Every couple weeks or so, we send out a little roundup of new recipes, techniques, and tutorials that we’ve recently posted on the site. Occasionally we announce exclusive giveaways to newsletter subscribers as well. We won’t spam you with ads or share or sell your email address. Every email we send has a 1-click unsubscribe link if you decide it’s not for you.
Sourdough Pizza
Origin of pizza? There are topped flatbreads in many cultures but one of the coolest stories in pizza history is of Persian soldiers in the 6th century BC using their battle shields to bake flatbreads with cheese and dates as toppings (Wikipedia).
Looking back on my own pizza history, battle-shield pizza would have been preferable to the frozen pizza (I hear your gasps of horror) I bought for years. My first revelation in pizza making was when I realized that sourdough pizza dough was barely different from the bread dough I was already making — just less water and a little olive oil.
[Jump to recipe]
I bought a baking stone and started making sourdough pizza in my kitchen oven at 500F. The sourdough leavening added complex flavors to the crust, and I had the freedom to choose unique wheat flours and ratios of white to whole wheat that I preferred. The flavor of my pizzas became phenomenal, and the crust was part of the show rather than simply a stage for toppings.
Quick aside: I do absolutely love that I can get creative with fresh, high quality toppings when I’m making pizza at home — from traditional mozzarella cheese, tomato sauce, and basil leaves; to pizzas with sauteed kale, chicken sausage, raw garlic, fennel, or peppadew chili peppers. With my recent history of pizza reading, I will be trying dates soon, too!
My pizza making got a further boost when I learned from @singkevin in the Breadtopia forums to use the broil setting of my oven in addition to baking. That browns the crust better, further melts the cheese and caramelizes the sugar in some of the toppings (e.g. onions, fennel, peppers, pineapple).
After baking 7 minutes at 500F and then broiling 1 minute
The next revelation came when Breadtopia released its new Tipo 00 flour. This flour makes the edges of my crust crispier and more pliable, and the dough easier to stretch without tearing. Even paired with whole grain flour up to 30% (possibly more, I just haven’t tried it), dough made with Tipo 00 is very silky.
The final revelation in my pizza journey was buying a Uuni Pro wood-fired pizza oven. Nothing inside my kitchen or on my grill can beat the results I get at temperatures over 800F in my Uuni. The flavors that come from the wood and charcoal add another dimension to the pizza, and the intense heat makes the crust bubbles spectacular and the toppings caramelize beautifully.
The recipe below is for sourdough pizza dough with instructions for how to cook your pizza in a kitchen oven with a stone/steel and in a wood and coal-fired Uuni Pizza oven. It includes weight measurements, volume measurements, and baker’s percentages. I added the latter option because of how important scaling is when making dough for pizza parties.
Below the recipe is an instructional photo gallery, followed by a gallery of some of the other food I’ve made in my Uuni Pro before and after cooking the pizzas (pitas, steaks, s’mores, garlic knots…etc.).
This video from Uuni (which you may notice is in the process of renaming itself Ooni) can help you visualize the process of firing up the oven.
Here are a couple of videos depicting kneading and shaping pizza dough, as described in the recipe below.
Sourdough Pizza
Homemade sourdough pizza is an eye-opening experience, with so much flavor in the dough and a crispy chewy texture to the crust. Add to that cooking the pizza in a wood-fired oven and you'll be dazzled by added smoke character, toasted crust edges, and more intensely caramelized toppings.
Ingredients
Baker's Percentages
Instructions
Levain
Mixing and First Rise
Preshape and Second Rise
Topping Prep
Shaping and Baking (by oven type)
Wood-Fired Oven
Kitchen Oven
Shopping List
Bonus Cooking On Pizza Night
See the captions on the photos for info on each item.
Note: If you use a cast iron pan for cooking veggies or meat, the high temperatures can burn off the pan’s seasoning, so you may not want to use your grandmother’s legendarily seasoned pan, rather a newer one, or Uuni’s Sizzler Pan, which comes with a detachable handle (on my wishlist).
Sourdough Pizza