Whole Grain Sourdough Pizza Recipes

Steps:

• Levain/Starter
• Prepare your 160g of starter by mixing 30g starter with 65g water and 65g flour. This is approximately a 1:2:2 starter preparation, but other builds are fine too. Mark your jar with a rubberband and let it sit overnight or until at least doubled.
• Saltolyse
• Mix the flour, water, and salt together in a bowl. Cover and let sit about 1 hour.
• Fermentation and Gluten Development
• Add the ripe starter to the dough, stretching, folding, and gently squishing the starter into the dough.
• Cover and let the dough rest for about a half hour. Then do two rounds of coil folding or dough rolling, one lamination, and one final round of coil folding. Separate each of the four rounds of gluten development with a 20-30 minute covered rest. Here are videos showing how to coil, roll, and laminate dough.
• When the dough has expanded by 50-75%, end the bulk fermentation. For my warm ambient temperature, this was four hours after adding the starter to the dough.
• Preshape and Second Rise
• Lightly oil a baking pan, or several small bowls, or several 16-ounce round takeout containers (photo above) to hold the dough balls during the final proof.
• Scrape the fermented dough out onto a lightly floured work surface and divide the dough into four pieces of about 320g each. (You can make the pieces larger or smaller if you want.)
• Roll each dough piece into a ball, place it in your proofing container(s), and cover. If using a pan, you can put the entire pan in a plastic bag.
• The final proof can be at room temperature for 1-3 hours or in the refrigerator for 12-24 hours (possibly longer). Various combinations of room temperature and cold proofing work too, and duration depends on the dough and room temperatures.
• Oven Preheat and Topping Prep
• Set your oven and pizza stone to preheat at 500°F for at least 30 minutes. I use an infrared thermometer to confirm my stone's temperature before baking and sometimes between pizzas too.
• If your dough is refrigerated, you can bring it out to room temperature to start warming up for easier stretching. After a 24-hour refrigeration, I got good results with both warmed up dough and with the one dough I left in the refrigerator until the last minute.
• Set up your toppings, sauce, cheese etc. and the area where you will be forming your pizzas.
• Prep a small bowl of flour or cornmeal to put on your pizza peel, or several 14x14-inch sheets of parchment paper. I like to run coarse cornmeal through my Mockmill on a medium-fine setting to make the chunks a little smaller.
• Shaping
• Sprinkle flour and cornmeal on your pizza peel or lay out a square of parchment paper.
• Lightly flour your countertop. Remove a dough ball from your proofing container and lay it on the flour.
• Place your fingers in the center of the dough and gently push the edges outward.
• Flour your hands, and then grasp one side of the dough circle with both hands and lift the dough off the counter. Holding the top edges of the circle (10 o'clock and 2 o'clock), let the dough stretch downward while you rotate and re-grab the dough like you're turning a steering wheel. This will develop about a 1-inch crust edge and stretch the middle of the circle. Try not to let any part of the dough get thin enough to see through or you may end up with a hole. If you do tear the dough, re-roll it and move on to another ball while the gluten in the re-rolled ball relaxes for a minimum of 15 minutes.
• Lay the stretched out dough on your pizza peel or parchment. If using a peel, check that the pizza can move by jerking the peel forward and backward to see if the dough slides. If it doesn't slide, lift the stuck area of dough and flour underneath it, Do this until you have an easy slide. It's fine if the dough sticks to the parchment paper. If you need to adjust the dough on the parchment, reach under the dough with one hand and pull it outward.
• Now top your pizza dough to your liking. Try not to take a long time doing this, because the longer the dough is on the peel, the more likely it is to begin to stick. (Use parchment paper if you expect to top your pizza very slowly.)
• Before approaching your oven with the pizza, check again with the quick forward and backward motion of the peel that your pizza can still slide.
• Baking*
• Slide your pizza onto the hot pizza stone and bake for 8 minutes, then switch the oven to broil for 1 minute more.
• While this pizza is baking, shape the next ball of dough and put toppings on it.
• Remove the pizza from the oven with a peel or metal spatula, or even by tugging on a corner of the parchment paper. Put the pizza on a cooling rack if you're not eating right away to keep the bottom from getting damp.
• Leave the empty oven on broil for one minute to reheat the stone, then switch back to bake mode and load the next pizza.
• Repeat until all the pizzas are cooked.
• *For baking these pizzas in an Ooni pizza oven, see the instructions in the Sourdough Pizza recipe

Steps:

• Levain
• Prepare your 120g of starter by mixing 40g of starter with 40g of water and 40g of flour. This is a 1:1:1 starter preparation, but other builds are fine too. Mark your jar with a rubberband and let it sit at room temperature for 4-8 hours until roughly tripled.
• Mixing and First Rise
• Mix the ingredients, including the 120g of mature starter, together by hand, or in a mixer with the dough hook attachment, until everything is incorporated and forming a ball around the hook.
• Scrape the dough out onto a floured counter and knead it for 3-5 minutes, adding a small amount of flour until the dough is manageable.
• I prefer to hand knead the dough, but if you want to keep the dough in your mixer for 5-10 minutes until it passes the windowpane test, that is fine too. Covering it while it's still shaggy, and doing several rounds of stretching and folding over the course of a couple of hours is also an option.
• Lightly oil a bowl, dab the "top" of your dough ball in the oil, then lay the bottom side down in the bowl and cover.
• Let the dough rise until it has approximately doubled. I tend to leave the dough at room temperature for a few hours and then put it in the refrigerator for a day or so, and finally pull it out when it is fully risen or close to fully risen and just needing a few more hours at room temperature.
• The bulk fermentation can be just a few hours if you use warm water and have a warm house or put the dough in a lit oven, or this can be five days if you use sleepy starter and put the dough in a 37F refrigerator. I did the latter recently, and the pizza was tasty-sour and the crust perfectly bubbly.
• Preshape and Second Rise
• When the bulk fermentation is finished, lightly oil a 9x13 baking pan and your counter.
• Scrape out the dough onto the oiled counter, gently press out most of the air, and divide the dough into 4-5 pieces. The total dough weight is approximately 1140g. This makes five approx. 225g or four 285g pizzas. (You can go larger and smaller, but you may need to adjust cook time.)
• Form each piece into a ball by folding the sides of the piece inward. Then hold the ball in one hand with the taut top on your palm, while you pinch the bottom pieces together with your other hand.
• Place the balls in the oiled pan seam-side down, and cover or put the entire pan in a plastic bag. The final proof can be at room temperature for 45-90 minutes or in the refrigerator for 8-12 hours. Various combinations of room temperature and cold proofing work, and a lot depends on how warm the dough was when you shaped it, and if your room temperature is very warm. Even in a heat wave, I've not seen a big difference in pizza outcome when the first dough ball of a batch was formed into a pizza and cooked an hour before the last dough ball.
• Topping Prep
• 45-90 minutes before the dough is finished proofing, set up your toppings and the area where you will be stretching and "decorating" your pizza. My preferred pizza sauce is NYTimes Classic Marinara plus 6 ounces of tomato paste (sometimes I skip the paste). I like to make it ahead of time, and simply pull it out of the refrigerator to warm up a bit when I'm setting up the toppings.
• Shaping and Baking (by oven type)
• Wood-Fired Oven
• About 30 minutes before your dough is finished proofing, fire up your pizza oven. Make sure your Uuni or other pizza oven is clean and ready to go -- the stone tiles have been brushed off, and the charcoal/wood tray has been emptied.
• Have everything you need on hand: kindling, charcoal, gloves, an aluminum pizza peel, and a "hot plate" to lay the door on (also the cast iron pan if you cook vegetables or meat too). I use a couple pieces of kindling as a rack, and steel/aluminum baking sheets and cooling racks for the pizzas that come out of the oven. (See gallery)
• Your damper in the chimney should be open, and the flue at the base of the chimney inside the oven should be about half open.
• Place 4-6 pieces of very dry kindling in the fuel area of your pizza oven. Light them and put the cover back on. Checking on them every few minutes, let them burn for about 5-10 minutes, until they are fully burning. Add about 15 pieces of lump charcoal and wait another 10 minutes or until the temperature is over 700F. About 5 minutes before cooking your pizzas, you can add wood again for an extra burst of heat. Wait a few minutes for the wood to be fully lit and the smoke to be white or clear, not black, before before loading a pizza. This entire process takes about 20 minutes, and this is what has worked for me, but you may prefer different time parameters, fuel types and amounts.
• Prepare your pizza peel with flour and cornmeal. Rub the flour into the wood and sprinkle the cornmeal on the top of the flour. I prefer a wood peel for prepping and loading pizzas, and an aluminum peel for removing them. A third smaller peel for turning the pizza is a helpful option, too.
• Remove a dough ball from the proofing pan and gently grasp one side of the circle with both hands. Holding the top edge of the circle (10 o'clock and 2 o'clock), let the rest of the dough droop/stretch downward while you then rotate and re-grab the dough like you're turning a steering wheel. This will develop about a 1/2-1 inch crust edge and stretch the middle. (Using a rolling pin is fine too.)
• If the dough only stretches a bit, lay it down on your floured counter for 5-10 minutes while you work on your other dough balls and check on your oven temperature. By the time you come back to the first circle, the gluten should have relaxed and you will be able to stretch it further. Try not to let any part of the dough get thin enough to see through or you may end up with a hole.
• Lay your pizza dough on the floured/cornmealed pizza peel. Stretch and adjust the dough a little more, aiming to position one edge of the pizza all the way at the front edge of the peel. When you insert the peel into the oven, the front edge of the dough will "catch" on the hot stone, making it easier to slide the peel out from under the pizza.
• Now top your pizza dough to your liking and put it in the oven. If you leave the pizza on the peel for more than a few minutes, it may begin to stick to the peel, so keep your assembly line moving.
• After about 1.5 minutes of cooking, rotate your pizza with an aluminum peel. The heat is strongest in the back of the oven near the fire, so this will encourage even cooking and char spots. After about 1.5 more minutes, your pizza is likely done.
• Using an aluminum peel, remove the pizza from the oven and put the pizza on a rack if not eating right away (this keeps the bottom crispy), or on a plate or a steel/aluminum sheet to serve.
• Repeat with the next pizza and so on. When you're finished cooking the pizzas, let the fuel burn off and the oven cool down before cleaning and storing it.
• See the last photo gallery for ideas for things to cook while the oven is warming up (pitas), cooling down (s'mores, garlic knots from extra dough), and still very hot (steak and veggies).
• Kitchen Oven
• About 30 minutes before your dough is finished proofing, preheat your kitchen oven with a baking stone or steel in it to 500F, using the top shelf if you have a top broiler. You can also use an upside-down baking sheet as your baking surface, with parchment paper under the dough, and preheated to only 450F.
• Flour and sprinkle cornmeal on the peel as described above, or use a square of parchment paper for each pizza.
• Remove a dough ball from the proofing pan and gently grasp one side of the circle with both hands. Holding the top edge of the circle (10 o'clock and 2 o'clock), let the rest of the dough droop/stretch downward while you then rotate and re-grab the dough like you're turning a steering wheel. This will develop about a 1/2-1 inch crust edge and stretch the middle. (Using a rolling pin is fine too.)
• If the dough only stretches a bit, lay it down on your floured counter for 5-10 minutes while you work on your other dough balls and check on your oven temperature. By the time you come back to the first circle, the gluten should have relaxed and you will be able to stretch it further. Try not to let any part of the dough get thin enough to see through or you may end up with a hole.
• Lay your pizza dough on the piece of parchment paper or floured/cornmealed pizza peel. Stretch and adjust the dough a little more, aiming to position one edge of the pizza all the way at the front edge of the peel if that is what you're using. When you insert the peel into the oven, the front edge of the dough will "catch" on the hot stone, making it easier to slide the peel out from under the pizza.
• Now top your pizza dough to your liking and put it in the oven. If you leave it on the peel for more than a few minutes, it may begin to stick to the peel, so keep your assembly line moving or use parchment paper.
• For a pizza stone or steel, bake for 7 minutes, then switch to broil for 1 minute more. Keep the oven on broil an additional minute before you load the next pizza. This helps reheat the stone before you switch back to bake mode.
• For a baking sheet, bake the pizza on parchment paper on the sheet for 8 minutes, then broil (still at 450F) for 1-2 minutes. Then move the pizza to a bare lower rack, removing the parchment after the transfer, and bake 3-4 more minutes.
• Remove the pizza from the oven with a peel, spatula, or even by tugging on a corner of the parchment paper.
• Put the pizza on a rack if not eating right away (this keeps the bottom crispy), or on a plate or a steel/aluminum sheet to serve.
• Repeat with the next pizza and so on.