Cocoa Pizza Dough

This recipe for cocoa pizza dough comes from New York City pizza-maker Thomas DeGrezia of Sofia Wine Bar. It’s made by integrating cocoa powder and melted baking chocolate into a conventional pizza dough. While chocolatey, it’s a sugarless dough, so any sweetness must come from your toppings. Though conceived in 2017 as an anti-Nutella dessert pizza, ironically, it also works well as a base for the famous chocolate hazelnut spread.

DeGrezia advises hand-mixing over using a mixer because the dough can be a bit delicate. (Try a low setting if you’d rather use a mixer.) The dough stretches nicely, but the chocolate does seem to create more resistance (and note that ten inches is DeGrezia’s ideal pie size). If you have problems stretching, just give it a few minutes to rest . This dough was made using 100% Cacao Unsweetened Cocoa Powder Carefully and 70% Cacao Extra Bittersweet Baking Chocolate from Ghirardelli, but your favorite brands should work just as well. 

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Arthur Bovino is Ooni’s Head of Pizza Content. Arthur is the founder of the 101 Best Pizzas in America and author of “Buffalo Everything: A Guide to Eating in "’The Nickel City"’”and “The Buffalo New York Cookbook: 70 Recipes from The Nickel City.” You can follow him on Instagram @nycbestpizza.


A ball of pizza dough flavoured with chocolate