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Recipe
7 min read
Sourdough Pizza with Confit Tomatoes, Taleggio & Thyme: The Slow Summer Bake Worth Planning Ahead
A sourdough pizza recipe built around slow-blistered confit tomatoes and melting Taleggio. Perfect for summer outdoor eating — worth every minute of the wait.
Close-up of a delicious pepperoni pizza on a rustic wooden board, showcasing melted cheese and spices.The tomatoes go into the oven around midday, low and slow, and by the time you're stretching dough in the early evening there's this smell drifting through the kitchen , concentrated, jammy, somewhere between a garden and a good Italian restaurant. That's when you know it's going to be a good Friday.
This isn't a quick weeknight pizza. It's a summer Saturday project: confit cherry tomatoes that collapse into sweet, intensely flavoured little bursts, a sourdough base with a proper open crumb and charred blistered edges, and Taleggio that goes molten and slightly funky under the grill. It's the kind of pizza you'd queue for at a decent spot in Bermondsey , except you're eating it in the garden with a cold beer. The dough comes together the night before, cold proofs while you sleep, and all the technique is genuinely achievable if you give it the time it needs.
Dough
- 350g strong white bread flour
- 80g active sourdough starter (100% hydration)
- 210g water (cold, around 18°C in summer)
- 8g (1½ tsp) fine sea salt
- 10g (2 tsp) extra virgin olive oil
Confit Tomatoes
- 400g cherry tomatoes, halved
- 4 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
- 6 sprigs fresh thyme
- 80ml (5–6 tbsp) extra virgin olive oil
- 5g (1 tsp) caster sugar
- Pinch of flaky sea salt
Toppings
- 200g Taleggio, rind removed, torn into pieces
- A handful of fresh thyme leaves
- Extra virgin olive oil, to finish
- Flaky sea salt, to finish
- A small handful of fresh basil (optional, to serve)
Baker's Tips
- In summer, your kitchen is warmer than you think. Using cold water in the dough slows the fermentation slightly so you have more control , aim to mix in the evening so the dough bulk ferments at room temperature for 2 hours before going straight into the fridge overnight.
- Taleggio melts fast and can catch quickly under a hot grill. Add it in the last 2–3 minutes of cooking only , you want it just melted and slightly golden at the edges, not pooled or scorched.
- If you're scaling this recipe up for a big summer gathering, the DoughRise Bakery plan includes commercial batch scaling and cost reporting tools that make multiplying dough quantities genuinely painless , especially useful if you're feeding a crowd.
METHOD
- Make the confit tomatoes (the day of, around midday). Preheat your oven to 140°C fan. Arrange the halved cherry tomatoes cut-side up in a small roasting dish. Scatter over the sliced garlic and thyme sprigs, sprinkle with sugar and flaky salt, then pour over the olive oil. Roast for 90 minutes to 2 hours until the tomatoes are shrunken, jammy, and deeply concentrated. Leave to cool completely. These keep well in the fridge for a few days if you want to get ahead.
- Mix the dough (the night before, around 9pm). Combine the flour and water in a large bowl and mix until no dry flour remains. Leave to rest for 30 minutes (this short rest lets the flour fully hydrate and makes the next steps easier). After resting, add the active sourdough starter and mix to incorporate fully, squeezing it through your fingers until it's evenly distributed. Add the salt and olive oil, then work them in with the same technique. The dough will feel shaggy and a little sticky , that's fine.
- Build strength with folds. Over the next 90 minutes, perform 3 sets of coil folds spaced 30 minutes apart. To coil fold: wet your hands, lift the dough from underneath at both ends, let it hang briefly, then fold it back under itself and rotate the bowl 90 degrees. Repeat 4 times per set. After the third set, the dough should feel noticeably tighter, smoother, and hold its shape better than when you started.
- Cold proof overnight. Divide the dough into two equal balls (roughly 325g each). Shape each one by pulling the edges under itself to create surface tension, then place into lightly oiled individual containers or a tray, cover tightly, and refrigerate overnight. Leave them in the fridge for at least 12 hours and up to 18 , this is where a lot of the flavour develops. The cold slows the yeast but keeps the bacteria working gently, building a slow, complex tang that you simply can't rush.
- Bring the dough to temperature. Pull the dough balls out of the fridge about 60–90 minutes before you plan to bake. In the summer heat they'll loosen and relax quickly. You're looking for dough that's puffy, slightly jiggly, and has lost the chill , at this point it should stretch easily without springing back too much. While the dough comes up to room temperature, crank your oven as high as it'll go (most home ovens max out around 250–275°C fan) with a heavy baking tray or pizza steel on the top shelf. Give it a full 45 minutes to heat up properly.
- Stretch the dough. Flour your work surface well and ease the dough ball out of its container gently , don't punch it down. Working from the centre outward with flat hands, press and stretch the dough into a rough circle about 28–30 centimetres across. Pick it up and let gravity help you stretch the edges, rotating it slowly. You're aiming for a thin centre with a slightly thicker rim. Set it onto a well-floured piece of baking parchment.
- Top and bake. Spoon the confit tomatoes and their oil across the stretched base, leaving the rim clear. Don't overload it , you want flavour, not a soggy middle. Scatter over the fresh thyme leaves. Slide the pizza (still on its parchment) onto the hot tray in the oven and bake for 8–10 minutes until the crust is golden and starting to char at the edges. Pull it out, scatter over the torn Taleggio, and return to the oven (or switch to the grill) for another 2–3 minutes until the cheese is just melted and slightly blistered. If your grill runs hot, keep the door slightly ajar and watch it closely.
- Finish and serve. Slide the pizza onto a board, drizzle with a little extra virgin olive oil and a pinch of flaky salt. Scatter fresh basil over if you've got it. Eat immediately, ideally outside, ideally with people you like and something cold to drink. The baker's percentages for this dough sit at around 60% hydration, which keeps it manageable to shape while still giving you an open, blistered crumb. If you want to experiment with going slightly wetter next time, that's where the flavour and texture get even more interesting.
Why this works
Coil folds develop gluten structure without degassing the dough, which matters a lot for pizza. The oil in this recipe slightly slows gluten development initially, so the extra resting time before folds gives the flour proteins a chance to hydrate properly first. By the end of your folds, you've built a dough that's strong enough to stretch thin without tearing, but still extensible enough to handle with ease.
INTO THE OVEN
Want to dial in this recipe for a bigger batch or a different flour? Use the free DoughRise Baker's Percentage Calculator to scale quantities accurately and keep your ratios consistent every time.
Happy baking! Find everything you need at doughrise.store
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