One of our favourite homemade pizza dough recipe leverages our sourdough starter, which has been part of our family since before the Forno made it in the back yard. We’ve baked countless sourdough breads and other delights so it was a natural step for us to create a sourdough pizza dough recipe for our Forno Venetzia wood fired oven.
If you don’t have sourdough, you can either start it yourself (there are plenty of tips on Youtube and google), ask a friend of yours or even your local sourdough bakery. Otherwise, you could also make a biga, which is an italian name for poolish or fermented dough, that is done 24 hours prior to make your pizza dough. If we get many requests, we’d be happy to share a biga pizza dough recipe here in the future.
You can also do our basic (but amazing!) yeasted pizza dough recipe which can be found here, until your sourdough is ready. The video shows you that both recipes achieve a great result!
We must say that between the taste of sourdough, the use of 10% whole grains flour and the 24-48 hours rest in the refrigerator, this dough has an amazing depth of flavours. We rarely think of the dough taste given the toppings are the stars of the pizza show but when tested side-by-side with our basic pizza dough recipe, this one has a little “je-ne-sais-quoi” that makes it a favourite in this house.
Step-by-step can be found in the video on our Youtube channel here.
SOURDOUGH PIZZA DOUGH RECIPE
Ingredients
- 300 g water
- 170 g liquid sourdough starter, mature
- 15 g olive oil
- 225 g 00 flour
- 225 g all purpose or bread unbleached white flour
- 50 g whole wheat or einkorn or rye flour
- 10 g salt
Instructions
- In a large bowl or the bowl of your stand mixer, combine water and sourdough shortly. Add olive oil, all flours, salt and mix for a few minutes until well combined.
- Let rest for about 15 minutes.
- Knead the dough, either by hand for about 10-15 minutes or with the dough attachment of your stand mixer, or with Thermomix, for 8 minutes, low speed. Look at the video to get an idea of the dough once it's done kneading.
- Put the dough ball in an oiled bowl (use olive oil), cover and let rise for about 4-5 hours. This step could take less time, depending on your house temperature, strenght of your sourdough or flour. The dough does not have to rise to double the size but it does need to get slightly puffy. There is a longer rest in next step.
- Once the first rest if over, cut the dough in 4 parts and roll each part into a ball (see video). Either wrap each dough ball in plastic or wax wrap or put in am oiled container and cover (this our preferred method).
- Rest in the fridge or cold room or garage, ideal temp of 6-10C (42-50F) is desired.
- About 2 hours before your planned pizza cooking time, transfer the balls to room temperature. If it is really hot in your house, reduce this time to 1 hour. It's ok if the ball spread a little but if you see the surface of your dough balls starting to tear, it means you have over proofed your dough balls and should aim for shorter rest times in the future.
- Start your Forno Venetzia oven! We are aiming for 650-675F floor temperature and about 600-650F oven temperature. You can cook your pizzas at higher temps but we suggest starting in these temperatures to get used to the process.