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Recipe
7 min read
Sourdough Pizza with Roasted Tomatoes, Stracciatella & Basil Oil: The Slow Summer Bake for When You Have People Over
A stunning sourdough pizza topped with slow-roasted tomatoes, stracciatella and fresh basil oil. Perfect for summer entertaining, made with an active starter.
Photo by Anastasiia Chepinska on UnsplashThere is a particular moment in midsummer when the tomatoes at the market finally look the way tomatoes are supposed to look: deep red, heavy, slightly irregular, and so ripe you can smell them from two stalls away. That is exactly the moment to buy a load of them, halve them, roast them low and slow, and build a pizza around them that tastes of nothing but a very good July evening.
This one has been on regular rotation lately. The base is a high-heat sourdough pizza dough, the kind with a bit of chew and a proper blistered edge. The sauce is barely a sauce at all, just those slow-roasted tomatoes collapsed down into something jammy and concentrated. Then stracciatella goes on after the bake, so it stays cold and creamy against the hot base, and you finish with a loose basil oil that turns the whole thing a ridiculous shade of green. It is one of those combinations that photographs well but tastes even better than it looks, which is rare. Great for a garden session with friends, or honestly just a Friday night when you want something that feels a bit special without being complicated about it.
Dough (makes 4 x 280g balls)
- 600g strong white bread flour (or 00 flour if you have it)
- 390g water, lukewarm
- 120g active sourdough starter (100% hydration, well-fed and bubbly)
- 12g (2 tsp) fine sea salt
- 15g (1 tbsp) extra virgin olive oil
Slow-Roasted Tomatoes
- 600g vine or plum tomatoes, halved
- 3 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
- 20g (2 tbsp) extra virgin olive oil
- 5g (1 tsp) caster sugar
- 4g (¾ tsp) fine sea salt
- A few sprigs of fresh thyme
Basil Oil
- 30g fresh basil leaves (loosely packed)
- 80g extra virgin olive oil, mild and fruity
- A small pinch of fine sea salt
To Finish
- 300g stracciatella (about 75g per pizza)
- Flaky sea salt
- Black pepper, freshly cracked
- Optional: a few fresh basil leaves to serve
Baker's Tips
- Your starter needs to be properly active for this one, ideally used around 4 to 6 hours after feeding when it is domed and lively. If you track your starter feeds and bake history in one place, DoughRise Pro is genuinely useful here, the full bake history and unlimited formula saving means you can dial in the exact timing that works with your specific starter rather than guessing each time.
- Roast the tomatoes the day before if you can. They keep covered in the fridge for several days and their flavour deepens overnight, which makes the pizza taste like you put in twice the effort.
- Pull the stracciatella out of the fridge about 20 minutes before serving. Cold cheese straight from the tub onto a hot base is fine, but slightly tempered stracciatella spreads better and the flavour is more pronounced.
METHOD
- Roast the tomatoes first. Preheat your oven to 150°C (fan 130°C). Arrange the halved tomatoes cut-side up on a baking tray. Scatter over the garlic slices and thyme, drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle the sugar and salt evenly across the tray. Roast for 90 to 100 minutes until they are collapsed, jammy, and have lost most of their moisture. Leave to cool completely. They should look almost caramelised at the edges.
- Make the dough. In a large bowl, combine the flour and water and mix until no dry flour remains. Cover and leave to rest for 30 minutes. Add the starter and salt, and squish everything together until fully incorporated, then work in the olive oil. The dough will feel slightly sticky and soft. Cover and leave at room temperature.
- Build structure over the next 2 to 3 hours. During the first couple of hours, perform 3 to 4 sets of coil folds (or simple letter folds in the bowl), spaced around 30 to 45 minutes apart. You are looking for the dough to feel noticeably smoother and more elastic with each round. By the final fold it should hold its shape briefly when you lift it. After the last fold, leave it undisturbed to finish fermenting until it has grown by around 50 to 75% and feels airy and alive when you gently shake the bowl.
Why this works
The olive oil goes in after the initial mix rather than from the start because fat can coat flour particles and interfere with early water absorption. Adding it later, once the dough has already hydrated, means you get the extensibility and flavour benefit without compromising the initial structure development. It is a small adjustment but it makes the dough noticeably easier to stretch at shaping time.
- Make the basil oil. Bring a small pan of water to the boil. Blanch the basil leaves for about 15 seconds, then immediately transfer them to iced water. Squeeze out as much water as possible and blend with the olive oil and a pinch of salt until completely smooth. Pass through a fine sieve if you want it very clean and bright. The blanching step locks in that vivid green colour rather than letting it oxidise to brown. Set aside.
- Divide and ball. Turn the dough out onto a lightly oiled surface. Divide into 4 equal pieces (roughly 280g each). Shape each piece into a tight ball by folding the edges underneath and rolling it against the surface with a cupped hand. Place each ball into its own lightly oiled container or tray. Cover and rest at room temperature for at least 1 hour before stretching, or refrigerate overnight and bring back to room temperature for 2 hours before use. Rested dough balls are dramatically easier to open out without tearing.
INTO THE OVEN
- Preheat your oven and baking surface hard. Crank your oven to its maximum temperature, typically 250 to 280°C. If you have a baking steel or stone, put it on the top shelf and give it at least 45 to 60 minutes to properly absorb heat. A hot surface from the start is what gives you that blistered, slightly charred base rather than something pale and bready. A good 65% hydration dough like this one performs best on a ripping-hot surface.
- Stretch the dough. Working one ball at a time, place it on a lightly floured surface. Press your fingers out from the centre to push the gas toward the edges, forming a rough disc. Then pick it up and let gravity do most of the work, rotating the dough over your knuckles and letting the weight of the outer edge stretch the base. Aim for a round or oval shape roughly 30 centimetres across. Do not worry about perfection. A slightly uneven edge is how you know a person made it.
- Top and bake. Lay the stretched base on a lightly floured peel or the back of a baking tray. Spoon over a generous layer of the roasted tomatoes and spread them loosely, leaving a 2 centimetre border. Slide the pizza onto your hot steel or stone. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes until the crust is deep golden with proper char at the edges and the tomatoes are bubbling.
- Finish at the table. Slide the pizza onto a board. Spoon stracciatella generously over the top in loose, uneven blobs. Drizzle with the basil oil fairly liberally. Finish with flaky salt, cracked black pepper, and a few whole basil leaves if you like. Serve immediately while the contrast between hot base and cold cheese is still doing its thing. Repeat for remaining balls.
Want to dial in the ratios for a bigger batch or a different flour? Use the free DoughRise Baker's Percentages Calculator to scale this recipe cleanly without losing the balance between starter, water, and flour.
Happy baking! Find everything you need at doughrise.store
Photo by Anastasiia Chepinska on Unsplash
