Sourdough Pizza ❤️ Plus an Instant Dry Yeast Version

Alongside daily bread baking, pizza has been one of my most frequent bakes over the past ten years, usually three times a week.

I developed and tweaked this formula through home practice rather than formal training, and I am sharing it here for fellow bakers.

🍞 Ingredients: (makes one 14-inch thin-crust pizza)

Type 00 pizza flour (or regular bread flour) 250g, water 145g (adjust as needed), salt 5g, active sourdough starter (levain) 80g.

🍞 Instructions:

1️⃣ Mix all ingredients together into a rough dough, cover with plastic wrap, and let rest (autolyse) at room temperature for about 20 minutes. Knead a few times until the dough surface becomes smooth. Ferment at room temperature (around 20°C) for about 2 hours, then place in the fridge overnight. In summer, shorten the room-temperature fermentation to about 30 minutes.

2️⃣ The next morning, take the dough out of the fridge and let it proof at room temperature for about 3 hours, just in time for lunch. Meanwhile, prepare the pizza sauce. As shown in Photo 6, you can use store-bought crushed or peeled tomatoes directly, or sauté minced onion in olive oil and simmer briefly with tomato paste for a quick homemade pizza sauce.

3️⃣ After about 3 hours, preheat the oven to 260°C with your pizza stone inside (my oven takes about 40 minutes to preheat thoroughly). Place the dough on floured parchment paper and stretch or roll it out (see Photo 4). Spread a thin layer of pizza sauce, sprinkle dried pizza herbs and a pinch of sea salt if you like, then top with vegetables, cheese, and your favorite meats or seafood.

4️⃣ Slide onto the lower-middle rack. If your oven runs hot, bake for about 12 minutes; otherwise bake for about 15 minutes, adjusting for how your oven runs.

5️⃣ Out comes a fragrant pizza with an airy, blistered crust.

🍞 Instant Dry Yeast Formula (for bakers without sourdough starter, adapted from baker Ai He Ziyou, see Photo 9):

All-purpose flour 200g, instant dry yeast 2g, fine sugar 3g, salt 3g, water 124g, olive oil 5g.

❤️ My Pizza-Making Tips:

🌼 1. High heat is critical for pizza, so use a pizza stone if possible. It retains intense heat and bakes the crust crisp in a short time (see Photo 8 for my pizza stone).

🌼 2. Whether you prefer a thin crust or a thicker crust is up to you. I usually make two pizzas, one thin and one slightly thicker. The thicker crust just needs about 2 extra minutes in the oven.

🌼 3. Always dock the center of the dough with a fork before topping so the base does not bubble up in the oven.

🌼 4. You can use store-bought pizza sauce, homemade sauce, or canned crushed/peeled tomatoes as shown in the photos. Do not spread the sauce too thickly, or the crust will turn soggy instead of crisp.

🌼 5. Mix and match cheeses to your liking. I often blend two or three cheeses.

🌼 6. Customize the vegetable, meat, and seafood toppings however you like.

🌼 7. Because the oven and stone are extremely hot, use a pizza peel or flat board to slide the pizza in carefully and avoid burns.