Written by 
by Katharine
I have been enjoying homemade sourdough bread for a few weeks now and wanted ideas to use discard starter and find other recipes using sourdough starter. A good family friend recommended using 00 (Zero Zero) flour from Italy for breads so I purchased some from Amazon and got to work. I used Italian fresh ingredients to create an easy homemade pizza option..fatto a mano.
The Dough
Like most Neapolitan pizza dough recipes, this one is fairly simple – just four ingredients plus the sourdough starter. I used 50g of my active sourdough starter, 250g of 00 flour, 175g of water, 15 grams of olive oil and 5g of salt. The night before, I mixed the starter, flour and water together in a bowl and let it autolyse overnight on the counter. The key is doubling and keeping the starter active.
I followed the steps from Emily at bakingtosurvive_ on Instagram and mixed all the ingredients in a bowl and then covered and let the mixture rest under a tea towel for 30 minutes. Then do a series of stretch and pulls every 30 minutes for the next 2 hours. I put the dough in a glass bowl with a lid in the refrigerator overnight. This is the bulk fermentation (BF) stage.
Shaping the Dough – when ready to make the pizzas, I took the dough out of the refrigerator and spread some flour on the counter. I made about 4 tennis ball sized dough balls and started shaping the dough into thin pizza shapes. I have to perfect this because my dough turned more into oblong shapes vs circles but that was ok. My goal was as thin as possible without breaking dough. Toppings were kept minimal and simple natural ingredients are key. I used Italian passata from a glass jar, fresh burrata, dried oregano and a little bit of EVOO.
Baking Technique
Armed with my non-600 degree oven, just a simple regular oven, I preheated it to 475°F. When the temperature was reached, I slid the pizza onto parchment paper and on a metal baking sheet with holes. I baked the pizza for 12 minutes.
After letting it cool and sitting down to enjoy my creation, I was impressed with the results.
Buonissimo! It was some of the best pizza I’ve ever made! The sourdough crust had a wonderful flavor and proved the perfect vehicle for the fresh Italian ingredients.
Buon appetito!
