Easy Sourdough Pizza Crust Recipe

Hey, I'm John Kanell. And today on Preppy Kitchen, we're making some delicious sourdough pizza crust. So let's get started. First off, you need your sourdough starter. This should be fed the night before with equal parts water and flour. And I will say that your sourdough starter should not have been dormant for the last three days. It should be like active. You're gonna wanna use this when the sourdough starter is starting to fall. That means it's hungry and ready to go. Into a large bowl, I'm adding one and a half cups of warm water, between 80 to 85 degrees. To this, I'm gonna add 2 1⁄3 of a cup or 150 grams of my starter. And you can spoon it in or measure it out. Sourdough pizza crust is one of my favorite things. I love that extra bit of flavor. I love pizza dough any way you cut it. But the sourdough variety, it's so good. You also wanna add a tablespoon of olive oil. Mixture this together with a fork just to get it all nice and distributed. When you have sourdough starter at home, it's hanging out in your fridge, you have so many things you can make besides delicious sourdough bread. You can make sourdough pancakes, pizza crust, like the list goes on. You can use it in any kind of breaded product. And it does add a delicious bit of extra flavor. By the way, this already smells delicious. I love the smell of sourdough. It's time to add some bread flour to this. If you prefer, you could also use all-purpose. It'll give you less of a chewier pizza crust. We're gonna add four 3 1⁄4 cups or 570 grams of bread flour. It's so much easier when you use a scale. Perfect. For some contrast, we're adding 2 1⁄2 teaspoons of salt. One, two, and a half. That's 15 grams. My scale's done, so grab a spatula and we're gonna stir this together until we have a nice shaggy dough. I like to make pizza on the weekends with George and Lachlan, and today, for instructional purposes, I'm doing this with just me. But if it's us at home, they start this from the very beginning with warm water and yeast. They do it all by hand, and then they have fun decorating the pizza dough. It's really a nice thing for kids to do because it's so tactile. Just make sure they wash their hands very well. And by the way, if you like my videos, go ahead and hit that subscribe button. There's two new recipes every single week. This looks nice and shaggy. I'm gonna lightly flour my hands and just knead this together a few times in the bowl just to help it come together a bit more. One final scrape down. Now it's time to cover this up. You can use plastic wrap or a damp bonnet. We're gonna let this rest for about an hour before we do some stretch and folds. If you've ever made focaccia, it's a very similar process. We're not gonna go crazy kneading this, but go have some rest time. We'll stretch and fold and repeat. It's been an hour, so let's take a look at our dough, and it needs to have some stretching and folding right now. We're gonna give this dough some structure. Wet your hands with some water. We're gonna pull on one side, and if it's stuck, you can use a little spatula just to free it up. Stretch it out and fold it over. Now we just turn this 90 degrees and do another stretch and fold. We're gonna do this four to six times. Kind of depends on how your dough is. If it's really tight at the last fold, stop there, but if you have some more room, you can give it another fold or two. Stretch it out, fold it over. Stretch it out and fold it over. And I think I can do one more, so a final stretch and a final fold. There we go. Wetting my hands one last time, and I'm gonna form this into a ball, just like that, and plop that right back into my bowl and cover it up with plastic wrap or a plate or your wet bonnet. Our first set's done. We're gonna do this three more times, this time waiting about half an hour in between each fold to let the dough rest before we try it again. I repeated my stretching and folding twice off camera, and it's time for my fourth and final. I also transferred this to a clean bowl. Just in case you're wondering. So we're gonna lift this up. Look at that stretch. Fold it. So at this point, you have a choice. You can leave this on the countertop for three to five hours for its final bulk ferment or for its rise, or you can pop this into the fridge and let it rise overnight slowly and then bring it to room temp. That's normally what I do because if you want this to be pizza for dinner, you're gonna start this recipe first thing in the morning and come back to it, and normally I just don't have that time, but it can hang out in the fridge overnight and then I'll take it out the next day, bring it to room temperature, and it'll be good to go. Okay. That was four. I'll do one final one. You can see on that last fold, it's really fighting you when you're stretching it. Needs to chill out and rise. On the countertop or in the fridge, you'll see a 50 to 75% rise. It won't quite double, but it'll be ready to use, and during that slower rise time, you're gonna develop more flavor, it'll have a nicer texture, and just getting all those great things that sourdough has. Okay, I'm gonna cover this up, pop this into the fridge, and I'll see you tomorrow with the magic of editing. I let my dough ferment in the fridge overnight. It's come to room temperature, so now you can see it's 50 to 75% larger. Gonna lightly flour the surface of my counter. Transfer this to your counter. I'm using my offset because it is a little sticky, but we all love a hydrated dough, don't we? Lovely. Divide your dough into four equal-ish pieces. I'm using a bench scraper here. If you're weighing it out, each of these pieces will be about 275 grams. Time to make some pizza dough balls, so gather the corners and pinch them together, just like that, almost like you're making a dinner roll. And now you're going to cup the dough with your hands and scooch it towards you. This should be on a clean countertop, so scoot that flour away if there's any. So I place it seam side down. I'm gonna cup it towards me, turn 90 degrees, cup it towards me, 90 degrees, cup it, and one last 90 degrees and cup. This developed a little bit of structure in the bread, and now I have a nice, beautiful ball of dough. It smells really nice, too. The overnight bulk fermentation gives you a deeper flavor, which I love. Place this seam side down on a parchment-lined baking sheet, and you're gonna repeat this process for the rest of your dough. So pinch together into a ball, seam side down, cup and scooch towards you, turn, scooch, turn, scooch, and turn, scooch. There we go, so nice. So pinch the corners together, gather it all in, pinch and place face down, cup, and bring it towards you. Rotate 90 degrees in between each cupping. There we go, so nice. Repeat that process with your remaining balls of dough, and once they've all been rolled and placed on your baking sheet, we're gonna dust them lightly with some flour. Cover loosely with plastic, and we're gonna let these rise for about two hours on the countertop until they're nicely puffed. If you wanted to, you could reserve some or all of these dough balls for the next day. Pop them into an airtight container, make sure that they're well-floured and everything, and they'll be good in the fridge for 24 hours. Bring them to room temperature before using, of course, and that'll take maybe one to two hours. Loosely covered, and we'll be right back. Towards the end of your rise time, preheat your oven to 500 degrees so it is screaming hot. Here you have a choice. Yes, you could use a baking sheet, you could use a pizza steel, you could use a pizza stone. So the technique is up to you. Today I'm using a baking sheet and then a pizza steel. If you're using a baking sheet, brush liberally with olive oil. Don't want things sticking. And I also don't love the texture when you're using a ton of semolina. Like, ugh, I don't like the way it tastes. Nice and brushed, I'll set that aside. Time to liberally flour your surface. Grab one of your rounds of pizza dough. It's so sticky. Face side down. More flour, please. And now flip it over. And you're gonna dimple this all over in the center. You wanna kind of create that little border with a crust. So dimple, dimple, dimple, dimple, dimple. And now we're gonna stretch this out so we have a 10 to 11 inch circle. The dough is elastic, so stretch it a bit larger because it'll pull back. Once it's stretched out, you can transfer it to the baking sheet. This should be able to easily slide around. You'll be able to slide that right onto your pizza stone or pizza steel and then pick it back up when it's ready. It's time to assemble your pizza and I have two helpers who have been asking if they can come in, so it's time. Boys, come help. Ooh. Okay, this looks pretty nice, doesn't it? Yeah. Okay, so what's our first step? All right. Wanna spoon some on? Would you say that you're an expert pizza maker? Thanks. I would say a sparing amount of sauce and then we're going to spread this out into a nice thin layer. Now, for the toppings. The world is your oyster. You don't wanna introduce too much water, so low moisture mozzarella. You wanna add some, Lachlan? Yeah. Is always welcome. Onto the pizza, onto the pizza. Into my mouth. No, onto the pizza. You can add the pepperonio. One more, one more for good luck. There we go. That looks very cute. You can nibble on that if you want. Lachy, do you wanna help me with this part? Now, we're gonna gently brush the crust with some olive oil. So, gently brush. This will give us some extra golden crispness. It's olive oil, yeah. It's gonna make the crust a little bit more crisp and a little bit more golden. And it'll taste a little bit better, too. In golden pizza crust. Our first pizza's ready to pop into the oven. Eight to 10 minutes until it is golden at 500 degrees. This one, we're leaving plain cheese for the kids. I'm gonna slide this into the oven and bake it up. Eight to 10 minutes at 500. Until it's golden and looks like a pizza. Give your pizza a slice, and just like that, it's ready to enjoy. Mm, that crust is so good. It's like chewy and wet on the inside, golden and crisp on the outside, and so delicious. I hope you get a chance to make this easy recipe, and if you like my videos, hit that subscribe button and check out my bread playlist.