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Recipe
6 min read
Sourdough Pizza with Mortadella, Stracciatella & Pistachio: The Summer Pizza Worth Making Indoors
A show-stopping sourdough pizza topped with mortadella, silky stracciatella and crushed pistachio. The summer pizza you'll make on repeat — recipe and tips inside.
Photo by Benu Marinescu on UnsplashThere is a point in July when the light hits London just right at about 7pm, golden through the kitchen window, and the only reasonable response is a cold beer and a pizza that feels genuinely special. Not a Friday night takeaway, not something knocked together from the fridge , something with a bit of thought behind it, even if the actual assembly takes about four minutes.
This sourdough pizza with mortadella, stracciatella and crushed pistachio is that pizza. The base is baked hot and fast, getting properly blistered in the oven, and then the toppings go on after the bake , cold, creamy stracciatella draped across the hot crust, ribbons of mortadella that catch a little heat and soften at the edges, and a scattering of crushed pistachios for crunch. It is a style of pizza you see a lot in good Neapolitan spots now, and for good reason: the contrast between the hot crust and the cool, rich toppings is genuinely brilliant. The sourdough base brings its own gentle tang that cuts right through the richness of the cheese, keeping the whole thing from feeling heavy even in the middle of summer.
Dough
- 300g strong white bread flour (or 00 flour)
- 195g water, room temperature (65% hydration , use the DoughRise Hydration Calculator if scaling up)
- 60g active sourdough starter
- 7g (1¼ tsp) fine sea salt
- 8g (2 tsp) extra virgin olive oil
Base Sauce
- 200g good-quality passata
- 1 small garlic clove, finely grated
- A pinch of dried oregano
- A pinch of fine sea salt
Toppings (added after baking)
- 200g stracciatella (or torn burrata)
- 120g mortadella, thinly sliced
- 30g shelled pistachios, lightly crushed
- A drizzle of extra virgin olive oil
- A few fresh basil leaves
- Flaky sea salt, to finish
Baker's Tips
- Do not skip the full preheat. Your oven and baking stone or steel need at least 45 minutes at maximum temperature , ideally 260°C or higher. A lukewarm surface is the main reason home pizza comes out pale and soft rather than blistered.
- Stracciatella has a lot of liquid in it. Spoon it onto the pizza in small portions rather than spreading, and let it settle naturally , trying to spread it tears it apart and makes the crust soggy faster than you'd like.
- If you are baking for a group and want to scale this dough accurately, baker's percentages make it simple. DoughRise Pro lets you save your scaled formula and pull it up next time without recalculating from scratch , useful if this pizza becomes a regular, which it probably will.
METHOD
- Mix the dough. In a large bowl, combine the flour and water and mix until no dry flour remains. Leave to rest for 30 minutes , this short rest lets the flour absorb the water fully before you add anything else.
- Add starter and salt. Add the active sourdough starter and salt to the dough. Squeeze and fold everything together until fully incorporated. Add the olive oil and continue working it in until the dough feels smooth and slightly tacky but not sticky. Cover the bowl.
- Build structure. Over the first two hours, perform four sets of coil folds or gentle stretch-and-folds, spaced roughly 30 minutes apart. After the final fold, the dough should feel noticeably more elastic and hold its shape when you pull it. Cover and leave at room temperature to ferment.
- Bulk ferment. Leave the dough to ferment at room temperature (around 24–26°C works well in summer) for a total of 6–8 hours from when you added the starter. In July heat, it will likely be on the shorter end of that range. You're looking for roughly 50–60% volume increase and a dough that feels airy and slightly domed when you gently press it.
Why this works
Adding olive oil to pizza dough affects more than just flavour. The fat coats some of the gluten strands, which makes the dough more extensible and easier to stretch without tearing , essential when you're pressing a ball out thin by hand. It also helps the base brown more evenly in the oven by encouraging a slightly crisper underside, even at home temperatures.
- Divide and shape into balls. Turn the dough onto a lightly floured surface and divide it into two equal pieces (roughly 280g each). Shape each piece into a tight ball by pulling the surface taut and tucking underneath. Place on a lightly oiled tray or individual containers, cover, and rest for at least one hour at room temperature before stretching. If you want to bake later in the evening, the balls can go into the fridge after shaping and come out 90 minutes before you need them.
- Mix the sauce. Stir together the passata, grated garlic, oregano and salt. Taste it , it should be savoury and just slightly sharp. Do not cook it; raw passata on a hot base is all you need.
INTO THE OVEN
- Preheat properly. Set your oven to its maximum temperature (ideally 260–280°C) with a baking stone or steel on the highest shelf. Allow at least 45 minutes of full-temperature preheat. This is non-negotiable if you want a blistered, leopard-spotted base at home.
- Stretch the dough. Take one dough ball and press it flat on a lightly floured surface using your fingertips, starting from the centre and working outwards. Then pick it up and let gravity help , hold the edge and rotate, letting the middle thin out naturally. Aim for a rough circle about 28–30 centimetres across with a slightly thicker rim. Keep it on a well-floured peel or the back of a flat baking tray.
- Sauce the base. Spoon roughly 3–4 tablespoons of sauce onto the stretched base and spread to within a centimetre of the edge. You want a thin, even layer , not too much or the base will steam rather than crisp.
- Bake the base. Slide the pizza onto your hot stone or steel. Bake for 6–8 minutes, until the rim is puffed and deeply charred in patches and the base is cooked through and starting to blister. Keep an eye on it from around the 5-minute mark , ovens vary a lot at high temperatures.
- Top after baking. Remove the pizza from the oven and immediately spoon stracciatella in loose portions across the surface. Drape the mortadella in loose folds on top (it will warm gently from the residual heat, which is exactly what you want). Scatter over the crushed pistachios, tear a few basil leaves across, finish with a drizzle of olive oil and a pinch of flaky salt. Serve immediately.
Want to dial in this recipe for a bigger batch or a different flour? Use the free DoughRise Baker's Percentage Calculator to scale your ingredients accurately without guessing.
Happy baking! Find everything you need at doughrise.store
Photo by Benu Marinescu on Unsplash
