Sourdough Pizza Crust (Rome-Style)
This Roman style pizza dough contains olive oil, and works best when pre-baked which gives it a perfect chewy, crunchy, thick pizza crust quality that matches any toppings.
Ingredients
- 120 g Sourdough Starter
- 450 g Strong White Flour
- 10 g Table Salt
- 350 g Water on the warm side
- 50 g Olive Oil
Instructions
- Take your starter out and feed it several hours before you're ready to start. It should be bubbly and active when you use it.
- Weigh out flour and salt into a mixing bowl.
- Add sourdough starter and warm-ish water. Mix roughly.
- Let the dough rest (autolyse) for 30 mins.
- Turn out the dough and work for several minutes. Use a slap and fold or turn and fold method, you have a lot more freedom here than with a Sourdough loaf because you want less rise.
- Add in the oil, and continue to work into a soft, shiny dough.
- Leave dough for 3-4 hours at room temperature. Stretch and fold every few hours. It is WAY stretchier than traditional sourdough.
- Place the dough in the refrigerator, covered for 12-36 hours. If you want Pizza on Saturday night, that means planning ahead and making the dough as early as Thursday!
- A few hours before dinner, remove the dough from the fridge. Divide into the number of pizzas you want- either a large tray of pizza or several individual pies. (A dough scraper will be VERY useful for dividing)
- Pre-heat the oven to 450 degrees.
- Press and spread the dough in desired shapes onto a parchment paper-lined sheet pan or a cast iron skillet.
- Spread a small amount of sauce onto each pizza. This gives extra flavor profile of roasted sauce and keeps the dough from overcooking, so you get that perfect soft, but not underdone, texture.
- Bake for 20-30 mins, depending on the size of your pizza crusts. You want dried tomato sauce, and just barely browned crust. (This is the pre-bake)
- Remove from the oven and allow to rest for anywhere from a few minutes to several hours.
- When you're ready to eat- Pre-heat the oven back to 475 degrees. Gather around and top as desired.
- Add the fully-topped pizzas back to the oven for a final 5-6 minutes. Finish with a broil and pull them out when the crusts are just-the-right bit of burnt.
Notes
This recipe is great because the dough can be pre-made several days in advance. Then, the crusts are pre-baked. When the group is ready to eat, top as desired and finish in the oven for another few minutes. Working with sourdough can be FRUSTRATING, but this introduction to sourdough crust is almost fool-proof since you don't rely on a rise or crumb structure the way you do a loaf.
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