Very trendy now, light as air Pizza a la Romana, is super soft inside and slightly crunchy outside. You can make gourmet caprese sandwich, or prosciutto arugula… or anything you like. This kind of bread is usually the first one to disappear from our lunch table.
It is made with slight amount of yeast, so tiny, you won’t even notice.
Ingredients
Poolish
- 250g strong flour
- 250g water
- 1g dry instant yeast
Main Dough
- All poolish
- 160g strong flour ( protein content 13% and more)
- 2g malt
- 81g water
- 10g salt
Directions
Prepare Poolish
Night Before
- In container add yeast to water, add flour, whisk all together, cover the lid, let ferment at room temp till next morning.
Next morning:
- Mix all poolish with flour, malt and salt on low speed of your mixing machine for 6-7 minutes, or KitchenAid on speed 3 for 7-10 minutes until well incorporated.
Notet: dough has to come up together before you’ll start to add water.
- Slowly start to add water little by little. Increase the speed of mixer to high and continue mixing for 12-15 minutes.
- If dough seems too loose, make a stop for 1-2 minutes and continue mixing on high speed.
- Dough has to come up together and clear out sides of the bowl.
- Cover the bowl and let the dough to proof for about 2-3 hours at 76F.
- Perform 2-3 stretches and folds during proofing time.
- Dough has to become slightly puffy.
- Transfer the dough to airtight container and move it to the refrigerator for 12-24 hours for cold fermentation.
Preshaping
Next Day
- Remove the dough from the fridge.
- Use big bowl with flour in it.
- Dump the dough from the container into the bowl with flour.
- Pinch all floured sides together (sticky dough will remain inside).
- Move the preshaped dough (seam side up) into another tray or container, generously sprinkled with flour.
- Cover the dough and let it proof for 2-3 hours at 76F until it doubles in size and becomes puffy.
Shaping
- Preheat the oven to 500F.
- Generously sprinkle baking tray with flour, set aside.
- Dump the dough on to a well floured surface.
- Shape it as shown on the picture below – pinch your fingers into the dough creating air bubbles (same way as if you would shape focaccia) and try to spread the dough as big as a size of your baking tray. Thickness should be about 1 inch.
- With floured hands transfer the dough into a tray, spread around.
- Optional, sprinkle some olive oil, salt and seasoning of your choice on top.
- Bake for 12-15 minutes until golden color.
Enjoy!
This looks amazing and since there is no sourdough starter, I’m tempted to give it a try. Is there a substitute for the malt?
Use 1 tsp of honey 🍯
What is malt?
You can skip it
What if your room temperature is higher than 75 degrees and more like 28-30 Celsius
Thanks for the recipe. Looks delish!
Thank you 🙏
So excited for this recipe. Thank you for sharing it with us. I am doing the final proofing and baking part later this afternoon.
Great! Good luck 🙏
Hii nat im making this today and i use hand mixer for the dough before the proofing, i found that my dough still sticky after 12 minutes and didnot hold it shape (it form ball when mix, but as soon as i stop my dough like spread ) is it right?
I can’t tell you how much I love your Pizza a la Romana recipe. It’s been on repeat so much that my sourdough starter is getting jealous. Just wondering if there’s a sourdough starter or mixed yeast and sourdough starter version of this recipe. I’ll be posting Instagram pics of the Pizza a la Romana in the near future and crediting you of course. Thank you again for sharing and caring!
Can I just use my hands instead of a stand mixer for this recipe?
The dough is very hydrated.
You can use hands, do stops in between kneading, to let the gluten to relax.
It will help to build up some strength
What can I substitute for the strong flour?
Hi
What is malt? And is honey a suitable substitute?
Hi!
Yes, you can use some honey
I can’t wait to try this. What size pan did you use?
Thank you. I am using 10x 14 inch pan
My flower here is pizza flower, 12.5 protein. I can’t find more protein . Will it still work or what will happen if it’s 12.5 and not 13?
Yes, it should be fine
hi Natalya,
I just made the poolish and found out that my flour which I thought is manitoba white flour is actually a mantoba whole wheat…
I kept it 250 gr flour, 250 ge water and 1 gram yeast.
what shuld i do tomorrow? shuld I add more water? if yes, how much?or shuld i just keep follow your recipe?
thanks a lot,
Nava
Sorry for late reply. Whole wheat flour will definitely need more water.
Thanks for recipe wish to go for a try🙏🙋♂️🇹🇷
Thank you 🙏
Can’t wait to try this. Just wondering if the dough can be frozen ?
Hi!
Freezing makes the yeast less active. You can try, but result may not be as good .
I’m putting this recipe together right now for pizza with the family this weekend and the dough looks fantastic so far. If I wanted to expand this recipe for more than a single serving of dough, how would you recommend handling the proportions? Should I keep the poolish the same as you have above, and then add additional water and flour to the “Dough” section of your recipe? Or should the poolish be expanded as well? With all the work going into this dough, I would love to make 3-4 servings at once.
Looking forward to your response and trying more of your recipes! Thank you!
Robert, hi!
If you are planning to 3x or 4X the amount of the dough, then you have to multiply each ingredient by 3x or 4X, including ingredients for poolish
Can you help me make this with sourdough starter please???
hi, if i leave the dough over 30 hours is it ok?
Omg! I started with malt!!!so now I added yeast! Do u think if I follow from now on it will be okay!✅
Can this be made with sourdough starter? What would the recipe be?
Can I use this recepie for baking a pizza in the oven? Will it work?
Hi Natasha,
thanks a lot for your amazing and foolproof recipes! Can I skip the cold fermentation for this one?
Hi there! I’m glad you’re enjoying the recipes. While cold fermentation can enhance the flavor and texture of certain dishes, you can definitely skip it if you’re short on time. Just keep in mind that the final result may be slightly different in terms of taste and texture. Feel free to experiment and let us know how it turns out!
very good
Thank you
What an amazing recipe! Thank you so much🙏🏽
I hope I’ve done this right! I just made the poolish, and I leave it out, covered all night. Tomorrow morning I add the flour, water, malt, and salt. Then I use the mixer, and then I put it in the refrigerator and let sit again overnight? Am I doing that right? Then the following day I bake?