Homemade pizza is one of life’s great joys, and this sourdough pizza is both easy to make and absolutely delicious.
Making sourdough can seem daunting, but it needn’t be. It takes time, but the steps are actually very simple. Just be sure to get started a day or two before you want to eat the pizza and you’ll be great.
I’ve suggested an option for the sauce and topping for the pizza here – my favourite tomato sauce, mozzarella, feta, green olives, tomato and peppers. This is the best pizza topping combination in my opinion! However, the great thing about pizzas is that they’re really customisable so you can choose whichever toppings you like.
The best thing about this pizza is that you don’t need any special equipment to cook it. Of course, if you have a pizza oven, feel free to use that, but if you don’t – no worries! I cooked this on a baking tray lined with baking parchment, at the top of my very ordinary oven. Perfect results!
Ingredients, Substitutions and Variations
- Sourdough starter, flour, water, salt, olive oil – these ingredients are all you need to make an incredible sourdough pizza dough. If you don’t have a sourdough starter yet, get started with that five days in advance. All it takes is flour and water to make and it’s very easy to get going. You can find out how to make your sourdough starter here.
- Passata, garlic powder, sugar, mixed Italian herbs – this is my super simple tomato sauce and it always works. No chopping needed!
- Mozzarella, feta, green olives, tomatoes, bell peppers – as mentioned above, these are my favourite pizza toppings. Feel free to mix it up!
Top Tips
- Resting and stretching your dough To get the perfect consistency for your pizza dough, follow the instructions for stretching and resting it. The first rest needs to be warm (I do this in my airing cupboard because I don’t live in a warm country. If your room temperature is around 23 degrees Celsius, that will be fine) and the second should be cold, so in a fridge overnight. The next day, you shape the dough and give them one final rest at room temperature, then they’ll be ready to go.
- Shaping the pizzas I won’t pretend to be an expert at shaping dough into perfect circles for pizzas. Mine are delightfully rustic looking. The best thing to do if you’re a novice like me is to roll with a floured rolling pin, then gently pull the dough at the sides until you have a circle-ish shape with dough that is a similar thickness throughout.
- Cooking the pizzas The key here is getting your oven really hot. Pop your baking tray in the oven while it’s heating up so that gets really hot too. Shape and make your pizzas on a piece of baking parchment then, when you’re ready to cook, slide the whole sheet of baking parchment onto the hot baking tray (be careful!).
Put the baking tray back in the oven and cook for approximately ten minutes, until the dough is starting to turn golden and your toppings are melted and yummy! Keep an eye on it so that it doesn’t burn.
Homemade Sourdough Pizza
Delicious homemade pizza made with sourdough, a tomato sauce and topped with mozzarella, feta, green olives, tomatoes and peppers.
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Ingredients
For the dough
- 310 grams white OO flour
- 215 grams water
- 1 tablespoon salt
- 50 grams sourdough starter
For the tomato sauce
- 200 grams passata
- ½ teaspoon garlic powder
- 2 teaspoons mixed Italian herbs
- 1 tablespoon brown sugar
For the toppings
- 150 grams mozzarella
- 40 grams feta
- 10 green olives
- 10 cherry tomatoes
- 1 bell pepper any colour
Instructions
- The day before you want to eat, in the morning, put the pizza dough ingredients in a bowl. Mix well, preferably with your hands, to create a shaggy dough. Cover with a tea towel and put somewhere warm (e.g. airing cupboard).
- Leave in the warm place for 2.5 hours. Every 30 minutes, pull the dough away from you and fold it over on itself (do this 4 times each 30 minutes).
- Transfer the bowl to the fridge and leave overnight.
- The next day, six hours before you want to eat, remove the dough from the bowl and cut in half. Dust the work surface with flour and shape the two pieces into tight balls. Put these on a baking tray lined with baking parchment, cover with a tea towel and leave to prove until you are ready to start cooking.
- To make your tomato sauce, put all of the sauce ingredients into a saucepan and put over a low heat. Bring to a gentle simmer, stirring so that the sugar dissolves, and season with salt and pepper. Remove from the heat.
- Prep the topping ingredients by halving the olives and tomatoes, thinly slicing the bell pepper and crumbling the feta.
- When you’re ready to cook, preheat your oven to 250 degrees Celsius. Put a baking tray in the oven to heat while it warms up.
- Put one of the dough balls on a piece of baking parchment. Use a rolling pin and your hands to flatten into a circle about 0.5cm thick. Spoon the sauce onto the pizza, dot with mozzarella and sprinkle over half of the other toppings. Take the baking tray out of the oven, ease the baking parchment with the pizza onto it, and put back into the top of the oven for 10 minutes or until cooked through. Repeat with the other pizza.
More sourdough recipes:
- Rosemary Sourdough Focaccia
- Sourdough Flatbreads
- Homemade White Sourdough Loaf
- Asparagus and Bacon on Sourdough
- Classic Welsh Rarebit Sandwich with Sausage
