Cross the Border into Pound Ridge for 123Dough Bakery’s Sourdough Pizza
Very quietly, in the sleepy town of Pound Ridge, there’s a tiny sourdough bakery that started a pizza program that’s grown into something that locals, and even Martha Stewart, is abuzz about.
At 123Dough—where the small team bakes sourdough bread, pastries, and even makes sourdough pasta and ramen noodles—baker Paul Park started messing around with pizza dough, first at home, then at the bakery, and has seen the program really take off.
Born in Queens, and previously employed in the world of banking for 10 years, Park moved to Briarcliff, and took a job at 123Dough, owned by his longtime friend, Louis Kim.
Park, a self-taught baker, who learned sourdough in his personal time, knew two things: he didn’t want to stay in banking, hence the career change, and he simply missed the pizza that reminded him of home.
“Pizza was something I grew up eating weekly, sometimes daily,” Park says. “I went to a lot of local pizzerias in Queens and there’s a lot of great pizza in the city overall. It’s not a knock on Westchester, but when I moved here, I couldn’t find anything similar to what I remember…thin crust New York style pizza.”
Speckled brown dough balls before they’re hand stretched to order.
Park’s red sauce isn’t just tomatoes and salt, he’s using more of a marinara, adding salt, garlic, oregano, and EVOO to some of the best organic tomatoes on the market, Bianco Di Napoli.
But even before he settled in at 123Dough, Park, during his downtime at the beginning of the pandemic, began messing around with pizza at home for him and his son.
The research and development for his ideal slice, though, was mastered overnight.
“I ate a lot of really shitty pizza,” he says. “People think of it as such a simple food, but I’ve been making it for about five years now. I just wanted to eat good pizza and I made and ate a lot of bad pizza for like a year! I changed things regularly and it started to get good. Eventually, I brought it here and people liked it and it kept getting better.”
Not just cheese. This one’s got roasted organic baby bella mushrooms, mozzarella, parmesan, and truffle honey. The cheese they use is Grande, a high end, low moisture mozzarella that’s known for it’s buttery, nutty taste and meltability. 
Sausage slice, free of flop.
That experimentation involved a little bit of everything you can think of; different flours and grains, temperatures, fermentation times, toppings, using baking steel instead of a stone.
And believe this, he still tinkers with it almost daily, despite the fact that Park’s pizza went from being a pop up at 123Dough to something that’s now offered four days per week.
“We’ve been doing it about two years and it’s gotten much better,” he shares. “Commercial yeast is the magic potion that most bakers use because it stabilizes everything and it’s easier to work with. Sourdough is living. What separates us is sourdough, the ancient grains in our flour, unmodified wheat, that’s freshly ground. The equivalent is if you drink coffee; it’s ground fresh. As you grind, flour oxidizes, and just like coffee it will degrade over time. We mill fresh and make dough as close to the grind as possible. Same philosophy with everything we make here. You see? Our dough is brown and has speckles in it.”
He’s also picked up a few tricks from pizzaiolos he respects. Nick Baglivo of L’Industrie Pizzeria told him something as simple as to set the oven temperature higher because while the first pie will cook quickly, the oven needs to be able to keep up for every one thereafter. And about constantly making little changes, that came from the legendary Anthony Mangiere of the renowned Una Pizza Napoletana.
“I met him and he said he makes changes to his dough all the time,” Park says. “We tweak it here, too, with incremental micro changes, so in a year, two years, it’ll make a significant difference.”
The result of 123Dough’s pizza, after mixing a dough using freshly ground einkorn grains (a high protein ancient grain) with sourdough starter, cold fermented for a minimum 48 hours, is something Park is proud of. And what you’re getting is a slice that’s ultra-thin, no flop, equal parts crispy-chewy, and it’s got a pleasant bitterness in both smell and taste.
“It’s easier to digest and a healthier dough for you,” Park says. “Usually it’s a 48-hour fermentation, but it’s fine if it goes to 72 or even 96, which I think is the best, but anything after that, it declines and becomes too chewy. But peak is like the third day. Any ingredients (toppings) are organic and natural. But also, I don’t want people coming because they think it’s healthy or not healthy pizza. I want people to come here because it’s good pizza.”
And coming, they are.
While locals were already onto it, they draw heavy from New Canaan and Ridgefield, and now even further away after a very random, organic visit from Martha Stewart, who’s a big fan of the bakery and gave their pizza a shoutout on her Instagram.
Because of 123Dough’s growing pizza prowess, Park told us that instead of chancing a walk-in and a potential long wait, you’re best suited to call and place an order that acts as your reservation.
“I hate doing that because pizza is a very normal thing,” he says. “You go in, order, sit down with your friends, and eat, but it’s the best way we can figure it out.”
He also added that they’re definitely outgrowing the space, which begs the question…how about plans to open a pizzeria independent from the bakery?
While it’s not completely out of the question, Park says, ever so humbly, “I’ve still got to get on the level where I can put myself up there with guys that have been doing this longer than I have.”
We’ll see you at pizza pickup.
Pizza hours: Thursday through Sunday, noon – 8
78 Westchester Avenue, Pound Ridge
914.764.8111, 123dough.com
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