Soppressata Hot Honey Pizza (The Bee Sting)
Recipes with Soppressata
The Brooklyn chef-driven classic from Roberta's in Bushwick, now copied in every wood-fired pizzeria from Sydney to Stockholm. Thin sliced Calabrian soppressata laid raw on the dough curls up in the oven into little crispy cups that catch a final drizzle of chili-infused hot honey. The sweet, hot, salty, fat finish became one of pizza's defining flavour moves of the 2010s. Twenty minutes from cold dough to first slice.
Prep Time
10 min
Cook Time
10 min
Servings
2
Difficulty
Easy
Ingredients
- 1 ball pizza dough (about 250g), at room temperature
- 80g San Marzano tomato sauce (lightly seasoned with salt)
- 200g fresh mozzarella di bufala or fior di latte, torn
- 80g spicy soppressata (piccante), sliced thin
- 2-3 tbsp hot honey (Mike's Hot Honey or homemade — see tips)
- A few fresh basil leaves
- Pinch of dried oregano
- Drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil
- Optional: grated Parmigiano-Reggiano, chili flakes
Steps
Heat the oven as hot as it will go, at least 260°C / 500°F, with a pizza steel or stone on the middle rack for 45 minutes. Conventional bake, not fan.
On a floured peel, stretch the dough by hand into a 28 cm round. Keep a 1.5 cm rim and a thin centre — this pizza is about contrast.
Spread the tomato sauce in a thin even layer, leaving the rim bare. Add the mozzarella in torn pieces, not slices. Scatter the soppressata slices across the top — they should overlap each other but not the cheese.
Slide the pizza onto the stone. Bake 6 to 8 minutes — watch the soppressata. The slices curl into cups, the edges crisp, the cheese bubbles. The crust should be leopard-spotted: dark brown blisters on a tan base.
Out of the oven straight onto a board. Drizzle the hot honey in a zigzag across the whole pizza — generous, not delicate. Scatter basil. Cut into 6 wedges. Eat immediately.
Tips
DIY hot honey: warm 100g honey with one halved Calabrian chili (or a tsp of chili flakes) for 5 minutes off heat, strain, store in a jar. Lasts months. The soppressata cups only form if the slices are thin (under 2 mm) and the oven is genuinely hot — a 220°C oven gives flat slices, not cups. If your fresh mozzarella is wet, tear it 20 minutes ahead and drain on a paper towel; soggy pizza is the most common home failure.