Last Updated on September 20, 2021
An Easy Sourdough Pizza Recipe with Sourdough.
Skip straight to my recipe for sourdough discard pizza
Having recently joined the growing number of people making their own sourdough bread, I’ve been busily feeding and discarding my starter for the last week or so. And, I’ve been just a little shocked. All that gloop going in the bin – it seemed wasteful to me. So, I’ve searched the internet for a solution and found a wealth of ideas to use up the sourdough discard.
Ever wondered how that posh sourdough pizza base comes from? Well, I have an answer – it is easily made from the discard starter perked up with a little extra flour and olive oil. I’m sure commercial pizza-makers don’t use the leftover starter from bread-making. But, for a small household like mine, it’s a great solution and one which is closer to the origin of pizza than you might imagine.
Pizza as we know it today is an evolution of early bread making, from before the days of commercial yeasts. Wiki talks about a number of early precursors – round cakes like pita bread that were topped with vegetables and appeared in the Aeneid (ca 19 BC), a flatbread called Plakous that was flavoured with herbs, onion, cheese and garlic and enjoyed by the Ancient Greeks…or even Persian soldiers baking flatbread on their battle shields in the 6th century BC. Of course, there were no tomatoes at that time, so it wasn’t that much like the type of pizza we eat today. Even in 16th Century Naples, Pizza was really an affordable streetfood. By the mid 17th century, pizzas were topped with oil and tomato – and had become a delicacy. The Pizza Margherita, garnished with tomatoes, mozzarella and basil to represent the national colours of Italy was created by a Neopolitan pizza maker in honour of Margherita of Savoy, the Queen Consort of Italy at the time.
In fact, there are very few rules about what you need to top a pizza. Even tomatoes are not necessary – Pizza Bianca, for instance, is NEVER made with tomatoes and usually includes a mix of mozzarella or other cheeses together with ham, vegetables and olive oil. I still use pizza as a way to use up scraps of vegetables, meat and cheese in the fridge and I have to confess I’m rather taken by the idea that I can use scraps of sourdough starter too.
Here’s another set of toppings – you add a handful of rocket or arugula right at the end while the pizza is still piping hot so that it just wilts a little but still has texture.
Here’s how to make your own rustic style pizza. This one is the right size for four moderate eaters or for two really hungry people. And, it’s a great way to make use of your sourdough discard. If for some reason you are not making sourdough bread, then simply substitute 7g of fast-acting yeast and increase the quantity of flour to 400g.
Sourdough Pizza Recipe
Ingredients
Pizza Base
- 150 g sourdough discard
- 250 g white flour
- 1 pinch salt
- 1 dessertspoon olive oil
- 1 tsp honey or caster sugar
- 125 ml warm water
Pizza Topping
- 1/2 red onion finely sliced
- 2 cloves garlic minced
- 2 tbsp tomato passata
- 1 tomato
- 1 handful fresh basil
- 2 slices parma ham or similar
- 12 olives stoned and sliced
- 1 ball mozzarella
- 2 tsp olive oil
- vegetables of your choice - mushrooms, peppers, courgette etc
- Salt and pepper
Instructions
Pizza Base
- Put the flour, salt and sugar into a large mixing bowl. Stir to mix
- Make a well in the middle and add the sourdough starter, oil and honey (if using)
- Use a fork to pull in the flour, then add warm water till you can form the mixture into a dough
- Knead on a floured board for 10-15 minutes or using the dough hook of your mixer for 8-10 minutes
- Cover and leave to rest for at least an hour until the dough has doubled in size. This may take up to 4 hours. It's safe to leave the dough out for up to eight hours until you are ready to bake.
- When you are ready to bake your pizza preheat the oven to around 250c
Pizza
- Take the dough and roll out or stretch into one or two rounds on a sheet of silicone baking paper
- Smear the top of the dough with passata
- Sprinkle over the minced garlic
- Layer on the remaining vegetables leaving the sliced fresh tomato till the end.
- Top with shredded ham and mozzarella and season with salt and pepper
- Slide the baking paper onto your pizza stone or steel or onto a large baking sheet
- Bake for 8-10 minutes until the cheese is melting and the edge of the pizza is golden brown
Nutrition
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Looking for a different way to use your sourdough discard? Try this classic French Pissaladiere recipe
A great way to use up that left over sourdough discard
I’ve just made some dough and have left it to rise. I doubled the recipe and used 400 plain flour and 100 strong white. Hoping it works! I make sourdough bread and this dough felt lovely and soft snd smooth when I had kneaded it. Fingers crossed as we have guests coming to watch the rugby! Thanks for your expertise Fiona!
This creates an amazing pizza crust. We made 2 smaller pizzas for the two of us and ended up with one leftover for a dinner early next week. I’ve been making pizza directly on the BBQ for a while now. No stone or pan required, just place the dough on a hot grill and rotate it a quarter turn every 30 seconds or so. Keep an eye on it so you don’t burn it but the end result is a bit of char on the crust just like a pizzeria.
The secret is to grill the first side with no toppings. Once the first side is done, flip it on the grill for just a couple of seconds, bring it back into the kitchen and top the grilled side of the dough. Once you’ve added your toppings put it back on the grill and keep an eye on the bottom, you don’t want to burn it. We usually pop it under the broiler to finish the cheese.
We topped ours using different ingredients but I imagine the topping sin this recipe would be great.
Fantastic pizza recipe, previously I had made pizzas with bakers yeast that ended up thick and bread, while these ended up thin and crispy much more like a traditional Italian pizza.
I can see this becoming a regular thing on our household menu.
Thank you – I’m glad you enjoyed it!
thanks:)
I will try on the BBQ once the weather gets a bit better – sounds amazing!
Once the dough is made, can it be frozen for making pizzas in the future?
I’ve never tried doing that, but I would imagine that’s perfectly reasonable
Did you try to freeze it? I’ve just done the same. I’ve stretched out two bases and popped them in the freezer between baking parchment. Not sure what to do when cooking them though!
My own freezer is too small for this. But honestly I can’t see why it wouldn’t work. I would take out of the freezer and top while frozen, then cook from frozen and just watch carefully!
Been having great results with this recipe!
I was throwing out my sourdough discard every day because living in a single-person household, none of the sourdough discard recipes on the internet (muffins, crackers, waffles, BREAD) were very practical for me to make on a daily basis. Now I make this sourdough discard pizza dough, divide into two balls of dough, refrigerate for 24 hours after kneading, and then either use or freeze. I’ve also got lots of pizza dough to give out to friends who love it!
As I discard ~100g of starter per day, I’ve been scaling the recipe to 2/3 with good results. The only feedback I’d mention is that the “pinch” of salt in the ingredients list is rather vague and I did need more than just one or two turns from my sea salt grinder.
I was taught that a ‘pinch’ was definitely more than one or two turns of a seasalt grinder. But fair point, it would be just as easy to put half a teaspoon…! will edit later
I actually used 9 gms of salt and the pizza dough turned out amazing!
Thanks! I think the quantity of salt you use will be based partly on personal taste. Next time I try myself I’ll actually measure (and may well try a bit more)
How old is your discard? I only feed my starter once a week and then collect the discard. Therefore, sometimes my discard has 1-3 weeks old before I use it in recipes. I have made great focaccia with 3 week old discard and assume can do your pizza too? Thank you, Carmen
I do much the same and make focaccia too. Yes, my discard can be three weeks old or so – every so often I do tip it out and start again (probably once a month but I haven’t got it on a calendar) if for some reason I haven’t used enough
Hello I feed my starter every day. Reading these messages I feel I am doing something wrong. Today I made some dough with the discarded starter for a pizza which I shall bake tomorrow.
I don’t feed my starter every day because I only bake once a week and I keep it in the fridge. You need to decide what works for you!
Would you use plain or bread flour for this? The recipe just says white.
Ideally bread flour, but plain flour will work. It may just be a bit chewier!
What is the amount of a dessert spoon?
A dessert spoon is 10 grams or two teaspoons
OMG… disaster. The silicone baking paper stuck onto the pizza base.
We couldn’t even peel off the paper!
Why did this not happen to anyone else??
Would love to hear more comments
Hi Su
Silicone baking paper never sticks once the pizza is cooked. There are a few possibilities. If your oven doesn’t cook at a high enough temperature, then you will always struggle with pizza. It should be pre-heated – and the temperature I have provided is Centigrade, not Fahrenheit which I know is the common oven temperature measure in the USA (I am from the UK). You DO need silicone paper, not greaseproof paper. I personally have never tried with greaseproof paper, but I believe if you needed to substitute it would be possible, but you’d have to oil the paper lightly first. I have even cooked this on a pizza-steel with no paper at all – so I can attest that the dough doesn’t stick if made properly. If you used regular flour rather than bread flour that might also cause a problem. Different flours need different quantities of water so if you made a dough that was too wet in the first place because you were using a different flour that would also cause a problem. I still wouldn’t expect it to stick if you cooked the pizza for long enough. You can clearly see from the photos how the crust should look. Was your pizza like that?
Hi, I am trying this recipe for the first time today with discard. I make pizza often and always sprinkle polenta on my greaseproof paper if that helps for next time
Thank you for this recipe, I have been making sourdough bread for over 6 months now, I feed my starter once a week and shave been throwing the discard out. Yesterday, I wanted to make pizza dough so researched your recipe. Best tasting pizza dough EVER! I’m so excited to be adding this to my recipe repertoire! I made my version of a Margherita, although I baked the basil and it did turn dark, but was still tasty! I wish I could post a picture of it.
Glad you enjoyed it!
Easy to follow and make and it tasted great. Thank you so much!
I love making this – and I’m glad you approve!
Once the dough is made, is it ok to freeze it and use at a later time?
Theoretically yes, but I haven’t tried (I never have any freezer space!)
Did you try this Wendy? I’m hoping to do the same!
Great recipe! Easy to make and delicious. Thank you for a great way to use up sourdough discard.
Just tried this recipe for lunch today. It was easy, quick and tasty! We used 100g plain flour + 150g bread flour and it came out crispy. This will be our classic sourdough discard recipe from now on. Thank you!
This was delicious!! This will be my go-to pizza crust!
Do I need to add sugar and oil?
I don’t add either. You don’t need sugar in the dough – but if you want a softer ‘focaccia style’ base, then you could try adding some olive oil and sugar or honey. If you check my sourdough focaccia here – https://frugalflexitarian.com/easy-sourdough-focaccia/ you’ll see what I mean. I’ve been known to add a little sugar to the topping if I’ve bought poor quality tomato passata or tried making my own with UK tomatoes which lack sunshine sweetness!
This is the PERFECT sourdough pizza dough recipe!! I have modified it slightly. 50:50 white and wheat flour. A little more olive oil and honey. I’ve made dozens of pizzas and they just keep getting better and better!!!! Best thing I got from Covid. How to make sourdough starter and this recipe!!!!!
LOL glad you enjoyed it. I use more olive oil and honey in my sourdough focaccia. If you like a lighter, fluffier base then it’s definitely the way to go.
After kneading and it has doubled in size, can I put it in the refrigerator to use it at a later time? If so, do I need to allow it to rise again after taking it out of the refrigerator before baking?
Honestly it’s not something I’ve tried. If I want to use the base at a later time on the same day I put it in the fridge to rise, which slows the process down a lot. Then I check about an hour before I’m ready to cook and if it hasn’t doubled, I take the dough out to finish. If it has doubled, I still take it out 10-15 minutes before I am ready to cook so it is at room temperature.
Hi, Fiona
If I want to add a little instant yeast how much would you recommend? I am not super confident about the strength of my discard (about 3 weeks old) so am thinking I may need a bit of instant yeast to help. Thanks
Really hard for me to say – I think I’d probably put in half of one of those little packs and see if that worked. It’s not dreadful if the base doesn’t rise a lot though, just more like a flatbread pizza
Anyone else have to add more flour? My discard was really runny. That could’ve been the case. I usually use my discard when it’s thicker bc of this phenom 😂 it was also unrefrigerated so maybe that didn’t help.
I added heaps more flour I hope it still comes out good!!!
I will try again when my sourdough discard is a little stiffer
My own discard is kind of thick. But, even the type of flour will make a difference – depending on how ‘strong’ the flour is, the amount of water it can absorb will change. So, using common sense (as you have done) is the way to go. Let me know how you get on!
Yummy! I used some of the discard that had been fed 12 hours before, and some that was in the refrigerator. Came out more sour than 100% fed 12 hours before. I put it in my bread machine on dough cycle. It had not risen enough at the point the machine finished. Let it rise a few more hours on the counter and it turned out great!
I so badly wanted to love this but it was a pretty heavy fail for me. Probably my own mistake, so here’s where I think I went wrong in case it helps anyone else… I thought “white flour” meant all purpose, so I intentionally didn’t use bread flour (which felt odd for pizza dough). Then the water measurements were in milliliters rather than grams like everything else. According to my scale they’re the same, so that may be a non issue. That said… I think using the wrong flour type hosed up my hydration volume, so I was left with a super loose, sticky dough that never came together. After about 15 minutes on the mixer with little improvement, I added a heavy scoop of flour. Five more minute, another scoop of flour. 10-15 more minutes and I felt like I was just being abusive to the poor, sticky dough at that point so I said a prayer and covered it up to rest. After about 3 hours it still looked pretty sad, so I tried to shape my sticky pal into a pizza-ish form, topped it and baked it on a well heated pizza stone as per the instructions. Aside from being massively misshapen, it looked like there may be hope when I pulled it out. But it was SUPER tough and had a thin layer that was still undercooked (despite the rest of it being debatably overcooked) after hours of work I still had to pull out a frozen pizza for the family to eat. Super bummed, but given all of the other great reviews I suspect my case was user error.
The flour will definitely make a difference and you are right it should be bread flour or 00 flour. I will update the recipe and try to come up with a way to describe the dough consistency – you should have eomething you can ‘stretch’. That will also depend on your sourdough discard. I do normally put liquid measures in millilitres – for some people it’s more convenient as you can use a measuring jug.
Can we used 100% wheat and if so does anything need to change? Asking for whole food plant based people 😊
Great recipe, I finally found a way to use my sourdough discard!
We use this recipe all the time and love it. I just made a triple batch as I had a lot of sour dough starter I needed to use up. Can you freeze the dough for use later?