The Best Ever Sourdough Pizza Dough

It was finally spring 2024 and the sun was shining, the birds were singing and my sourdough starter was fermenting nicely. Even though I was four loaves deep into my Knead for freshly baked sourdough bread something was missing from my life. Was it sourdough pizza? Perhaps! Or maybe it was something more physical then just kneading dough.

I kept shoving loaves of dough into my five hundred-degree preheated oven a few times a week but I was just not feeling complete. And you may ask, how can you feel not satisfied when you are constantly shoving home-baked sourdough spread with pate at your face?

I knead more in my life

I took a break from baking one April morning and discovered that what was lacking in my life was my Cannondale mountain bike. I haven’t really been into cycling since way before the pandemic and I think this afternoon I became reobsessed. Because this newly queened sourdough dough puncher needed another obsession, right?

Now if you are going to start riding ten miles or more every few days then I think you truly deserve a slice of freshly baked pizza at happy hour. And lets face it, life is too short for store-bought pizza dough!

If you are as obsessed with sourdough as I am then you are constantly discarding starter. Sure you could just throw it down the drain, or you can bake the best pizza dough you have ever tried in your life! This recipe makes quite a bit of dough but it freezes exceptionally well. I like to cut this mixture into four separate pieces and freeze most in small ziplock bags. Simply defrost on your kitchen counter for 1-2 hours when you are ready to bake a pizza.

So what are the best toppings for your sourdough pizza?

• Your favorite red sauce, mozzarella, goat cheese, peppercines and cashews.
• Argentine shrimp, pesto, ricotta, lemon zest, mozzarella.
• Pesto, goat cheese, fennel, pine nuts and freshly cooked bacon bits.
• Garlic butter, mozzarella, figs, prosciutto and freshly torn basil leaves.

For that optimal wood-fired pizza goodness, I suggest baking this pizza dough on your barbeque.

This is a great summertime recipe if your kitchen is just too hot (Like mine!) to turn on the oven and make the house hot.

Sourdough Pizza Dough

150 grams sourdough discard starter

1 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons olive oil

600 grams of bread flour

375 grams water

1 teaspoon rice flour

2 extra teaspoons olive oil when it’s time to bake

In your mixing bowl add your room temperature warm water to your starter discard. Add the honey. Set aside for a few minutes. Mix in the 2 teaspoons of the olive oil, bread flour and salt. Mix just a bit until you have a shaggy dough and set aside. Let sit, well covered for thirty minutes. After thirty minutes pull your dough together, maybe twenty times, doing coil folds until it comes together just a bit and has a shine to it. You can use extra flour or water on your hands to keep the dough from sticking to your hands or the bowl. Set your dough aside for thirty more minutes.

After thirty minutes, you will want to do six sets of stretch and folds, every fifteen minutes. Check out this video for what the hell a stretch and fold may be. After your sixth set of stretch and folds leave your dough on the counter, well covered overnight or for twelve hours to ferment.

After twelve hours you are ready to pull your dough back together into a ball and cold ferment it for 5-12 hours. The longer you cold ferment the better sourdough flavor will build. Use rice flour to coat the outside of your dough so it does not stick. Set your dough in a bowl with a clean towel coated with rice flour and set in the fridge, well-covered to cold ferment.

When you are ready to bake your sourdough pizza, preheat your gas grill to high. Turn it down to low right before placing the pizza on the grill. If you need to flour the dough anymore while shaping it into a pizza shape, use rice flour or cornmeal. Shape your dough into a pizza pie shape. Place your sourdough pizza crust on a cutting board along with olive oil, a large spatula and a pastry brush to spread the oil.

Open your barbeque. Oil one side of the pizza dough very well and place this side of your sourdough pizza dough downwards on the barbeque. Close the lid, and wait just two minutes. Oil the upward-facing side of your sourdough pizza crust, flip the crust carefully and let it cook for two more minutes. At this point, you can remove your crust and add your pizza toppings at once and finish in the oven, or finish your pizza later

The final step for your sourdough pizza crust

When you are ready to add toppings to your pizza, preheat the oven to 375. Add your sauce and your toppings and bake your sourdough pizza for twelve minutes in the oven.