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Recipe
6 min read
Sourdough Pizza with Roasted Tomatoes, Caramelised Onion & Taleggio: The Late-Summer Flatbread Worth Making on a Hot Evening
A rich, melty sourdough pizza with slow-roasted cherry tomatoes, sweet caramelised onions and Taleggio. A proper late-summer recipe worth every minute.
Photo by David Todd McCarty on UnsplashThe smell of onions going slowly sweet in a pan, cherry tomatoes collapsing in the oven, and a sourdough base blistering on a hot stone , there are worse ways to spend a Wednesday evening in August. This is a pizza for the tail end of summer, when the tomatoes are properly ripe and you've got a bit of time to let things cook gently rather than rushing through it.
What makes this one worth writing about is the combination of textures and flavour. Taleggio is one of those cheeses that melts into something almost silky, with a mild funk that sits really well against sweet roasted tomatoes and deeply caramelised onions. The sourdough base brings its own gentle tang, and when it blisters in a hot oven, you get that contrast of soft, chewy interior and charred, crispy edge that makes sourdough pizza so much better than anything else. The dough here works at around 65% hydration, which is manageable to handle and still gives you an open, light crumb under the toppings.
Dough
- 325g strong white bread flour
- 210g water, lukewarm
- 65g active sourdough starter
- 7g (1¼ tsp) fine sea salt
- 10g (2 tsp) olive oil
Roasted Tomatoes
- 300g cherry tomatoes, halved
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- 1 tsp caster sugar
- Flaky sea salt and black pepper
- 4 sprigs fresh thyme
Caramelised Onions
- 3 large white onions, thinly sliced
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- 1 tbsp unsalted butter
- 1 tsp balsamic vinegar
- Pinch of fine sea salt
Toppings
- 200g Taleggio, rind removed, torn into pieces
- Small handful of fresh basil leaves
- Extra virgin olive oil, to finish
- Chilli flakes (optional)
Baker's Tips
- Taleggio melts fast and can go greasy if overdone , add it in the final 3 minutes of baking rather than from the start. The residual heat from the stone does the rest.
- The caramelised onions genuinely need at least 40 minutes on a low heat. Anything less and you're just softening them, not transforming them. It's worth doing a big batch and keeping what you don't use in the fridge for the week.
- If you're baking a lot of pizza this summer and want to keep track of your dough formulas, DoughRise Pro lets you save unlimited formulas and export your full bake history to PDF , really useful once you start tweaking hydration or starter percentages across different batches.
METHOD
- Make the dough. In a large bowl, combine the flour and water and mix until no dry flour remains. Leave to rest for 30 minutes. Add the sourdough starter, salt and olive oil, then squeeze and fold everything together until fully incorporated. The dough should feel slightly tacky but not sticky. Cover and leave at room temperature.
- Build strength in the dough. Over the first two hours, perform four sets of coil folds, spaced roughly 30 minutes apart. To do a coil fold, wet your hands, lift the dough from the centre, let it hang, then fold it under itself. Rotate the bowl 90 degrees and repeat. After four sets, leave the dough covered to ferment undisturbed for a further 2 to 4 hours, until it has grown noticeably and feels airy when you gently handle it. In the August heat, your kitchen is probably running warm, so check from the 4-hour mark rather than waiting.
- Prepare the toppings while the dough ferments. For the caramelised onions, heat the oil and butter in a wide, heavy pan over a low heat. Add the sliced onions and a pinch of salt, stir to coat, then leave them largely alone for 40 to 50 minutes, stirring every 10 minutes or so. They should turn deep golden and very soft. Add the balsamic vinegar in the final 5 minutes, stir through, then remove from heat. For the roasted tomatoes, toss the halved cherry tomatoes with olive oil, sugar, thyme, salt and pepper on a baking tray. Roast at 180°C (fan) for 25 to 30 minutes until they are jammy and slightly charred at the edges. Set both aside.
- Divide and rest the dough. Once fermentation is complete, turn the dough onto a lightly floured surface and divide into two equal pieces (roughly 300g each). Shape each into a tight ball by folding the edges into the centre and rolling under your cupped hand. Place on a floured tray, cover loosely, and rest for 45 minutes to 1 hour at room temperature. This rest is essential , it lets the dough relax so you can stretch it without resistance.
- Heat your stone or steel. Place a baking stone or heavy steel tray in the oven and set it to its highest temperature (usually 250 to 260°C, or 230°C fan). Let it heat for at least 45 minutes. The longer it preheats, the better the base will colour.
- Stretch the dough. Working with one ball at a time, press gently from the centre outward with your fingertips, leaving a slightly thicker rim around the edge. Lift the dough and let gravity do some work, rotating it slowly while supporting from underneath. Aim for a roughly 28 to 30 centimetre round. Don't fight it , if it springs back, rest it for 5 minutes and try again. Lay the stretched dough onto a well-floured pizza peel or the back of a flat baking tray.
- Top the pizza. Spread a thin layer of caramelised onions across the base, leaving the edges clear. Scatter the roasted tomatoes over the top. Slide the pizza onto the hot stone and bake for 7 to 9 minutes until the crust is deeply golden and blistered and the base is cooked through.
- Add the Taleggio. In the final 3 minutes of baking, scatter the torn Taleggio pieces over the pizza. Return to the oven and watch it closely , the cheese should melt and just start to bubble.
- Finish and serve. Remove from the oven, scatter fresh basil leaves over the top, drizzle with a little extra virgin olive oil, and add chilli flakes if you like some heat. Eat immediately , this is not a pizza that improves with waiting.
Why this works
Coil folds build tension through the dough network without degassing it , you're organising the structure rather than forcing it. Each fold tightens the dough slightly, giving it the strength to hold gas produced during fermentation. The olive oil in this dough also slows gluten development marginally, which is actually useful for pizza: it makes the dough more extensible and easier to stretch thin without tearing.
INTO THE OVEN
Scaling this up for a group, or want to adjust the starter percentage? Use the free DoughRise Baker's Percentages Calculator to recalculate the whole formula for any batch size.
Happy baking! Find everything you need at doughrise.store
Photo by David Todd McCarty on Unsplash
