Sourdough pizza crust.

An ongoing series, apparently:   Adventures in Sourdough.  I made a pretty good sourdough pizza crust last night, with no jar yeast.  

Pizza, like bagels and pretzels, seems as if it should be well matched to sourdough, since many types of pizza take a denser, chewier crust.  As long as you don't want a very fluffy and thick kind of crust it should work well, right?

Here's what I did.  I refreshed sourdough overnight, giving me about 2 cups of sourdough starter to work with after setting aside the fridge portion.  One cup went into sandwich bread and I used the other cup for pizza.

In the morning:

In the bowl of a food processor fitted with the chopping blade I blended

• 1 cup whole wheat flour
• 2 cups bread flour
• 1 Tbsp gluten
• 2 scant tsp salt

(I like my pizza dough at least 50% white, and for a first attempt at sourdough I didn't want to overdo it.)

In a measuring cup I mixed

• 1 cup sourdough starter
• 1/2 cup filtered water
• 2 Tbsp olive oil

With the food processor running, I poured the contents of the measuring cup all at once down the feed tube and let it go for a while.  It was a little crumbly so I added a couple of tablespoons of water, and then it formed a dough ball.  I turned the dough out onto a floured board and kneaded it for a few minutes, then transferred it to a well-oiled bowl and turned it to coat the ball with oil. I covered it with plastic wrap and a plate and set the bowl on a heating pad for the day.

At dinner-making time:

I preheated the oven to the maximum, 550 F in my oven because I am not a crazy person, and put a baking stone on the bottom rack of the oven.

The dough ball had about doubled in size.  I gently tore it into three pieces; the dough was definitely more delicate, moister and spongier, less elastic than a yeasted pizza dough.  I pressed it out on a cornmeal-sprinkled pizza peel.  Because it wasn't quite so elastic, it was not difficult to press out with gentle finger pressure.  I let the pizzas rest a bit and then baked the naked crusts for  7 minutes for smaller pizzas, 10 for larger ones.  The dough was so moist that I was worried it would get soggy if I didn't prebake it.

I pulled the pizzas out of the oven (I did these in batches, by the way) and topped them before baking them again.  I don't remember how long they baked the second time; I always judge by how brown they get.

(Pizza type #1:  Tomato-paste-plus-diced-tomatoes sauce, shredded bagged pizza-mix cheese, and pepperoni.)

(Pizza type #2:  Barbecue-sauce-plus-tomato-paste-plus-diced-tomatoes sauce, shredded cooked chicken, red onion, red peppers, banana peppers, and shredded Jack cheese.   I added the cheese near the end of baking because I don't like it to brown on this particular pizza.)

Result:

The sourdough crust was crackly and firm, with a very pleasant tang.  The cornmeal embedded in the bottom gave it a pleasant crunch.  It stood up well to the heavy load of toppings on my barbecue chicken pizza.  It was not a chewy, fluffy "hand-tossed" type pizza, nor a New-York-style, floppy, foldable type.  If that's what you're going for, you're going to have to do something different.  What, I'm not sure!

Now that I have seen how the sourdough behaves on baking, I know two things I will do differently next time.  Also one thing I might do differently.

First, when I press out the crust, I'll go ahead and press it out evenly flat to the very edge.  This time I left a "rim" on the outside, in the style of a hand-tossed pizza, and left that rim un-topped; but it didn't really work, because the sourdough didn't puff up as much in the oven as a yeast dough would.  The rim tasted great, but was really chewy and a little hard.  I think that this sort of pizza is better suited for the thin-and-crackly crust style that's topped all the way out to the edge and cut into square pieces (think Cassano's, Donato's, or Milano's, O my fellow native southwestern-Ohioans).   I would say to leave it a little thicker if you're going to give it really sloppy toppings, thinner if you're doing something like parmesan-rosemary-olive oil.  

Second, I'll remember to prick the crust before par-baking it.  There were a few big poofy bubbles in the large crust.  Not a big deal, but inelegant.

Third, I would like to try letting the pizza shells rise longer after pressing them out.  That might mean letting it rise less in the bowl and shaping the shells earlier in the day, or it might mean letting it rise overnight in the bowl, shaping the shells in the morning, and letting them have a long second rise.  The latter technique would make the crusts even more sour, but perhaps a bit lighter.