Is This The Best Pizza in London?
17.07.2026
Hannah Drye never set out to make "London-style" pizza - that's a label other people attached to it. What she set out to make was thin, crispy pizza she actually wanted to eat, first from the back of a car at weekend markets, then through pub residencies, and now as XL slices and whole 20-inch pies at All My Friends in Hackney Wick.
Here, the Dough Hands founder talks 72-hour proves, why truffle oil never stood a chance, the fish finger sandwich she'd genuinely put on a pizza, and the scotch bonnet hot honey you can make at home with a day's patience.
Interview with Hannah Drye, founder of Dough Hands
Dough Hands started as a lockdown side hustle and is now genuinely one of London's most talked-about pizzas. Was there a single moment - an order, a queue, a review - where you realised this had stopped being a hobby and become the thing you do?
When I quit my full time job! Before that it very much felt like a side hustle, I was working Monday to Friday 9-5 and then packing up the car each weekend to go and sell pizza at markets. So when I packed the 9-5 in I was like ok this is it, pizza needs to pay my bills now.
Your pizza often gets called "London-style" - a label you didn't choose. How would you describe it yourself, and how did you land on that thin, crispy base?
I always say it's just thin and crispy pizza. I've always pushed the bake on pizzas even when we were using Gozneys at the markets, there's nothing worse than an anaemic crust. As we moved into the pub residencies we worked with deck ovens and it really allowed us to get the crispy base I'd been wanting. I've really just made pizza that I want to eat, that's with the crust and the toppings, and luckily other people like that kind of pizza too!
You bake at 350°C rather than the 400°C+ that Neapolitan tradition insists on, and your bases famously stay crisp under even the heaviest toppings. Talk us through what the slower bake actually does - and is there a lesson in there for someone making pizza in a normal home oven?
So the slower lower bake is how you achieve a crispier base, you need the temp to come down to allow the pizza to stay in the oven longer - if you were to bake at Neapolitan temps and leave it in there for 5 mins it would become charcoal. For anyone making pizza at home I would buy some sort of pizza stone/baking steel, you need this to achieve that crisp base. Preheat the oven as much as you can at the oven's highest temp to get heat into that stone and then bake your pizza for probs 7-8 mins or until it's looking golden and crispy.
What's the biggest mistake home cooks make with pizza dough, and the one fix that costs nothing?
A quick prove! Unless you're using a pre-ferment you want to be patient with your dough. Ours goes for 72 hours mostly, it's what adds lightness and flavour.
You use regenerative flours from Shipton Mill and Wildfarmed. What drew you to them, and what do they change about the finished pizza?
Ultimately I want to work with British brands where possible, the fewer air miles that go into each pizza the better, but the Wildfarmed specifically adds great flavour to the dough, it has some of the bran left in it which helps boost that flavour!
We've heard The Jode - 'nduja, sausage, stracciatella, hot honey - is named after your girlfriend, which we love. What's the story there, and what did she say when she found out?
So the story for this isn't as romantic as it sounds, I put the pizza on the menu and it needed a name and I thought The Jode sounded kinda cute, but she's mostly veggie so never orders it haha.
The Shroomy gets its earthy depth from soy-roasted mushrooms and taleggio rather than truffle oil. Talk us through that choice - what does the soy-roasting do that nothing else can?
The soy works as a seasoning really, it gets a lovely deep umami flavour into the mushrooms and brings out their natural savouriness. To me truffle oil just overpowers the whole pizza and it's all you can taste. The soy mushrooms work much better in combination with the other bits on the pizza.
Your specials get gloriously experimental - tequila sauce, harissa aubergine, spicy tuna with Calabrian chilli. Where do those ideas start? And has there ever been a combination that never made it off the pass - what killed it?
Ideas literally come from all kinds of different places, it could be a sandwich I've eaten, or a small plate at a restaurant, my girlfriend has hundreds of cookbooks so sometimes there's inspiration from recipes in those. I feel like almost anything you eat where there is a winning combo of flavours can be pizza-fied. To be honest lots of things don't make it off the pass, we'll do tests and they will work flavour wise but they just won't fully blow your socks off which is what we want from every special!
London's pizza scene is more crowded than ever. What's the thing you obsess over at Dough Hands that you think often gets overlooked elsewhere?
I think for me I want to keep the menu interesting, it's important to do the classics well but I want to have signatures and be known for more than just a good pepperoni or marg. I think we've done that quite well with pizzas like the spicy tuna and The Shroomy. That's not to say other places don't also do this though, there are loads of creative slices all over London!
What did "a treat" look like when you were growing up, and does that nostalgia show up in what Dough Hands makes now?
Fish finger sandwich! Tbh that's still a treat for me? It's a hangover meal, it's lunch, it's dinner, it's a meal for all occasions. I'd put fish fingers on a pizza tbh, bit of lemon, dill, pickles, banger.
After a full service of pizza, what do you actually cook for yourself at home?
After a full service I pass Iceland on my way home and I grab this crunchy nut granola and eat it in front of the TV, at the moment I've been catching up on I Kissed a Girl!
So, what's next for Dough Hands? We've read whispers about a first permanent site, but tell us everything you're allowed to: what are you dreaming about, plotting, or building right now?
A Dough Hands pub or something booze focused is the goal!
DOUGH HANDS HOT HONEY
DOUGH HANDS HOT HONEY
Hot honey really is the easiest thing to make, we just blend scotch bonnets into ours and let it sit for a day before straining it out. The scotchies give the honey more than just a level of spice, they add fruitiness as well. We do 5 scotch bonnets for a 1.6kg.
Quickfire
Slice or whole pie, if you're forced to choose?
Slice! That extra bake gives it an extra level of crispiness.
Crust: eaten, dipped (in what?), or abandoned?
Always eaten, dipped in hot sauce for me.
Hot honey: on everything, or strictly rationed?
Strictly rationed, I think there's other ways to get that sweet/salty combo.
Does your dough (or starter) have a name?
Lol no, but if it did with this heat atm it would be 'problem child'.
Your honest 3am post-service order?
Depends what kind of service we've had, if I'm still there at 3am I'll be having a frozen margarita. Actually, make it 10.
Pineapple: genuinely fine or genuinely not?
The best! Why can you put honey on a pizza but not pineapple!?
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