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Recipe
7 min read
Sourdough Pizza with Roasted Garlic, Nduja & Honey: The Late-July Bake for When It's Too Hot to Care
A smoky, sweet, properly fiery sourdough pizza with roasted garlic, nduja and honey. Perfect for summer outdoor baking. Recipe, tips and technique inside.
Photo by David Todd McCarty on UnsplashThere is a particular kind of Friday evening in late July where it is still 25 degrees at 8pm and no one has the energy for anything complicated. You have people coming round, the garden is set up, and someone will inevitably ask what is for food. This pizza is the answer. Roasted garlic, nduja, a drizzle of honey, and a sourdough base that blisters and chars in all the right places , it is bold enough to feel like a proper bake, but relaxed enough to pull together on a weeknight without stress.
What makes this one worth writing about is the balance. Nduja is punchy and fatty and intensely savoury. Roasted garlic softens that edge completely, turning sweet and almost nutty after an hour in the oven. The honey at the end cuts through the chilli heat and ties the whole thing together. It is the kind of pizza that makes people go quiet for a moment after the first bite, which is always a good sign.
Dough
- 500g strong white bread flour (00 or high-protein)
- 325g water (use cold water straight from the tap if your kitchen is particularly warm)
- 100g active sourdough starter
- 10g (2 tsp) fine sea salt
- 10g (2 tsp) extra virgin olive oil
Roasted Garlic
- 2 whole bulbs of garlic
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- Pinch of flaky sea salt
Toppings (per pizza)
- 40g nduja (straight from the jar or casing)
- 80g low-moisture mozzarella, torn
- 4–5 cloves roasted garlic (squeezed from their skins)
- 1 tsp runny honey, to finish
- Small handful of fresh rocket, to serve
- Extra virgin olive oil, to drizzle
Baker's Tips
- In summer heat, keep your dough cooler by using cold water straight from the tap. Warm kitchens accelerate fermentation fast, so watch the dough rather than the clock. If you want a reliable way to track timing across different ambient temperatures, DoughRise Pro lets you save your formula with full bake history so you can look back and compare how the same recipe performed on different days.
- Nduja varies a lot in intensity depending on the brand. Taste yours before using , if it is very spicy, you might want slightly less per pizza, and slightly more honey at the end to balance it.
- Do not skip the roasted garlic. It sounds like extra work but it is genuinely not , you can pop it in the oven while the dough is resting and forget about it. Raw garlic on a hot pizza turns bitter fast; roasted garlic goes sweet and almost caramel-like.
METHOD
- Make the dough. Combine the flour and 300g of the water in a large bowl and mix until no dry flour remains. Cover and leave for 30 minutes. This short rest gives the flour time to absorb the water before you add anything else.
- Add the starter and salt. Add the active sourdough starter to the dough and squeeze it through your fingers until fully incorporated. Add the salt dissolved in the remaining 25g of water and work that in too. Finish with the olive oil, mixing until the dough feels cohesive and slightly tacky.
- Build strength. Over the next 2 hours, give the dough 3 to 4 sets of folds, spacing them roughly 30 minutes apart. To fold: wet your hand, reach under the dough, pull a section up and fold it over the top. Rotate the bowl a quarter turn and repeat four times per set. By the third set the dough should feel noticeably more elastic and hold its shape when you stop handling it.
- Bulk ferment at room temperature. Cover the bowl and leave the dough to ferment. In a warm July kitchen this will likely take 4 to 6 hours. You are looking for the dough to have grown by around 50 to 75 percent, feel airy and slightly domed, and jiggle as one mass when you shake the bowl gently.
Why this works
Adding olive oil at the end of mixing, rather than the beginning, means it does not interfere with the initial hydration and network development. Once the flour proteins have had a chance to absorb the water, the oil coats the structure and makes the dough more extensible and easier to open without tearing. It also contributes to that slightly crisp, richly flavoured underside on a hot bake surface.
- Divide and ball. Turn the dough onto a lightly floured surface and divide it into 4 equal pieces (roughly 235g each). Shape each piece into a tight ball by folding the edges into the centre and then cupping your hand over it, using light friction against the surface to build tension. Place the balls in a lightly oiled tray or individual containers, cover, and refrigerate for at least 2 hours and up to 24 hours.
- Roast the garlic. Slice the top off each bulb to expose the cloves. Place on a sheet of foil, drizzle with olive oil, season, and wrap tightly. Roast at 180°C (fan) for 50 to 60 minutes until the cloves are completely soft and golden. Squeeze them out when cool enough to handle. These will keep in the fridge for several days, so you can do this the day before.
- Bring the dough balls to room temp. Remove from the fridge 45 minutes to 1 hour before baking. Cold dough is stiff and will resist opening. Giving it time to relax at room temperature makes a significant difference to how the base handles.
INTO THE OVEN
- Heat your bake surface. Place a pizza stone, steel, or heavy baking tray in the oven and set it to its maximum temperature, usually 250 to 280°C. Allow at least 45 minutes for the surface to fully absorb that heat. A cold stone is one of the most common reasons home pizza does not blister properly.
- Open the dough. On a lightly floured surface, press the centre of a dough ball down with your fingertips, then use your hands to gently push the dough outward from the centre. Rotate and stretch until you have a base roughly 28 to 30 centimetres across with a slightly thicker rim. Do not use a rolling pin , you will push out all the air you spent hours building.
- Top the pizza. Working quickly, dot the base with small pieces of nduja (it will melt and spread as it bakes), scatter over the torn mozzarella, and place 4 to 5 cloves of roasted garlic around the pizza. Keep the toppings away from the very edge so the crust has room to puff and char.
- Bake. Slide the pizza onto your hot stone or steel using a well-floured peel or the back of a flat baking tray. Bake for 6 to 8 minutes, until the base is charred in spots, the crust is puffed and blistered, and the nduja has melted into pools of orange-red oil across the surface.
- Finish and serve. As soon as the pizza comes out, drizzle over the honey in a thin, lazy zigzag. Scatter a handful of rocket on top (it will wilt slightly from the heat, which is fine), add a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil, and serve immediately. Repeat for the remaining dough balls.
Want to scale this recipe for a bigger group or dial in the baker's percentages for your own flour? Use the free DoughRise Baker's Percentage Calculator to adjust the formula precisely to your batch size.
Happy baking! Find everything you need at doughrise.store
Photo by David Todd McCarty on Unsplash
