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Recipe
6 min read
Sourdough Roman-Style Pizza al Taglio with Potato, Rosemary & Smoked Mozzarella
Make sourdough pizza al taglio at home — a crisp, airy Roman-style tray bake with potato, rosemary and smoked mozzarella. Full recipe and technique guide.
Photo by Diego Arenas de Rodrigo on UnsplashThere is something about a thick slab of Roman pizza, all golden underneath and pillowy on top, that feels almost unreasonably satisfying to pull out of the oven. The kind of thing you might find at a counter in Testaccio at lunchtime, sold by the kilo and eaten standing up, grease on your fingers. Making it at home in April, when you have got a strong starter and an afternoon to spare, turns out to be one of the better ways to spend a spring Saturday.
Pizza al taglio (literally pizza by the cut) is a style that suits sourdough beautifully. The dough is high hydration, cold-fermented and baked in an oiled tray rather than on a stone. That combination gives you a crust that is crisp and almost fried on the base, open and tender in the crumb, and sturdy enough to hold a generous topping without going soggy. The potato and rosemary version is the Roman classic , earthy, fragrant, deeply savoury. Add smoked mozzarella and it becomes something you will want to make every couple of weeks. This is not a quick-turnaround recipe, but most of the time is hands-off. The dough does the work while you get on with the rest of your weekend.
Dough
- 400g strong white bread flour
- 300g water (75%, cool , around 18°C)
- 80g active sourdough starter (at or just past peak)
- 8g (1½ tsp) fine sea salt
- 30g olive oil, plus extra for the tray
Topping
- 3 medium waxy potatoes (about 350g total), very thinly sliced
- 150g smoked mozzarella (scamorza affumicata), torn or sliced
- 4–5 sprigs of fresh rosemary, leaves picked
- 3 tbsp olive oil
- Flaked sea salt and black pepper
Baker's Tips
- Use waxy potatoes like Charlotte or Desiree and slice them as thin as you can , a mandoline is ideal. Thick slices will not cook through in the bake time and you will end up with raw potato on a perfect crust, which is a shame.
- The dough is quite sticky at 75% hydration , resist the urge to add flour. Work with wet hands during the folds and trust that it will come together. Once it has had a cold proof overnight it becomes much more manageable.
- If you are new to high-hydration doughs or you keep running into the same issue at the same stage of the process, it is worth trying the DoughRise Coach. You get personalised bake plans and unlimited troubleshooting messages, so you can work through exactly what is going wrong rather than guessing.
METHOD
- Mix the dough. In a large bowl, combine the flour and 270g of the water. Mix until no dry flour remains, then cover and leave to rest for 45 minutes (this is your autolyse). After the rest, add the starter to the remaining 30g of water, squish it in until roughly combined, then pour over the dough. Dimple it in with your fingers. Add the salt on top, then the olive oil. Work everything together by squeezing and folding until the dough feels cohesive and slightly tacky. Cover and leave for 30 minutes.
- Fold the dough. Over the next 2–3 hours, perform 4 sets of coil folds, roughly 30–45 minutes apart. For each set, wet your hands, slide them under the dough, lift the centre up and let the sides fold underneath. Rotate the bowl 90 degrees and repeat four times. After each set, cover and rest. By the final fold the dough should feel noticeably more elastic and should hold its shape a little when you set it down.
- Cold proof. After the final fold, lightly oil the bowl, cover tightly with cling film or a plate, and transfer to the fridge. Leave overnight, or for up to 18 hours. The dough will puff up slowly and develop flavour as it sits. This long cold ferment is where the character of the pizza comes from , a warm same-day dough just does not have the same depth.
- Prepare the tray. Take a deep-sided baking tray (roughly 30x40cm) and pour in a generous amount of olive oil , about 4–5 tablespoons. You want the base well coated. Remove the dough from the fridge and, without punching it down, carefully tip it out into the centre of the tray. Drizzle a little more oil over the top and leave it to warm up and relax for 1–2 hours at room temperature. Do not rush this step. A cold, tight dough will tear if you try to stretch it too soon.
- Stretch and top. Once the dough has relaxed and spread noticeably, use oiled fingertips to dimple and push it gently towards the edges of the tray. Work from the centre outward. If it springs back, leave it for another 15 minutes and try again. Preheat your oven to 250°C (fan 230°C) or as high as it will go. Arrange the potato slices over the surface in a single layer, slightly overlapping. Drizzle with the 3 tablespoons of olive oil, scatter over the rosemary leaves, and season well with flaked salt and black pepper. Leave the smoked mozzarella off for now.
- Bake the base. Slide the tray into the bottom third of the oven and bake for 15 minutes. The potato should be just starting to turn golden at the edges and the crust should be pulling away from the sides of the tray.
- Add the mozzarella and finish. Pull the tray out, scatter the torn smoked mozzarella across the top, and return to the oven for a further 8–10 minutes until the cheese is melted and bubbling in places and the base is deeply golden underneath (lift a corner with a palette knife to check). Leave to cool for 5 minutes before cutting into squares with a sharp knife or scissors.
Why this works
Cold fermentation slows yeast activity right down but keeps bacterial fermentation (the lactic acid bacteria in your starter) ticking over at a gentle pace. This extended acidification builds flavour complexity without over-proofing the structure. The cool temperature also firms up the high-hydration dough, making it far easier to handle when you come to transfer it to the tray the next day.
INTO THE OVEN
Want to dial in this recipe for a different batch size or adjust the starter percentage? Use the free DoughRise Baker's Percentages Calculator to scale everything precisely without any guesswork.
Happy baking! Find everything you need at doughrise.store
Photo by Diego Arenas de Rodrigo on Unsplash