Recipe 6 min read

Sourdough Pizza al Taglio with Roasted Peppers, Nduja & Stracciatella

A summer sourdough pizza al taglio recipe with roasted peppers, spicy nduja and stracciatella. Crisp base, airy crumb, baked in a tray.

Freshly baked pepperoni pizza slice topped with jalapenos and mushrooms on a wooden tray.
Freshly baked pepperoni pizza slice topped with jalapenos and mushrooms on a wooden tray.

Sliced straight from the tray, a little oily at the bottom, the cheese still pulling as it hits the board , that is pizza al taglio done right. It is a different beast from a Neapolitan round. This is Roman street food: thick-ish, airy, almost focaccia-like in the crumb, with a base that crisps up properly underneath while staying soft enough in the middle to fold slightly as you eat it. Ideal for a long summer evening with a cold beer and no particular urgency.

I started making this style a couple of summers ago after eating a genuinely brilliant version at a Roman-style pizza place near Borough Market. Came home, fired up a bake the same night. The combination here , sweet, blistered roasted peppers, punchy nduja that melts into the dough in the oven, and stracciatella dropped on cold at the end , is dead simple but the flavours together are properly good. The sourdough base brings a gentle tang that balances the heat of the nduja better than any yeasted dough would. This is the kind of recipe worth keeping in your regular rotation all summer.

Prep30 mins
Ferment8–12 hrs
Cook25 mins
Total10–14 hrs
Yield6 portions
DifficultyIntermediate

Dough

  • 500g strong white bread flour
  • 375g water, room temperature (75% hydration , use the DoughRise Hydration Calculator if scaling up)
  • 100g active sourdough starter
  • 10g (2 tsp) fine sea salt
  • 20g (1½ tbsp) extra virgin olive oil, plus more for the tray

Roasted Peppers

  • 3 large mixed peppers (red and yellow)
  • 2 tbsp olive oil
  • 1 small clove of garlic, finely sliced
  • Pinch of fine sea salt

Toppings

  • 80g nduja (soft, spreadable , from a jar or casing removed)
  • 150g fior di latte or low-moisture mozzarella, torn
  • 150g stracciatella
  • Small handful of fresh basil leaves
  • Flaky sea salt, to finish
  • Extra virgin olive oil, to finish

Baker's Tips

  • This dough is wetter than a typical pizza dough, so resist the urge to add more flour. The oil you line the tray with is doing real work here , be generous, it creates the crisp bottom crust that makes al taglio what it is.
  • Roast your peppers the day before if you can. Stored in a little olive oil overnight, they deepen in flavour and make the whole process more relaxed on bake day.
  • If you are baking a few different al taglio variations across the week (or just want to track how your timing shifts with summer temperatures), DoughRise Pro lets you save unlimited formulas and keep a full bake history with notes, which makes comparing batches genuinely easy rather than digging through phone photos from three Fridays ago.

METHOD

  1. Roast the peppers. Heat your oven to 220°C (200°C fan). Halve and deseed the peppers, toss with olive oil, the sliced garlic and a pinch of salt, then spread cut-side down on a baking tray. Roast for 25–30 minutes until the skins are blistered and starting to char. Transfer to a bowl, cover and leave to steam for 15 minutes, then peel and tear into strips. Set aside (or refrigerate overnight in a little olive oil).
  2. Mix the dough. In a large bowl, combine the flour and 350g of the water. Mix until no dry flour remains, then cover and rest for 45 minutes. This short rest (a rough autolyse) lets the flour hydrate fully before you add anything else.
  3. Add the starter and salt. Pour the active sourdough starter over the dough. Dimple it in with your fingers, then add the salt dissolved in the remaining 25g of water. Squeeze and fold the dough until everything is fully incorporated , it will feel a bit rough at first, then come together. Drizzle in the olive oil and work that in too. Cover the bowl.
  4. Bulk ferment with folds. Leave the dough to ferment at room temperature for 6–8 hours, depending on how warm your kitchen is. During the first 2 hours, perform a set of coil folds every 30 minutes (4 sets total). After that, leave it undisturbed. You are looking for the dough to roughly double in size and feel pillowy, with visible bubbles around the edges. Summer kitchens can push this faster, so keep an eye on it , check the bulk fermentation time guide if your kitchen is running warm.
Why this works

Coil folds build gluten structure without degassing the dough. By lifting the dough up and folding it under itself repeatedly, you are aligning the gluten network to hold the gas produced by fermentation. With a high-hydration dough like this one, skipping the folds would leave you with a slack, unworkable mess that spreads flat on the tray rather than puffing up into that characteristic airy crumb.

  1. Cold retard overnight. Once the bulk ferment is complete, transfer the bowl to the fridge and leave overnight (8–12 hours). This slows fermentation right down and develops flavour. It also makes the dough firmer and much easier to work with when you come to load the tray.
  2. Prepare the tray. The next day, take the dough out of the fridge about an hour before baking. Pour a very generous amount of olive oil into a large roasting tray (roughly 30 x 40 cm). Seriously, more than you think. Tip the cold dough in and turn it to coat in the oil.

INTO THE OVEN

  1. Stretch to fit. Using your fingers, gently press and stretch the dough to fill the tray. Work from the centre outwards. If it springs back, leave it for 10 minutes and try again , the gluten is relaxing, give it time. Once spread to the edges, dimple the surface firmly with your fingertips, pressing almost to the base. Drizzle a little more olive oil over the top.
  2. Top it. Dot the nduja across the surface in small blobs (it will melt and spread in the oven). Scatter over the torn mozzarella. Lay the roasted pepper strips across the top. Leave to prove at room temperature for a further 30–45 minutes while your oven preheats to its maximum temperature, ideally 250°C (230°C fan) with a baking stone or heavy tray on the shelf below.
  3. Bake. Slide the tray onto the lower shelf of the oven. Bake for 20–25 minutes until the top is golden in places, the edges are deeply browned and if you carefully lift a corner with a palette knife, the base is crisp and a rich amber colour underneath. The bottom matters as much as the top here.
  4. Finish and serve. Remove from the oven and leave to cool for 5 minutes in the tray. Transfer to a board, then spoon the stracciatella across in loose blobs. Scatter fresh basil leaves over the top, finish with flaky salt and a thin drizzle of good olive oil. Slice into rectangles and serve immediately.

Want to dial in this recipe? Use the free DoughRise Hydration Calculator to calculate exactly the right ratios for your flour and batch size.

Happy baking! Find everything you need at doughrise.store

Photo by Engin Akyurt on Pexels

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