Sourdough Bread Pizza

Ever since my boss gave me a 40-year old sourdough starter, I’ve been enjoying experimenting with it and the most recent has been making sourdough bread pizza! I’m excited to share with you this recipe which is a spin on our Easy Peasy pizza dough elevated with the introduction of sourdough!

The only special ingredient you need here is patience! And isn’t that a small price to pay for next-level pizza?

What Is Sourdough? Why Use it in Pizza?

Sourdough is one of three popular dough starters (also called pre-ferments) and, much like in artisan breads, starters are commonly used to start pizzas too! Using a starter like sourdough can bring extra depth of flavor and rich texture accomplished through the pre-fermentation process. It even offers some digestive benefits!

Steps for Making Sourdough Bread Pizza Starter

• Add 1 ounce of water to an 8 ounce mason jar.
  • As tap water can have a lot of chlorine (which will inhibit yeast and bacteria growth), bottled drinking water is ideal. More on this below.
• Add 1 ounce of flour of your choice (type 00 or bread flour are the most common).
• Stir with a butter knife so that you can scrape it on the edge – it will be very sticky!
• Cover with a lid and store at room temperature out of sunlight (cupboard is great).
• 24 hours later, you need to feed the starter. You can either discard half of the starter, or you can split it and feed two starters (makes a nice gift for other bakers!)
  • Split the starter in two. Discard half (or start a second).
  • Add 1 ounces of water
  • Add 1 ounces of flour
  • Stir.
  • Cover and store again at room temperature.
• Repeat again tomorrow.
• After 3 fermentations, the starter should be bubbling and doubling in size each day, indicating it is fermenting well.
• Don’t be discouraged if you need to go another couple of days, however further feedings will result in a bigger starter – you may need to move to a bigger jar.
• Once the starter is fermenting well, you can either continue to nurture it or you can do your one-time sourdough pizza.

Tip: Water For Sourdough

Per King Arthur Baking, the ideal water for bread (and therefore pizza) is of medium hardness and with little or no chlorine. Why? The mineral content of the water affects the activity of the yeast and the production of gluten. The sweet spot is between 100 to 150 parts per million.

Most times, tap water is going to be fine. Conventionally filtered water (like using a Brita or Pur) is a step up because it should remove particulates and should allow the chlorine to dissipate.

However, reverse osmosis filtration will soften your water, so if you already have soft water, using RO filtered water is going to work against you. If your tap water is generally hard, then RO filtered water is going to be a good choice.

Bottled drinking water generally has minerals added for improved taste (such as Dasani) and therefore will also work well. The trace amounts of salt added in most US brands should not affect the fermentation.

Nurturing Your Sourdough Starter

If you are planning to create and keep a sourdough starter for a number of uses and a long period of time, you should repeat these steps every 24 hours for 1 week. The starter will rise and bubble for about 12 hours and then may fall in the second 12 hours, which is normal.

This process of repeatedly feeding the starter will encourage the wild yeasts and bacteria to become fully active in fermenting your starter. And the starter will be something you can use for a long, long time to come. After the first week of nurturing, you can store the starter in the fridge, but you will have to feed it every 1-2 weeks. This requires a bit more commitment, but pays off if you love sourdough.

Sourdough Discard Pizza Dough

Because nurturing your sourdough starter requires throwing away half of it each week, bread bakers refer to this style of pizza “sourdough discard pizza dough” – because it’s the part you are discarding. It’s also referred to as sourdough pizza dough no yeast.

More on this variation at the bottom.

Time to Make Our Sourdough Bread Pizza

Now that your sourdough starter is active, you are ready to start your sourdough bread pizza.

If you’ve followed our blog, you’ll know we’ve already made recipes for Sourdough Neapolitan Pizza and Whole Red Wheat Sourdough Pizza – so what’s different about this one?

Well, different flours make for different doughs. And this time we’re using bread flour.

Why?

Bread flour differs because – well, you guessed it – because it’s principally for making bread! What we like about it is that it makes for a really excellent pizza dough to work with. The texture of the dough ball is really our favorite to work with. That’s why we use it in our Easy Peasy pizza dough! However, the Easy Peasy dough doesn’t have quite as sophisticated of a flavor or texture as one might want when they’re stepping up their pizza game.

Therefore, the use of a dough starter is a great way to improve the dough. Biga or Poolish are certainly quicker and easier – but, as with so many things, investing more time and more effort usually results in better things!

Hence: sourdough bread pizza!

Creating the Levain

You’ve developed your starter, and now it’s time to create your levain.

For your levain, you want to feed it your dough bread flour exclusively (it doesn’t matter if your starter was made with regular flour, as the bulk of the volume will come from the red whole wheat).

Adding 5 tablespoons (2.5 fluid ounces) of water (~70 grams) and 8 tablespoons of bread flour (also ~70 grams) to 2.5 ounces (by weight – again, about 70 grams) will yield a total of about 7 ounces of levain. Let the levain develop over at least 8, but preferably 24 hours at room temperature.

Preparing Your Sourdough Bread Pizza Dough

You now have 7 ounces of levain that should have a delicious aroma that’s not just characteristic of a typical sourdough, but also has the characteristics of bread through the bread flour.

Add the levain to your stand mixer (or you can mix by hand) and add 0.5 cups of water and start the stand mixer on its slowest setting. Slowly add 1.25 cups of bread flour. The dough should develop into a ball but it may need a little extra kneading time. You might have to stop the mixer and work the dough a little with your hands to make sure it feels well mixed.

You should have a dough ball between 15 and 16 ounces, which will make a nice 14″ pizza (or two smaller individual size pizzas).

Cover the dough with a damp tea towel leave at room temperature for an hour (up to about 4 hours) to allow the starter to ferment the rest of the dough. If you’ve got time, after that first hour, you can pop the dough into the fridge for an extra day or two and let that sourdough really go to work. This will up the sourness in the final dough. When it’s time to make your pizza, be sure to let the dough fully come up to temperature before you roll it out.

Stretching Out Sourdough Bread Pizza Dough

You’ll likely find this dough is easy to work with due to the high protein content of bread flour and the time you’ve given it to develop the gluten. This will make this dough more structurally sound than Neapolitan dough. But with practice, you can certainly make a delicious Margherita Pizza!

• Place a light layer of bread flour on your work surface.
• Place the dough onto the floured work surface.
• Using your hands or a rolling pin, stretch the dough from the center outward trying to keep a uniform thickness.
• The higher gluten content should help you form the dough without making a hole, but you still need to be careful, especially if you’re going with a thin pizza dough.
• Transfer the dough to an oiled pan or a floured pizza peel.

Cooking Sourdough Bread Pizza

This dough can be readily made using a pizza pan or in an outdoor pizza oven. It is definitely easier cooked in a pan in a conventional indoor oven at 450º. 8 minutes, rotate, 8 more minutes, and finish with the oven off (transferred to a pizza stone for the finish, if you have one).

However, the peak of its flavor will be found if you can cook it in an outdoor pizza oven. However, I have found that bread flour pizzas cook much better at lower temperatures than the standard 900ºF used to make Neapolitan pizzas – somewhere closer to 650ºF in an outdoor oven seems to be the best, in my opinion.

Variation: Sourdough Discard Pizza Dough Same Day

Warning: This Takes a Little Practice to Get Right! You need to have some experience with your sourdough culture because this is a bit of trial and error on how much yeast and how long to proof.

If you’ve got a good, active sourdough starter, you can definitely use that starter to get a pizza off to a great ferment and make a delicious pizza the same day! This skips the levain step entirely.

Granted, you still need to have a sourdough starter on hand (which itself takes several days to make), but if you feed your sourdough on the weekend (I do Sundays), you can easily use that discard to make a pizza today.

The two keys here are the fermentation time and the ratio.

When discarding half of your starter, hopefully that is 20% (by weight) of your recipe. If it isn’t, you will almost certainly need to supplement the dough with dry active yeast.

Tip: If you’re not sure, I recommend adding some active dry yeast. You will still get the sourdough flavor from the discard, but the additional yeast will help make sure your dough rises. Again, trial and error is in order here since each sourdough culture is different, but If you have at least 10% sourdough discard by weight, I suggest 1/4 teaspoon per pound of dough. If you have less than 10%, you should use 1/2 teaspoon per pound.

And TIME: you should try to give your dough at least 30 minutes to rise before balling the dough.

Once the dough ball is formed, cover with a damp cloth or plastic wrap and let it rise in a warm place for at least 6 hours (10-12 is generally better), or until it has roughly doubled in size. The warmer your kitchen, the faster it will rise.

Tips for Same-Day Sourdough Discard Pizza Dough

• Ratio of Discard: Ideally, you’ll want about 20% of your pizza dough to be sourdough starter (by weight). If you don’t have that much, you might want to use (discard) more than half of your starter. This is something you can easily do – but when you feed the starter after, make up for the extra you’ve used and then leave the starter on the counter for a few hours to “catch up”.
• Active Discard: Make sure your sourdough discard is at room temperature and fairly active for the best results. This will give your dough a slight rise and more complex flavor, even without the overnight fermentation.
• Yeast Option: Including a small amount of dry active yeast can help ensure your dough rises adequately within the shorter timeframe. I typically add about 1/4 teaspoon per pound of dough ball.

Variation 2: Biga Pizza Dough

Another variation that doesn’t require making a sourdough starter is to use Biga (or Poolish). We have a recipe on that here.

January 31, 2025