Sourdough Pizza

Sourdough pizza is what my starter gets used for more than bread. I do not keep a special bag of flour for it either. Sometimes it is plain, sometimes 00, sometimes very strong Canadian, depending on what is in the cupboard and what sort of pizza I am after that day. The one in the photo was made with 500 g of plain flour, baked on a sheet of parchment in an ordinary oven, so there was no peel to wrestle with and nothing sliding onto the floor.

Flour changes the timing far more than it changes the recipe. A weaker plain flour is happiest over about a day, while a very strong Canadian will carry a two or three day ferment and come out chewier for it. My pizza dough calculator has a sourdough setting that works the quantities out for any number of pizzas, and it will tell you if the flour you have picked will not survive the schedule you want.

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PPin it

Why You’ll Love This Sourdough Pizza

• Use the flour you have. Plain, 00 or very strong white all work. You change the schedule to suit the flour, not the other way round.
• No peel, no stress. It goes into the oven on parchment, which is how I do it and how the pizza in the photo was baked.
• The timing bends around you. Mix in the morning, ferment through the day, chill overnight, bake tomorrow evening.
• It is not sour. People expect a sourdough base to taste sharp. At this much starter over this long, it just tastes of bread.
• It works in a British oven. 240C fan, a hot tray and a minute under the grill gets you there.

A Closer Look at the Ingredients

• Flour, whichever you have Plain is around 9 to 11% protein and is happiest over about a day. Strong white sits around 12 to 14% and will take two days. Very strong Canadian goes higher again and holds a three day ferment, coming out chewier. Pizza-grade 00 is lovely but check the bag, because 00 is a milling grade and some supermarket versions are barely 10% protein.
• Sourdough starter 90 g, which is 18% of the flour weight, at 100% hydration. Feed it 4 to 6 hours ahead and use it domed and bubbly. A liquid starter like this gives a milder, lactic flavour, where a stiff one pushes towards sharp and vinegary.
• Water 330 g, which lands the dough at about 65% hydration once you count the water already in the starter. Wet enough to be light, dry enough to handle.
• Mozzarella Ready-grated from a bag, the ordinary supermarket kind, is what I use on this one. It is drier than fresh mozzarella, so it melts over the base without flooding it, and it saves you a job. If you would rather use fresh, slice it and pat it dry with kitchen paper before it goes on, or the water comes out in the oven and leaves the middle soggy.
• Salami Thinly sliced, and it crisps at the edges as it bakes. Its fat renders into the cheese, which is most of why this pizza tastes the way it does.
• Chestnut mushrooms Sliced thin so they are cooked through in the eight minutes the pizza gets. They hold a lot of water, so scatter rather than pile: too many and the base steams instead of crisping. Chestnut over plain white for the deeper flavour.
• Cherry tomatoes Halved and laid cut side up so they roast rather than sit and leak. They blister and go sweet in the heat, and that sharpness is what cuts through the salami fat and the cheese.
• Banana shallot Milder and sweeter than an onion, and thin slices soften in the bake without needing to be cooked first. It goes under the cheese so it steams gently rather than burning on top.
• Garlic Some crushed into the sauce and a little sliced over the top, where it toasts. Keep the slices thin or they catch and turn bitter.

Equipment You’ll Need

Ingredient Substitutions

• Strong white bread flour Swap it straight in for the plain flour. It will take a longer ferment and a slightly wetter dough, so you can push the fridge to two days if you like.
• No salami Fennel sausage pinched into lumps, ham, or nothing at all. A plain margherita on this base is a fine thing.
• Passata for tinned tomatoes Works directly, and it is already smoother. If it looks thin, reduce it in a pan for ten minutes and let it cool before it goes near the dough.
• No sourdough starter This dough is leavened entirely by the starter, so there is no swapping it out. Use my pizza dough calculator for a yeasted version instead, or start a jar going with my sourdough starter recipe.

How to Make Sourdough Pizza, Step by Step

Full quantities are in the recipe card below. The whole thing spans about a day and a half, but almost all of that is waiting: roughly 40 minutes of actual work.

1. Feed your starter 4 to 6 hours ahead. Use it when it is domed and bubbly rather than collapsed and liquid. A starter straight from the fridge has not got the strength for this and will leave you waiting all night wondering what went wrong.
2. Disperse the starter in the water first. Stir until the water goes cloudy, then add the flour and mix with your hand until no dry flour remains. It will look shaggy and unpromising at this stage, which is correct. Cover and leave 30 minutes.
3. Now the salt and oil. Squeeze them through until the dough comes together. Two minutes of gentle kneading in the bowl is plenty: this is not bread, and pizza does not need that much gluten structure.
4. Three sets of folds, 30 minutes apart. Reach under one side, stretch it up, fold it over the middle, turn the bowl and repeat four times. This is what builds strength in place of kneading, and it is the difference between a dough that stretches and one that tears.
5. Ferment until it has grown by about half. Puffy, domed, a few bubbles at the surface. At 22C that is around 6 to 8 hours; in a cold British kitchen at 17C expect 10 to 12. Do not wait for it to double. A sourdough that has doubled has usually gone past its best, and it will rip rather than stretch.
6. Divide into two and ball them tightly. Drag each half towards you against an unfloured patch of worktop until the surface pulls smooth and tight.
7. Into the fridge overnight. Separate lidded containers, or a tray under a bag, for 8 to 12 hours. You can push it to two days if it suits your week, but that is the outer limit on plain flour: past it the dough goes slack and tears, and remember the fridge does not stop fermentation, it only slows it down.
8. Out 2 hours before you bake. Cold dough fights you and will not stretch. This step gets skipped more than any other and it shows in the shaping.
9. Make the sauce, and leave it raw. Crush the tomatoes with garlic, oil, oregano and salt. If it looks watery, sieve it for a few minutes first. Water on the base is what makes a soggy pizza.
10. Get every topping ready before the dough comes out. Once you start stretching you do not want to stop to slice a shallot.
11. Heat the stone under the grill, not with the fan. Stone on the top shelf, oven on the grill setting, no fan, 30 minutes. The grill element radiates straight down onto the stone and heats it far faster than convection will, while a fan actually strips heat off the surface. The oven reaching temperature is not the same as the stone reaching temperature, and that gap is the commonest cause of a pale, floppy base.
12. Press it out from the middle, leave the rim alone. Fingertips from the centre outwards, leaving the outer inch untouched so it puffs. Then lift it and let gravity do the rest. If it springs back, walk away for five minutes rather than forcing it: a tight dough only tears.
13. Build it on parchment. Trim a sheet roughly to size, lay the base on it, then a thin layer of sauce with the rim left clear, the grated mozzarella, salami, mushrooms, shallot, garlic and cherry tomatoes. Do not overload it: a heavy pizza steams instead of crisping.
14. Slide it in, parchment and all, for 8 to 10 minutes. Straight onto the hot stone. About halfway through, pull the parchment out from underneath and let the base sit directly on the stone. Parchment insulates, so leaving it in for the whole bake costs you the crisp bottom you heated the stone for. You want the rim puffed and blistered and the cheese bubbling.
15. Oil, pepper, cut, eat. Do not let it sit around. Then put the stone back under the grill for 10 minutes before the second pizza goes in, because the first one takes a lot of heat out of it and a lukewarm stone gives you a soft base.

Tips for the Best Sourdough Pizza

• Judge the dough, not the clock. Every timing on this page assumes a particular kitchen temperature. A British January kitchen at 16C will roughly double all of them, and no amount of following the schedule will fix that. Look for growth of about half and a domed, puffy surface.
• Warm the mixing water in winter. A few degrees above room temperature is enough to stop a cold kitchen stalling the whole thing before it starts.
• Do not add flour to sticky dough. With sourdough, stickiness late in the process usually means it has fermented too long, not that it needs more flour. Adding flour treats the symptom while the gluten carries on breaking down. Shorten the bulk next time instead.
• Semolina on the worktop, not just flour. Half plain flour and half fine semolina stops the base gripping while you stretch, and it gives the underside a bit of crunch.
• Bake one at a time, and reheat the stone between them. Two pizzas in together drops the oven temperature and steams both. Give the stone 10 minutes back under the grill before the next one goes in, otherwise the second pizza comes out noticeably softer than the first.

No Stone, No Steel, No Problem

If you have neither, do not buy anything yet. Get a heavy frying pan properly hot on the hob, lay the stretched base straight into it dry, and give it about 2 minutes until the underside is set and spotted. Top it in the pan, then slide the whole pan under the grill on full for another 2 minutes until the cheese bubbles and the rim colours.

It sounds like a workaround and it is anything but. It is how Edd Kimber makes his at home and how Franco Manca tell you to cook theirs, and the reasoning is sound: a domestic oven cannot give you fierce heat above and below at once, but a hob and a grill together can.

Variations

• Margherita. Sauce, mozzarella, basil after it comes out. The base is good enough to carry it.
• White pizza. Skip the sauce entirely. Garlic oil, mozzarella, mushrooms and shallots, then black pepper and a little grated hard cheese at the end.
• Longer and slower. Swap to strong white bread flour and give it 48 hours in the fridge. The flavour deepens noticeably and the crust crisps harder.
• Hot honey. A thin drizzle over the salami as it comes out of the oven. Sounds wrong, is not.

Storing and Freezing the Dough

Balled dough keeps in the fridge for 2 days comfortably. Day three is pushing it on plain flour and day four is a gamble. You will know it has gone too far when the ball has spread flat in its container and tears rather than stretches.

Freezing sourdough pizza dough divides people, and I will not pretend otherwise. Some bakers get good results freezing the balls after shaping and thawing overnight in the fridge; others find it never quite recovers its lift. If you want to try, freeze it the day it is balled rather than after a long chill, and do not let it prove more than a few hours once thawed. Baked leftovers reheat far better than you would expect in a dry frying pan with a lid on, three or four minutes over a medium heat.

🍽 What to serve with sourdough pizza: something sharp to cut the cheese. A plain rocket salad with lemon and oil, or my Polish celeriac salad if you want something with a bit more crunch. And if you are feeding people, put a bowl of fermented dill pickles on the table.

FAQ for Sourdough Pizza

My dough is sticky and will not stretch. Should I add more flour?

Almost certainly not, and this is where sourdough behaves differently from a yeasted dough. With yeast, sticky usually means the flour has not had time to absorb the water and a rest fixes it. With sourdough late in the process, sticky means it has over-fermented - the acid has started breaking down the gluten, so it can no longer hold tension and it rips instead of stretching. Adding flour at that point papers over the symptom while the dough carries on degrading. Bake it anyway, it will still taste good, then shorten the bulk next time or hold back 30 g of the water at mixing. If it happened after an overnight rise, your kitchen was warmer than you thought.

The base is gummy in the middle even though the top looks done.

That is an oven problem, not a dough problem, and usually the stone rather than the oven. Heat the stone on the top shelf under the grill with the fan off for 30 minutes, which gets it far hotter than a fan preheat will, then pull the parchment out halfway through the bake so the base actually touches the stone. If you are going straight on to a second pizza, put the stone back under the grill for 10 minutes first. If it still happens, an oven thermometer will tell you what temperature you are really baking at, and most ovens run cooler than the dial claims.

My base came out flat and dense. What went wrong?

Frustratingly, this happens at both ends, and telling them apart is the useful bit. Under-fermented dough feels tight and springy, fights you when you stretch it, and comes out dense but firm. Over-fermented dough feels slack and sticky, has spread out in its container, tears easily, and comes out flat with no oven spring at all. If you got no rise in the oven whatsoever, suspect over-fermentation before you suspect a weak starter.

My dough has not doubled. Is it ready?

It is not supposed to double. That is a bread instruction that has leaked into pizza recipes. You are after roughly 50 to 75% growth: puffy, domed, a few bubbles showing. A pizza dough that has genuinely doubled has usually gone too far and will have lost the strength to stretch.

Can I use sourdough discard instead of an active starter?

Not on its own. Discard has largely spent its leavening power, so there is nothing left to raise the dough. You have two honest options: add a little instant yeast alongside the discard and treat it as a yeasted dough with a sourdough flavour, or make a deliberately unleavened cracker-thin base and accept that it is a different thing. For this recipe you want a starter that has been fed and is at its peak.

How do I make it less sour?

Most people find this base is not sour at all, so start by checking whether you actually have a problem. If you do, the levers run the opposite way to what you would guess. Use a well-fed starter at its peak rather than one that has been sitting in the fridge for a fortnight. Use more starter, not less, because it reaches the same rise in fewer hours and so builds less acid. Shorten the time in the fridge. And keep your starter at 100% hydration rather than making it stiff: a stiff starter pushes towards the sharp, vinegary end.

Which flour should I use?

Whichever you have, and then match the timing to it. Plain flour at 9 to 11% protein is fine over a day, which is what this recipe is built around, but it does not have the gluten to survive a long multi-day ferment. Strong white will take two days, very strong Canadian three. Be careful with supermarket 00: it is a milling grade rather than a strength, and some of it is barely 10% protein despite the name. If you are unsure, put the protein figure off the bag into my pizza dough calculator and it will tell you how long that flour will hold.

My kitchen is freezing in winter. Will it still work?

It will, it just takes longer, and the flavour is better for the slower rise. Expect a bulk of 10 to 12 hours at 17C where a summer kitchen would take 6 to 8. Use water a few degrees warmer than usual when you mix, and if you want to help it along, an oven with only the light on makes a reasonable proving box. Do not use a warm airing cupboard for the whole bulk though, because that is how you end up with the sticky, over-fermented dough in the first question.

Do I need a pizza stone?

No. A heavy baking tray turned upside down gets you most of the way, as long as you heat it properly: top shelf, grill setting, fan off, 30 minutes. The frying pan and grill method above gets you further than either. If you do buy something, a baking steel beats a stone in a domestic oven because it conducts heat into the base faster, which is precisely what a cooler oven needs.

How much starter should I use for a different amount of flour?

Keep it at 15 to 20% of the flour weight and you will not go far wrong. Less starter means a longer, more complex ferment; more means a faster, milder one. If you would rather not do the sums, my pizza dough calculator now has a sourdough setting that works it out for any number of pizzas, and my sourdough calculator will sort your starter feed.

A Few Words from the Chef

Pizza night is a proper event in our house. My kids love it, and making it together has become a thing we do rather than just something we eat. It helps that a delivery has got so expensive lately, but honestly that is not why we do it. It is good fun, and a pizza you stretched yourself tastes better than one that turned up in a box.

I have had a fair bit of practice, mind. My first kitchen job was as a commis chef at nineteen, and I was making pizzas every single day. You learn quickly at that volume, and most of what is on this page came from those months rather than out of a book. If you give it a go, let me know how your crust turned out.