I keep a sourdough starter in the fridge and feed it every 1 or 2 weeks. I often make pretzels, bread but pizza dough is a good use. I add yeast but the sourdough adds a nice flavor to the dough.
The pizza dough can be made by adding most of the ingredients into a stand mixer with the dough hook and letting it mix for 5-10 minutes. The pizza dough is just flour, water, salt, and yeast. Adding the sourdough gives the crust more flavor. Having a pizza stone makes the crust cook easier. A pizza peel makes sliding the dough on the stone easier. I find the trickiest part adding the topping and keeping the dough from sticking by adding lots of flour and corn meal allowing the dough to slide off the peel. To avoid the sticking and sliding you can always just use a cookie sheet and put in the oven with transferring.
I like dividing the dough into several pizzas. Dividing into 2 is good but I find 4 works well and you can cook two at the same time. For this particular time I made four pizzas. The basic was tomato sauce with cheese. For the second I did tomato sauce, cheese, and proscuito. The third was pineapple, gouda cheese, basil, with spicy salsa, then added argula after the pizza was finished. The last was squash with goat cheese and tomato sauce.
Ingredients
- 1 cup (240g) unfed sourdough from fridge
- 1/2 cup (115g) luke warm water
- 2 1/2 cups (300g) unbleached all purpose flour
- 1 t salt
- 1 t instant yeast
- oil
- extra flour for rolling out, can use some corn meal to help with sticking
- tomato sauce
- cheese grated like mozzarella
- any other toppings
Steps
Make dough
dough before rising
- mix water and yeast in mixer bowl, mix with dough hook let sit for 5-10m
- add sourdough, flour, salt
- can add 1T oil, can add more flour or more water if appears to wet or too dry to get a good texture
- mix for 8-10 minutes until comes together and slightly elastic
- place a bit of oil in bowl
- rub oil around bowl, coat dough in oil
- let sit for 2 hours or our overnight in fridge
- when ready should have doubled in size and feel elastic when poked
dough after rising
Bake pizza
- punch down risen down
- cut into 2 or 3 pieces, roll out each thin
- let rise for ~30m, until is desired thickness
- preheat oven to 425F
- keep dough from sticking to peel with flour and corn meal
dough on peel
- add tomato sauce, toppings
- can use pizza stone and pizza paddle
- bake 10-15m until pizza starting to turn brown
cheese pizza
pineapple gouda arugula
squash goat cheese pizza
