LITTLE DOUGH

Little Dough is part of The Cutlery works, itself a venue where Sheffield’s steel and pewter history meets the future of dining. The cutlery works is an informal, commune like collection of independent food stalls that deliver some of the best eats in the country. It’s populated by young entrepreneurs both behind the kitchen counters and sat on laptops networking away. In a city where once the plate pie, roast pork sandwich and Hendo’s on everything was king, Sheffield kids nag their parents for Korean fried chicken, Yakitori done on glowing Konro’s and Pizza that could have walked in off Via dei Tribunali.

Little Dough is a real success story and, like many modern British stories, born out of lockdown. “It came to me, I didn’t go out looking for it (Little Dough.) I was enjoying being on furlow during lockdown, sunbathing on my balcony and an employer from a previous job said we’re going to be reopening the food hall again soon but we don’t have a pizza place, do you want to open a pizza place?..and I was like....ehhhh why not?”

Now though, Alice has very strong views on what makes a good pizza and when I taste the Marinara, the balance of light “puffy” dough with an unmistakable aroma and sweet, nutty toasted flavour of Farina Petra, you can immediately tell that the Pizza she now makes is much more refined and considered but there are still a few nods to the past.

The pizza sauce she hypnotises her dough with is cooked beforehand for a short amount of time, which gives it a little more jammy sweetness than maybe a traditional Neapolitan pizza may have. A few of the pizzas feature red onions and oregano which give you that aromatic nod to a flavour profile more American than necessarily Italian . But, again, the way she has combined this with her bases and other toppings creates something new and possibly a front runner in the race to create the fabled “British Pizza” and we will come to this in a bit.

The pizza is well cooked but not burnt on the base, not thick and can support its own weight when fully topped, unlike its more traditional Neapolitan counterpart. You don’t get the little soggy pool in the middle, the Umido, the structure and texture of ingredients on the top is pretty uniform. The crusts are majestic, cavernous and supported by a web like gluten network. Her toppings tread a tightrope of being classically Neapolitan but also reminiscent of the American influence. Maybe she has come close to the mythical dough beast that is British Pizza?

What is clear though is that she knows her market and she knows the city and region, its character, norms, values, tastes, past and present. This puts her in a position to provide some of the best Pizza’s in the North of England to a market ready to eat such quality tailored to them.