Sourdough Pizza Dough
If you’re a fan of crispy, flavorful pizza crust, you’ve got to try out this sourdough recipe! Sourdough Pizza Dough is a super easy pizza dough recipe that makes fantastic use of sourdough starter and delivers amazing flavor.
Sourdough Pizza Crust
Equipment
- Mixing bowl
- Wooden spoon
- Plastic Wrap
- pizza stone, baking steel, or baking sheet
- a pizza peel (or other way to transfer the dough in and out of the oven)
Ingredients
- 3½ cups of bread flour or 00 flour
- 1½ cups of fed sourdough starter see notes if you want to use discard starter
- ¾ cup water
- 2 teaspoons salt
- 2½ tablespoons sugar
Instructions
Make the dough
- Mix. Combine all the ingredients in a large bowl, mixing gently with a spoon until a ball forms. If the dough seems too dry and a ball is not forming, add more water, a teaspoon at a time. Cover the bowl with a clean tea towel and let it rest at room temperature for 30 minutes.
- Knead. Turn the dough onto the counter and knead until it feels smooth and loses its stickiness, about five minutes.
- First rise. Place the dough in a clean, oiled bowl and cover tightly with plastic wrap. Allow it to rise for 3-4 hours at room temperature or overnight in the fridge.
Make the pizzas
- Bring to room temperature and preheat. Remove the dough from the fridge and divide it into thirds (or halves or quarters, depending on the desired thickness of your crust and the size of your baking sheet). Preheat a pizza stone to 500°F. Allow the dough to come to room temperature before stretching.
- Stretch and bake. Stretch the dough into the desired shape and place it on parchment paper sprinkled with cornmeal. Top the pizza dough as desired and bake at 500°F on the pizza stone for 9-12 minutes, until the crust is browned and the center of the pizza is baked.
Video
Notes
Nutrition
More Tips:
If the dough is hard to stretch, let it rest for 10 minutes. This will relax the gluten and make the dough more flexible.
Always allow your dough to reach room temperature before stretching it. Cold dough is more difficult to work with and won’t rise as well in the oven.
Using too many toppings can make your pizza soggy. Stick to a few high-quality ingredients to maintain a crisp crust.
Make sure that your pizza stone is fully preheated to 500°F to help achieve a crispy crust and even cooking.
If you don’t have a pizza stone, you can use a baking sheet. It may not get as hot, but it will still do the job.
If you want to use a sourdough starter from the fridge, make sure to bring it to room temperature before using it in this recipe. You can use a discard starter if you add yeast, but the dough will rise better and be bubbly with an active starter.
About the Ingredients
You can try these ingredient substitutes for this recipe:
- Bread flour: Use all-purpose flour instead of bread flour for a softer crust.
- 00 flour: Use bread flour if 00 flour is unavailable.
- Fed sourdough starter: Instead of fed sourdough starter, use an unfed starter with 1 teaspoon of instant yeast.
- Sugar: Swap sugar with honey or maple syrup for a different flavor.
Remember that these substitutions will alter the recipe’s outcome, but feel free to experiment and find your favorite version!
Enjoy making this easy sourdough pizza crust at home for a delicious, crispy base that will surely become a favorite. With a few simple steps, you’ll have a perfect crust ready for any topping you like.
By Katie Shaw
Katie lives in Virginia with her husband, three daughters, a chocolate lab, and over thirty chickens. She loves creating simple tutorials for sourdough, bread, and soap. Her recipes, articles, and YouTube videos reach millions of people per year.
We love this recipe! I do need to add more liquid than 3/4 cup. I usually triple this for our large family anyway. I add a few seasonings (Dried Tomato & Garlic Pesto, garlic salt, and/or pizza seasoning) when I feel like it, to give it another burst of flavor.
I’m having a make-your-own pizza party for some teens. I want to use this recipe. Approximately how large can each pizza be if I provide 1/3 the recipe for each person? I’m hoping each pizza can be about 8” with it not being extremely thin.
Yes you will be good! For a thin crust I’d actually do 4! 🙂
Thanks very much for a super way to use my sourdough discard. The crust was fantastic! And so easy!
I made my pizza following your recipe and was very pleased with the taste and ease of making the dough. I cut it in half and froze one half in the freezer for baking in the future. Yum.
This is a REALLY good recipe. I love using this when I want to make same day pizza!
Thank you for the recipe….I made it ~! The dough was AMAZING to work with…. but I made a mistake by not letting the dough come to room temperature when I stretched it out onto my pans (had company, got distracted, then just had to get dinner made so I took a chance). The dough stretched beautifully, but when it went into the oven it shrank quite a bit…so I think next time I will make sure it’s nice and relaxed and at room temp before it goes into the oven…. I’ve been making homemade pizza for years…but just started getting into sourdough and I’m SO glad I found your recipe this will be my new pizza dough recipe for SURE~!!! THANKS ~!!