Pinsa Recipes
Burns Night Romana Pizza
Recipe Overview Looking to add a tasty twist to your traditional Burns Night celebration? This Burns Night Romana pizza recipe is a memorable way to
20 January 2025
We all know a good pizza starts with great dough, but did you know your choice of dough could also affect how your body feels after eating? At Virtue Pizza, we’re big believers in sourdough. Not just for the taste (though it’s amazing), but because it’s genuinely better for your gut.
In this blog, we’re diving into the difference between traditional pizza dough and sourdough and why sourdough might be your new favourite.
Traditional pizza dough is typically made with refined wheat flour, water, yeast, salt, and sometimes a little oil or sugar. It’s usually leavened quickly using commercial yeast, which produces carbon dioxide to make the dough rise in a matter of hours.
This method is fast and efficient, ideal for high-output pizzerias, but it often comes at the cost of digestibility and flavour depth.
Sourdough dough is made using a naturally fermented starter, often a blend of flour and water colonised by wild yeasts and lactic acid bacteria. At Virtue Pizza, our sourdough dough undergoes long fermentation, allowing natural enzymes and beneficial bacteria time to break down the gluten and sugars in the flour.
This process produces a crust with a beautifully developed flavour, a light and open texture, and most importantly, genuine nutritional advantages.
When comparing sourdough to traditional dough, the difference isn’t just in taste it’s in how your body responds to it. Traditional dough, made with refined flour and fast-acting yeast, provides little time for the natural breakdown of complex compounds. In contrast, sourdough benefits from slow fermentation, which enhances both the nutritional profile and the body’s ability to absorb those nutrients.
Sourdough contains fewer simple sugars, more beneficial organic acids, and is often lower in gluten content due to natural enzymatic activity during fermentation. The result is a dough that supports better metabolic health and digestive comfort.
Sourdough fermentation is a slow, natural process where wild yeasts and lactic acid bacteria break down starches and proteins over time, often 24 to 72 hours. This long fermentation has several important effects:
With traditional dough, fermentation is typically fast, ranging from 1 to 3 hours, using commercial baker’s yeast. This doesn’t give the enzymes enough time to fully develop the dough or reduce anti-nutrients. The result is a product that’s often harder to digest and nutritionally less bioavailable.
One of the most compelling reasons to choose sourdough is its digestive comfort. Thanks to the slow fermentation process, sourdough is pre-digested by beneficial microbes before it even enters your oven, making it much easier on the stomach.
People who experience bloating, discomfort, or heaviness after eating conventional white bread or pizza dough often find sourdough far more tolerable. It’s not a cure-all, but for many, it’s a gentler option that doesn’t sacrifice satisfaction or flavour.
Another important health advantage of sourdough is its lower glycaemic index (GI). Because the fermentation process slows down the rate at which starches are broken into sugars, sourdough is digested more gradually, resulting in fewer blood sugar spikes after eating.
This makes sourdough a smarter choice for individuals managing type 2 diabetes, insulin resistance, or energy fluctuations, and helps contribute to a more balanced diet overall.
Whole grains naturally contain minerals like magnesium, zinc, and iron, but they’re often bound up in phytic acid, which makes them difficult for the body to absorb. During sourdough fermentation, this phytic acid is broken down, releasing these minerals and increasing their bioavailability.
In contrast, traditional doughs made with refined flour and rapid yeast rising don’t allow this transformation to occur, meaning you’re missing out on potential health benefits, even if the ingredients seem similar.
Sourdough offers gut-friendly properties that traditional dough simply doesn’t. The fermentation process produces prebiotics—non-digestible fibres that help feed the good bacteria in your gut. While most probiotics (live bacteria) don’t survive the baking process, their metabolic by-products can still support gut health.
This means:
Traditional doughs, lacking in fermentation complexity, offer none of these benefits, making sourdough the clear winner when it comes to gut wellness.
Taste is personal, but few would deny the superior depth of flavour that sourdough brings to the table. The extended fermentation process produces organic acids and aromatic compounds that give sourdough its distinctively tangy, complex taste—a far cry from the more neutral and predictable profile of traditional pizza dough.
In terms of texture, sourdough delivers:
Traditional doughs, by comparison, tend to be more uniform—softer, but without the same character or artisanal feel.
Sourdough isn’t just a trend—it’s a smart choice for a wide range of people who care about what goes into their food and how it makes them feel. Thanks to its slow fermentation and natural ingredients, sourdough dough is well-suited to:
While sourdough is not suitable for those with coeliac disease, it can be easier to tolerate for individuals with non-coeliac gluten sensitivity. The long fermentation process breaks down some of the gluten proteins, making it gentler on the digestive system.
The natural acids and fermentation by-products found in sourdough support a healthier gut microbiome. These include prebiotics that feed beneficial gut bacteria, helping to reduce bloating and support digestion.
Sourdough has a lower glycaemic index compared to traditional doughs, which means it causes a slower rise in blood sugar. This makes it a valuable choice for people with type 2 diabetes, insulin resistance, or those simply looking to maintain stable energy levels throughout the day.
At Virtue Pizza, health and flavour go hand-in-hand. That’s why we’ve centred our offering around naturally fermented sourdough because better dough means better pizza, for your body and your tastebuds.
Among our range, Sourdough Pinsa Romana Bases stand out as the healthiest choice. With their unique flour blend (typically wheat, rice, and soy), long fermentation process, and high hydration level, Pinsa Romana delivers a lighter, airier bite that’s easier to digest and naturally lower in gluten.
Whether you run a busy restaurant, hotel kitchen, or catering business, our Sourdough Pinsa Bases offer an unbeatable combination of nutrition, flavour, and convenience:
Explore our full range of Sourdough Pinsa Romana Bases, including regular and mini formats, and discover how this ancient Roman recipe can elevate your menu with a healthier, artisan-quality twist.
Try our naturally fermented sourdough dough balls and experience the Virtue Pizza difference.
Shop now or get in touch to speak to our team.
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