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Tomato Pizza (and Pitas) with Khorasan Flour
This tomato pizza is a celebration of sauce and bread. Without mozzarella and other toppings, the focus is on the delicious, chewy-crispy Tipo 00 and khorasan wheat crust and the tangy herb-filled tomato sauce. A light grating of pecorino romano cheese adds some umami and salt to the pizza, and in the sauce, you have the option to boost that savoriness with an anchovy, along with red pepper flakes for heat.
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This pizza recipe is loosely inspired by Rhode Island pizza strips, which are thick, rectangles of tomato pizza sold in bakeries and often served cold. These thinner, round pizzas are delicious cold as well, so don’t hesitate to make extra. Along with scaling the recipe up or down, you can also use the dough to make pitas while your baking stone is already hot.
In the short video below, about 1 kg of dough becomes three pizzas and two pitas. The sauce recipe we’ve included below makes about 1 quart of sauce and the extra sauce can be frozen for future use. In fact, you might want to double the sauce recipe so you have an ample freezer stash for pasta and future pizzas.
Quantity of Sourdough Starter
This pizza recipe uses only about a tablespoon (10 grams) of cold, unfed sourdough starter. I chose this amount for scheduling and gluten development considerations: the slow process allowed me to ignore the dough for 16 hours and have the gluten strength build passively during that time. Once the dough had expanded by 75%, I refrigerated it for the rest of the day until about 3 hours before baking time.
You’re welcome to use a more typical amount of sourdough starter (15-20% of flour weight) if you’d like to have a faster process. You can also use temperature (refrigeration) at any point to slow the process. Keep in mind that proofing times need to account for the dough warming back up. For example, if the dough is never refrigerated, the final proof would be 1-2 hours, but if the final proof begins with very cold dough, it will need 3-4 hours.
You can learn more about using tiny amounts of sourdough starter in these articles: Slow Lazy Sourdough Bread and Challenging Sourdough Starter Convention.
Flour Types
Breadtopia’s Tipo 00 flour has a protein level of 13.8% so it is quite strong as well as silky fine. Pairing this flour with high extraction khorasan wheat makes for a flavorful, golden pizza crust with excellent texture. Khorasan whole grain flour, durum flour, and semolina rimacinata are wonderful substitutions you can use in varied ratios with the Tipo 00 flour. Moreover, bread flour (13.5% protein) instead of Tipo 00 is a reasonable substitute. For any flour change, add water slowly and as much as needed, paying attention to the dough-feel. Handling the dough a bit after mixing will help you confirm that it is a good hydration for shaping into pizzas and pitas.
Tomato Pizza (and Pitas) with Khorasan Flour
This tomato pizza packs a flavor and texture punch without the heaviness of a lot of toppings and cheese. Enjoy the characteristic butteriness of khorasan wheat paired with silky Tipo 00 flour for a crispy crust, and feel free to use any extra dough to make delicious pitas on your hot baking stone or steel.
Ingredients
Dough
Sauce
Topping
Instructions
Dough
Sauce
Shopping List
Sourdough Starter (Dry)
Tipo 00 Strong White Flour
Khorasan High Extraction Flour
$12.20 – $97.60Parchment Paper Sheets — 200 Sheets
$19.00FibraMent Oven Baking Stones
Bowl Covers (5 pcs)
JK Adams Wooden Patisserie Rolling Pin
$42.00The Baker’s Board Cherrywood Pizza Peel
Infrared Thermometer with Laser
Stainless Steel Mixing Bowls — Set of 3
$39.99Tomato Pizza (and Pitas) with Khorasan Flour