Roman Pinsa

Strong white flour is doing the structural job here — it's the one with enough protein to actually form gluten strands strong enough to trap gas and oven steam. Standard plain flour (what a lot of UK kitchens default to for baking) has less protein and will give you a slacker, less elastic dough; you can use it, but expect a flatter rise and less chew at the crust. If you want to go the other way, Italian "00" strong flour or Canadian bread flour both work fine — anything labelled strong or bread flour, nothing more exotic needed.

Soy flour and rice flour together are only 50g against 500g of white flour, but don't skip them as a throwaway detail. Soy flour is a protein booster and a natural humectant — it helps the dough hold moisture, which is part of why pinsa keeps better than ordinary pizza dough and doesn't go leathery by the time it's cold. Rice flour has zero gluten, so scattered through the dough it acts like tiny breaks in the gluten net — without it the dough would knit itself into one continuous, chewy sheet; with it, you get pockets, irregular bubbles, that open crumb pinsa is known for. If you genuinely can't find either, you can leave them out and use all strong flour, but the result drifts toward "thick pizza" rather than pinsa — looser crumb, longer keeping, that's the trade you're losing.

Yeast at 2g dried (or 7g fresh) against 500g flour is a small amount on purpose — this is a slow-fermentation dough, and a small amount of yeast over a long rise builds flavour and digestibility that a big dose of yeast over a short rise never will. Don't be tempted to add more "to speed it up"; you'll get a dough that rises fast and tastes of nothing, and loses the structure the long rise was building. The two rises here (150 minutes each, at room temperature, not shoved in an airing cupboard for warmth) are not padding — they're the ingredient that turns flour and water into something with actual flavour. Treat the time as a floor, not a target: a cooler kitchen, and British kitchens in winter often are cooler than Roman ones, means it may want longer before the dough visibly domes and feels soft and pillowy rather than tight.

Olive oil at 40g isn't there for flavour alone — it coats some of the gluten strands and makes the dough more extensible, easier to stretch thin without tearing, and it's part of why pinsa can be pulled into that elongated, slipper-like shape rather than snapping back. Use an oil with a clean, not overly bitter flavour for the dough itself; save a more characterful extra virgin for the drizzle at the end where you'll actually taste it raw.

Tomato passata, not tinned chopped tomatoes or passed-through puree with lumps — you want something smooth enough to spread thin without weighing the base down with excess liquid, since a thick wet layer on a high-hydration dough is how you end up with a soggy centre that never crisps. Provolone is suggested for its meltability and mild tang; if you can't get it, a semi-hard cheese that melts without turning oily — mozzarella, a mild cheddar in a pinch — does the job. Just cut it small as instructed: big slabs melt unevenly and leave cold pockets while the rest of the cheese has already browned.

The two-stage bake — passata and oregano first, cheese added later — exists to stop the cheese from scorching before the base has had its chance to set and colour. Add everything at once in a hot oven and you'll get burnt cheese sitting on a pale, underbaked crust. Give the base its own run first; the cheese only needs enough time to melt and just catch at the edges, which is a much shorter job than crisping dough.