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Recipe
6 min read
Sourdough Pizza with Radicchio, Smoked Scamorza & Honey Walnuts: The Bitter-Sweet Autumn Bake Worth Staying In For
A bold autumnal sourdough pizza with bitter radicchio, melted smoked scamorza and sweet honey walnuts. A proper seasonal bake worth making on a cold evening.
Photo by veda kiran on UnsplashThere is something about the first genuinely cold evening in October that makes you want to do something a bit more considered with dinner. Not elaborate, not fussy, just intentional. This sourdough pizza lands exactly there: a crispy, blistered base topped with wilted radicchio, pools of smoked scamorza, and walnuts that have been briefly tossed in honey and roasted until sticky. Bitter, smoky, sweet, a little salty. It sounds like it should be complicated, but it really isn't.
Radicchio is one of those ingredients that autumn seems to unlock. It is around all year, technically, but something about the cold air makes the slight bitterness feel right rather than harsh. When it hits a screaming hot baking stone and the edges start to char while the centre softens, it becomes one of the best pizza toppings you will make all season. Smoked scamorza, which is essentially a firmer, smokier cousin of mozzarella, melts beautifully without going watery, and the honey walnuts cut right through the richness. This one is worth saving your best active starter for.
Dough
- 350g strong white bread flour (or Tipo 00)
- 245g water, room temperature
- 70g active sourdough starter (at peak)
- 8g (1.5 tsp) fine sea salt
- 10g (2 tsp) extra virgin olive oil
Honey Walnuts
- 60g walnut halves
- 15g (1 tbsp) runny honey
- Small pinch of flaky sea salt
Toppings (per pizza)
- 100g smoked scamorza, torn or sliced
- Half a small head of radicchio, leaves separated and roughly torn
- 1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
- Freshly ground black pepper
- A few shavings of Parmesan to finish (optional)
Baker's Tips
- Your starter needs to be at peak activity here, not just vaguely bubbly. Dome shape, slightly domed top, and it should pass the float test. The flavour and lift both depend on it.
- Radicchio wilts fast at high heat, which is exactly what you want, but add it in bigger pieces than you think you need. They shrink down considerably in the oven.
- If you are running multiple pizza nights regularly and want to keep proper track of which dough formula worked best, DoughRise Pro lets you save unlimited formulas and export your full bake history, which is genuinely useful when you are trying to dial in your ratios across different flours and ambient temperatures.
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 hydrate. This is working at around 70% hydration, which gives a dough that handles well without being too slack to stretch by hand.
- Add starter and salt. Add your active starter and salt to the dough. Use your fingers to pinch and fold everything together until fully incorporated. Add the olive oil and continue working it in until the dough is smooth and slightly tacky. Cover the bowl.
- Build structure. Over the first two hours, perform four sets of coil folds at roughly 30-minute intervals. To coil fold, wet your hands, reach under the dough, lift the centre, and allow the sides to fold underneath. Rotate the bowl 90 degrees and repeat. Do this four times per set. After the final set, the dough should feel noticeably tighter and hold its shape better when you lift it.
Why this works
Coil folds build tension through the dough without tearing the structure you are trying to develop. Each fold aligns the gluten network and traps gas more efficiently than aggressive kneading would. The olive oil, added after the initial mix, lubricates the dough without interfering with early gluten development, which is why you hold it back rather than adding it at the start.
- Bulk and divide. After your folds, cover the bowl and leave the dough to ferment at room temperature. Total bulk time will depend on how warm your kitchen is, but expect somewhere between 4 and 6 hours for a 20–21°C kitchen. You are looking for roughly 50–75% growth and a dough that wobbles gently but holds structure. Divide the dough into two equal pieces (around 340g each).
- Shape into balls and rest. Shape each piece into a tight ball by cupping your hands around the dough and dragging it towards you on an unfloured surface. The friction helps build surface tension. Place the balls on a lightly oiled tray, cover with oiled clingfilm or a damp cloth, and refrigerate overnight (or for at least 8 hours and up to 24).
- Make the honey walnuts. Roughly an hour before baking, take your dough balls out of the fridge to come back to room temperature. While you wait, toss the walnuts in honey and a pinch of salt, spread onto a small baking tray lined with parchment, and roast at 180°C for 8–10 minutes until golden and fragrant. Let them cool and set before breaking them apart.
INTO THE OVEN
- Get the oven screaming hot. Place your baking stone or heavy baking tray on the top shelf and preheat to maximum temperature (250°C or as high as yours will go) for at least 45 minutes. The stone needs to be fully saturated with heat, not just the air around it. This is non-negotiable for a properly blistered base.
- Stretch the dough. On a lightly floured surface, press the dough ball into a disc with your fingers, working from the centre outward. Then lift the dough and let gravity do the stretching, rotating it slowly between your hands. Aim for a roughly 28–30 centimetre round with a slightly thicker edge. If it springs back, rest it for 5 minutes and try again.
- Top and bake. Transfer the stretched base onto a flour-dusted pizza peel or the back of a flat baking tray. Scatter the smoked scamorza across the base. Toss the radicchio leaves in a tablespoon of olive oil, season with black pepper, and arrange over the cheese. Slide the pizza onto the hot stone and bake for 8–10 minutes, until the crust is deep golden with charred patches, the scamorza is fully melted and starting to brown at the edges, and the radicchio has wilted and crisped slightly at the tips.
- Finish and serve. Scatter the honey walnuts over immediately as it comes out of the oven. Add Parmesan shavings if you like, a small drizzle of olive oil, and eat straight away. The contrast between the bitter radicchio, smoky cheese, and sweet walnuts is best when the pizza is still crackling from the heat.
Want to dial in this recipe for a larger batch or a different flour? Use the free DoughRise Baker's Percentages Calculator to scale everything accurately without losing the ratios that make this dough work.
Happy baking! Find everything you need at doughrise.store
Photo by veda kiran on Unsplash
