gergan shared this post · 1h ago
sc_we_ol

Sourdough Pizza

Pizza dough allowed? Sorry photos aren't social media fancy these just phone snaps from last night. but the pizza was amazing.

DOUGH Based on 1kg flour
Makes 6 dough balls and 12-14" pizzas
64% hydration (water)
10% sourdough starter discard (mine is 1:1 so technically this drops my hydration a minuscule amt but I dont worry about it)
1.6% salt (16g)

Since this is the sourdough sub, i started my own start about 6 weeks ago with camas mill flour. 1:1:1 i’ve been feeding it with costco organic AP since running out of the local flour (about 10 days ago) . It’s very active, i discard 100g daily (and what I used for this dough) add 50/50 water and flour and it triples in about 6 hours. I used to make pizzas professionally using commercial yeast, so wanted to try sourdough at home. 

DAY 1 MORNING
1000 Grams flour (i used to use a combination of caputo 00 and 0 nuvolo flours for more oven spring, but their blue pizzeria flour works great by itself and what i use at home now cause its less stuff to deal with)
640g water
16g fine sea salt
100g sourdough starter discard (I use in morning before daily feeding since thats when i start the dough)

  • Measure out 640g slightly warmer than skin water (probably 100F)
  • Add fine sea salt and swish until dissolved
  • Add 500g flour
  • Add 100g starter and swish 
  • Add rest of flour, mix by hand, until combined almost nothing left stuck to sides of container
  • Let rest for 20 minutes (Fermentolyse) 
  • Hand kneed for 5 minutes, I use a push out, fold back over itself, rotate and repeat kind of motion, I’ve never used a machine for this and since dough roughly 64% hydration would be hard on home mixer.
  • Lightly oil dough container and top of dough with olive oil
  • Place in container with a lid, after the dough relaxes mark height.

BULK FERMENTATION
Let rise until doubled (mine about 8 hours in pnw)  or more depending on temp. 

DIVIDE AND FORM

  • Lightly olive oil a dough box (mine are stackable, one I use probably 16x24in) 
  • Turn dough out on counter, divide into roughly 285g pre-skins
  • If you need to add a little dough, just put on top until weight correct and you can fold it in when you ball it. 
  • Form each into a tight ball, there's a lot of way to do this and after several thousand pizzas i’ve got my method, which is basically a tuck under itself while holding in my hands, then I pull / roll the ball on the counter with the "bottom staying the bottom" to create surface tension
  • Place in dough tray, lightly olive oil top, I cover with another dough tray
  • Place in fridge for at least overnight, could push it maybe to 2-3 days if you want to keep slow fermentation going, but I don't have that kind of time at home or space in home fridge. We did a little over 48 hours secondary cold fermentation when I sold pizzas.

MAKE PIZZA
Day of pizza making, pull dough about 3-4 hours before you cook pizza (this is shorter with commercial yeast), place on counter, I'm in the PNW and our ambient temp is probably 67-70ish degrees or less in fall / winter. 

We use caputo Semola flour for dusting and forming pizza, which is finer than semolina (or cornmeal) it’s almost as fine as regular all purpose (but not as fine as double or single 0 flour), spread on counter, sprinkle some on top of dough ball before removing, I lay it top down first and use my fingers to push out dough into circle, do not touch the outer 1-1.5inch of rim, thats where your oven spring is for the crust. Flip over and repeat. Then up to you how you want to continue to stretch your dough, we use a toss and fist / back of hand method to work around the dough letting gravity also help. You want about a 12-13” skin when done.

TOPPINGS
Here you can go nuts obviously, Buy the finest DOP tomatoes you can get. Ours were imported from near naples, so have fun and experiment or just get whatever you can locally and it’ll be fine. But, tomatoes make a huge difference. Some have higher water content etc. You can do whatever you want to crush them, I prefer a hand food mill for what i think is the perfect tomato texture, scrape pulp in as well. We add about half a tablespoon of high quality tomato paste per 28oz can (using mutti currently) . 8oz fine sea salt per 28oz can. Stir. That's our “sauce”, not cooked, no herbs.

We use about ⅓ - ¼ cup of the milled tomatoes, You don't want it soupy. We use a fior di latte mozzarella cheese (ferndale farmstead out of Washington), i cut it into strips about ¼ wide by maybe 2 inches long (have a cheese thing for this but can use knife). Don't overdo the cheese. 

Flour your peel (again we use caputo semola here) and quickly pull the pizza onto your peel.This take practice, you could probably also assemble your pizza on your peel, just keep shaking it to make sure it’s not sticking. I like a metal peel with perforations so extra flour falls through, no one wants a bunch of burned flour on the bottom of their pizza. Pull it back into a circle. Give your pizza a few shakes to make sure it’s loose on the peel, this also helps bring it back to circular. 

Oven
Professionally we used a wood fired oven, at home I have a gozney arc xl. Does a great job and doesn't take 4-5 hours to warm up, and you can add a little wood if you like (I prefer oak). I let it come up to temp for about an hour at least before we cook.I prefer a neo-neopolitan style cook, vs traditional neapolitan cook temp which is over 800 degrees. The really high temps give you that classic black spot leoparding but I feel like the cheese / topping never cooked into sauce the way I prefer. So, we cook between 730-780 degrees give or take which gives some leoparding and a slightly more toasted crust and melted cheese. If you just have a home oven, I use broil only, which approximates (but not the same)  the hot dome temps and a stone, I put it lower in the oven and let it get super hot for an hour ish as well.

Launch your pizza on the deck, i make my first 90 degree turn when side closest to fire starts to brown, keep turning until cooked, keep checking bottom.  If done before the top, you can lift the pizza toward the ceiling of the oven and “dome” it to finish top faster.

We finish with high quality parm (with salt crystals if you know what I’m talking about), a little flaky sea salt depending on the pizza, and extra fresh basil sometimes. We also add a couple leaves of fresh oregano typically. We pull from oven directly onto a wire rack where it sits for finishing, if not, the bottom of your pizza can get wet like toast on a plate. So we don't let it sit on a metal peel or plate until we serve. Cut and eat (we do 6 slices for a 12-14” pizza).

My sons pizza (hes great pizzaiolo!) here is sourdough, ferndale farmstead fior di latte, tomato sauce, fresh basil before and after cook, olympic provisions italian sauasage, finished with fresh oregano, and little extra tomato sauce.

Thats my sourdough pizza experiment if you'll allow sourdough pizza crust! Buon appetito!

53 7
mariustoday Good job!
Do you think you can manage to have a Contemporany Neapolitan pizza just by using sourdough? I’m struggling to have the cornicione “puff” like with the poolish approach.. but the sourdough dowsnt produce comparable CO2 (air) in the dough in my opinion
4d ago 2 likes
sc_we_ol Author totally, im going to work on that and think it's possible, I actually did a test a few weeks ago where i let the dough overproof overnight, then refed it day 3 and made pizza that night and got more spring. I'll post more experiments! For reference in my past "life" we were doing a neo-neopolitan style (cooked just shy of 800 which is why they call it that and crust caramelizes a little more vs the sharp black leopard spots) and had 48 hour cold ferment crust dialed (think we made over 7000 pizzas while food cart open) . so, i'll see if I can get it closer to there! here's a commercial yeast pizza we made to give you idea, would love to get closer to this so maybe it'll be more starter or some other variable. But! stoked anyways. thanks for comment.

https://preview.redd.it/fs946s58dazh1.png?width...

4d ago 2 likes
mariustoday That looks very nice, I’m also using 800F (425C) for top and around 750F(400C) for buttom .. but cant get that cornicione spring similar to commercial yeast.. after some research with chatgpt it seems that there is a fundamental challenge as commercial yeast is selected to produce more gas.. compared to the wild yeast, so, for now, the only approach in order to get that result is a combination of two starters: poolish and levain 3d ago 2 likes
Hot_Ad_787 A super active starter and a 48 hour cold proof will get you light and airy. 3d ago 2 likes
sc_we_ol Author we used to do a 48ish hour cold proof with commercial yeast and that was our go to i just havent tried it with sourdough yet ! thanks for chiming in



3d ago 2 likes
sc_we_ol Author this pizza was light and airy just not the oven spring we got with commercial, but it was close. I should have taken a picture of the crumb, but alas i did not we ate. but was appropriate for this style pizza

3d ago 2 likes