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
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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 shares simple, reliable recipes from her home in Virginia, where she lives with her husband, three daughters, a chocolate lab, and over thirty chickens.
This is a great recipe thank you . I just started making sourdough during lockdown and it is so handy to freeze and takeout and use as required.
If I make this the night before can I keep it in the refrigerator until the next afternoon and make the pizza for that evening?
yes! let it warm up for a couple hours on the counter or it will hard and difficult to shape.
This is the best pizza crust that I’ve ever made! Thank you so much for shairng your recipe!
~Sheila
thank you sheila! we love it too!
Will it work without sugar? or at least less sugar?
sure! you could just leave it out
I’ve made this recipe with discarded starter numerous times. We love it. But I just realized that I think the last few times I did not add the yeast. Soooo….is the yeast really necessary….what would be the difference in using it or not?
Yvonne your starter is probably feeding on the dough as it rests and becoming active. as long as it keeps working, that’s great! when the weather turns cold it might slow things down.
Hello:) wana ask you if i can half bake just the crush n put them in the freezer for later use?
I’ve never tried it but it should work fine
Can this dough be frozen?
yes, in theory. I find that it never rises quite as well in my experience though.
Can you make in cast iron skillet ?
yes, but I would still preheat it and use parchment.
Do you leave the dough on the parchment paper when you put it on the hot stone?
yes! I have tried it without and it stuck
Thanks ! I made 3 very nice pizzas 🙂 I’m glad that I can use my starter easily.
I baked the pizzas without a stone at 270 degrees C and they were crusty.
Thanks for the recipe !
I’m so happy to know the pizzas were crusty without a pizza stone! this is one of our favorite uses for starter too 🙂
I’d like to make this ahead of time. How long will it last in the fridge, or can I freeze it?
I wouldn’t freeze it, but it will be fine in the fridge 3 days. I would lightly coat the ball of dough in olive oil and cover with plastic wrap.
I’ve followed this recipe and it was amazing!!! I have a question, what happens if I use AP flour instead of bread flour?
Thanks!
Hi Rosa! It should be fine, with two differences: AP flour absorbs less water. I’d reduce the water by 20% to start, then add a bit more if needed. Also it might not be quite as chewy. 🙂
Is there any reason to use instant yeast instead of regular active dry? I happen to have a big bag of the regular stuff on hand, and the rising time does seem to be enough.
Regular is fineZ, just add it to the liquid at the beginning 🙂
I did the overnight in the fridge method and this morning my dough is hard as a rock. My starter was very active and I followed everything else exactly. Any ideas how I might salvage it?
Lindsay, put on the counter and cover it with plastic wrap. it should soften a lot as it comes to room temp 🙂
It was delicious! I didn’t have time to wait for my starter to be ready (just took it out from the refrigerator) so I added a tsp of yeast. I used garlic salt because we love garlic and added 2 taps of Italian seasoning. Made large and medium size pizza baked on cast iron pans. This will be my pizza dough recipe from now on. Thank you for sharing your recipe!
so glad you liked it Karen! I will have to try the garlic salt and Italian seasoning, that sounds delicious!
Katie Shaw – DO NOT use “garlic salt”, but “GARLIC POWDER”. ????
First time baking sourdough pizza crust and had a terrific result with this recipe – thanks for sharing it!
glad you liked it Stephanie!
Used twice the water.
The crust was ok but not great. Diastatic Malt didn’t brown the crust anymore than if it hadn’t been used.
Have you ever frozen this dough? Wondering if I make it today and don’t get to it tomorrow, if I can freeze it for when I’m ready to make pizza. Time to feed Gus (my starter) and it’s good and bubbly, so I don’t want to waste the discard. Thanks!
I have frozen it and I felt like it didn’t rise so well after it was defrosted. I would just make it now and tuck it in the fridge overnight.
this looks like a delicious alternative!
This looks delicious! Which pizza stone do you recommend?
I have this one from Williams Sonoma I had a cheap one a few years ago and it broke ???? so sadly I think the more expensive ones are better.