewarm water
- 10g (2 tsp) fine sea salt
- 10g (2 tsp) extra virgin olive oil
For the Roasted Peppers
- 2 red or mixed peppers, halved and deseeded
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- Pinch of sea salt
For Topping Each Pizza
- 3 tbsp tomato passata or crushed tinned tomatoes, lightly seasoned
- 70g (about 2.5 oz) nduja, broken into small pieces
- 80g (about 3 oz) low-moisture mozzarella, torn
- A small handful of roasted pepper strips
- 1 tsp runny honey, to finish
- A few fresh basil leaves, to finish
- Flaky sea salt
Method
- Mix the dough. Combine the flour and water in a large bowl and mix until no dry flour remains. Cover and leave for 30 minutes to autolyse. After that, add the active sourdough starter and salt, squeezing them in with your fingers until fully incorporated. Add the olive oil and continue working the dough until it feels cohesive and slightly tacky.
- Build the gluten. Over the first two hours, perform 4 sets of stretch and folds spaced 30 minutes apart. Each set: grab the dough from one side, stretch it up and fold it over itself. Rotate the bowl 90 degrees and repeat four times per set. After the final fold, cover and leave to bulk ferment at room temperature (around 21 to 22°C) for a further 2 to 3 hours, until the dough has grown noticeably and looks airy.
- Divide and ball up. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and divide into two equal pieces (roughly 380g each). Shape each piece into a tight ball using a gentle circular motion, creating surface tension. Place into lightly oiled containers or on a tray, cover, and refrigerate for at least 4 hours or overnight.
- Roast the peppers. While the dough is in the fridge, roast the peppers. Preheat your oven to 220°C (200°C fan). Place the halved peppers cut-side down on a baking tray, drizzle with olive oil and roast for 25 to 30 minutes until the skins are charred and blistered. Transfer to a bowl, cover tightly with clingfilm and leave for 10 minutes. Peel off the skins, slice into strips and set aside.
- Preheat your oven hard. At least 45 minutes before baking, place a heavy baking steel or thick baking tray in the top third of your oven and preheat to its maximum temperature (usually 250 to 280°C). The longer you preheat, the better the base will cook.
- Shape the pizzas. Remove a dough ball from the fridge 30 minutes before shaping to let it come up to room temperature slightly. Dust your work surface generously with flour and press the dough out from the centre using your fingertips, leaving a slightly raised edge. Stretch gently by lifting and letting gravity do the work, aiming for roughly a 28 to 30cm round. Try not to compress the crust edge.
- Top and bake. Spread a thin layer of seasoned passata over each base, leaving the edge clear. Dot the nduja pieces evenly across the sauce, then scatter over the mozzarella and roasted pepper strips. Carefully slide the pizza onto your hot baking surface (a pizza peel or the back of a flat baking tray works well) and bake for 10 to 14 minutes, until the crust is golden and blistered and the nduja has melted and oozed into the base.
- Finish and serve. As soon as the pizza comes out of the oven, drizzle with honey, scatter a few fresh basil leaves over the top and finish with a pinch of flaky sea salt. Eat immediately.
Baker's Tips
- Watch your oven temperature. The biggest difference between a pizza with a properly blistered crust and one that comes out pale and bready is oven heat. If your home oven struggles to get above 240°C, try using the grill for the final 2 minutes to push colour onto the top. A baking steel holds heat far better than a tray, and it is the single biggest upgrade you can make for home pizza.
- Keep the sauce thin. Sourdough pizza bases have real flavour of their own, so resist piling on the sauce. A few tablespoons spread thinly is enough. Too much moisture will steam the base rather than crisp it, and you will end up with a soggy middle. Nduja also releases oils as it cooks, so you are adding to that liquid anyway.
- Everything you need in one place. If you are getting serious about home pizza, the DoughRise Pizza Making Kit has everything set up so you are not scrambling around for tools mid-bake. Good equipment genuinely makes the process more relaxed, especially when you are trying to move fast with a hot oven involved.
A Few Notes on the Dough
If you are used to making sourdough bread, pizza dough is actually a bit more forgiving. The hydration is lower, the ferment is shorter, and cold-proofing the balls in the fridge gives you a lot of flexibility with timing. I usually make the dough in the morning, cold-proof it through the day, and then bake in the evening. It fits around real life, which is what I want from a recipe.
One thing worth knowing about nduja: not all of it is the same. Some versions are much spicier than others, so taste yours before you decide how much to use. If you want to turn the heat down, a little less goes a long way. If you want to lean into it, you can always finish with chilli flakes as well.
Spring is a genuinely good time to get into sourdough pizza. The kitchen is not too hot for fermentation to run away from you, the days are getting longer so there is more room to plan a bake properly, and there is something satisfying about making something this good on a Saturday when you have the time to enjoy the process. Give this one a go and see how fast it disappears.
Happy baking! Find everything you need at doughrise.store
Photo by Getúlio Moraes on Unsplash