Nancy Silverton is famous for her dough. In the 1980s, she brought burnished, artisanal bread to the forefront of American bread making when she opened La Brea Bakery, and she now heads up the famous Pizzeria Mozza. Needless to say, we’d be remiss if we didn’t turn to her for a pizza dough recipe.
While this dough isn’t “an exact replica” of that at Pizzeria Mozza, Nancy promises if you follow her steps, “your pizza will be just as delicious as the one we serve.” And in case you weren’t already convinced, know that Nancy also brought in her colleague of over 20 years, Jon Davis, to help perfect the recipe.
Their resulting recipe uses a sponge, which means half the flour is aged for 90 minutes before it's mixed with the rest of the ingredients. It may seem like an unnecessary step, but you’ll be rewarded with a more interesting and flavorful dough. Pressed for time? You can add all the flour and water at once, if you must. “Though you might lose some flavor, it will still be better than most pizzas I’ve been served,” Nancy writes in The Mozza Cookbook.
In addition to the recipe, Nancy also provided us with her Scuola di Pizza (pizza school) below. There, she’ll walk you step-by-step through the process of turning great dough into stretched, launched and bubbling pizza.
