Fast dough is cheap and heavy. Slow dough is lighter, crisper and tastes of something. Here is what happens in those two days.
Most pizza dough in a busy kitchen is made in the morning and baked by lunch. It works, in the sense that it rises and holds toppings. But it tastes of very little, and it tends to sit in your stomach for the rest of the afternoon. At Slice Mode we do it the slow way: every ball of dough rests for 48 hours before it meets an oven.
What actually happens in two days
Dough is flour, water, salt and yeast. When you give yeast a short time and a warm room, it races. It produces a lot of gas quickly, the dough puffs up, and that is about all. When you give it a long time in a cold room, it works slowly, and other things get a chance to happen. Enzymes in the flour break starch down into simpler sugars. Those sugars are what brown and caramelise in the oven, which is why a slow dough comes out with a deep golden, spotted crust instead of a pale one.
At the same time, the proteins in the flour relax and organise. A rested dough stretches without tearing and without springing back. That is what lets our pizza makers open a base by hand, pushing air out to the rim, instead of flattening it with a roller.
Flavour you can taste
Long fermentation produces small amounts of organic acids. You will not find our crust sour, but there is a gentle tang and a wheaty, almost nutty depth that a three-hour dough simply does not have. It is the difference between fresh bread from a good bakery and a packet loaf.
Lighter to eat
Because so much of the breaking-down has already been done during fermentation, many people find slow dough easier to digest. The crumb is also full of irregular air pockets, so a slice feels lighter than it looks.
How we run it
Every outlet mixes dough daily in the early morning. It is divided, balled and put into trays that are dated and held at four degrees. Dough mixed on Monday is baked on Wednesday. If a tray passes 72 hours, it is not used for pizza. There is no shortcut and no powder that fakes the result; it is only time and a cold room.
Try it for yourself
The best way to taste the dough is on a pizza with very little on it. Order a Margherita Mode on Hand-Tossed crust, eat the rim first, and you will see what the two days are for.
