We got a ringside seat to the action at the bustling open-concept kitchen in the 160-seat restaurant at a recent tasting session. The kitchen has become more open to diners  —  parts of the kitchen pass are even accessible to diners now.

Our pulse raced slightly when we saw the kitchen staff kneading the dough and lifting the stretched-out sheet towards the light until it became almost translucent before dusting it with more flour.

The dough recipe, which is used across all Mozza restaurants, has been recently tweaked by Silverton. The flour mix comprises two types of King Arthur bread flour, which is used for making more lofty, high-rising yeast-based breads, and spelt and rice flours.

The dough-making process starts at 7am, which gives the dough ample time to be fermented with yeast. It is then left to rest for close to an hour. The production time for a batch of dough is three to four hours.

Silverton is known for adopting an artisanal bread-making approach to making pizzas. The pizza, which toes between the lines of a wafer-like cracker and bread, doesn’t not droop — unless the toppings are hefty, such as burrata or tomatoes. The crust is so crispy that the crunch is discernible from chewing on the pizzas.

Encircling the pizza crust is a puffy and airy cornicione that has been baked brown evenly in the woodfired oven with California almond wood, which is known for its fruit-forward wood flavour.

The beauty of the crust is amplified through the leaner pizzas such as Margherita, which beams with mellow sweetness from the tomato paste, splotches of mozzarella di bufala and a sprinkling of basil leaves.

Another lean pizza is the Bianca, which has a blend of creamy fontina, mozzarella, truffle-scented sottocenere cheese, which has been aged beneath a layer of ash. The blend of these cheese yield a mix of saltiness, honeyed sweetness and butteriness, coupled with fragrance emanating from the leaves of fried sage.

For a richer punch, opt for the BLT, which is like a pizza equivalent of the sandwich. The pizza is garnished with bacon and guanciale that gives a burst of saltiness, which is tempered down by the bitterness from the forest of arugula leaves on a bed of onion cream. If that isn’t rich enough, the pizza has generous lashings of aioli.

I very much prefer the Fennel Sausage pizza, which is sprinkled with frilly fennel fronds that resemble dill and injects some herbaceous freshness to the pizza, which is loaded with minced pork sausage.

Pizzas aside, other lunchtime specials include Nancy’s chopped salad – deconstructed ingredients of radicchio leaves, butter lettuce and topped with provolone and salami, which are presented like a bibimbap, Shrimp Caesar and Roasted Chicken Salad.

Text: Kenneth SZ Goh/The Peak

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