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Getting Started with Sourdough Pizza Dough

Getting Started with Sourdough Pizza Dough

July 19, 2022

Feeding and maintaining your starter

Once you have successfully made or acquired a sourdough starter, it requires regular "feedings" to keep it healthy. You can choose to keep your sourdough starter out of the refridgerator or in the refridgerator. Storing it at room temperature will make the starter prove faster, so it will require once or twice daily feedings. The upside to maintaining it this way is that it is always ready to go when you are ready to make a pizza. The downside to leaving your starter at room temperature is that it requires a lot of flour and time, to maintain it. Keeping it in the refridgerator requires much less time and energy on your part, it only needs to be fed once a week. Just remember that when you want to make pizza dough, you'll want to feed your starter the day before you are ready to make dough.

This is one of many starter feeding recipes out there. Sourdough is as much art as it is science, play with it and see what works.

Recipe: feeding your sourdough starter

Ingredients:
- 250g flour
- 200g lukewarm water
- 100g sourdough starter

Directions:
1. Add the sourdough starter to the water and mix with your hands until blended. It's ok if some chunks of starter remain intact.
2. Add the starter and water mixture to the flour and mix with your hands until blended.
3. Add blended mixture to a vertical container such as a mason jar.
4. Let your jar of starter sit at room temperature or in the refridgerator until you begin the process of making dough. When your starter douvles or triples in size, that is what it's ready for dough making!
5. If you are not making dough, repeat feeding the starter daily (if starter is at room temp) or weekly (if starter is in the refridgerator.

Recipe: soudough pizza dough

After many attempts at perfecting sourdough pizza dough, this is our best recipe to date. We like using 68% hydration. The hydration levels refer to the flour/water ratio. Sourdough pizza dough recipes use anywhere from 60-80% hydration, so if you feel that the dough is not quite right (maybe too wet or too dry), feel free to adjust the hydration ratios as you see fit.

Ingredients:
- 250g type 00 flour
- 250g bread flour (at least 12% protein)
- 364g lukewarm water
- 10g salt
- 150g sourdough starter
- olive oil

Directions:
1. Mix together the 2 types of flour and the salt until blended. Set aside.
2. Add the sourdough starter to the water and mix with your hands until blended. It's ok if some chunks of starter remain intact.
3. Add the starter and water mixture to the flour and mix with your hands until blended.
4. Knead dough with your hands for about 10 minutes.
5. Put into a bowl and cover with a towel. Every 30 minutes for two hours you will pull the dough and stretch it to develop the gluten. When you stretch the dough, uncover the bowl and pull some dough from the bottom and fold it over top. Repeat 4 or 5 times until you have stretched all sides of the dough ball. You will do this 4 times in 2 hours.
6. After 2 hours your dough should feel way more elastic. It's now ready to separated into balls. Divide your dough into 4 equal sized portions and carefully shape into balls. place dough balls on a baking sheet lined with a little olive oil to prevent sticking. Thnen cover with plastic wrap. You may also use individual dough containers.
7. If you are cooking pizza the same day, let your dough balls sit out, covered, for another 2 hours.
8. If you are cooking your pizza the next day, place the covered dough balls in the fridge. Take the dough out about an hour before you want to shape it so it gets to room temperature.