
I’m glad you’re here to learn more about how to use your beautiful sourdough starter!

We’re sticking with sourdough recipes that don’t need as much rise for now, in case you’re still nurturing your baby sourdough starter and waiting for the bubbles you really want to see, like this:
Look at the beautiful air pockets right through the side of the jar! This starter is ready to leaven some bread!
RELATED: Chickpea Pizza Crust
Pizza Night Done Right!
I am totally planning sourdough pizza for next week after checking out some options for this post. Lots of drool all over my keyboard here. I haven’t tried sourdough pizza dough yet, but Sarah Wood has, and she shares her recipe:
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Soaked Sourdough Pizza Crust
Ingredients
- 1.5 C sourdough starter
- 2 T olive oil (use the code STEWARDSHIP for 10% off at that site!)
- 3/4 t salt (Use the code kitchenstewardship for 15% off of your first purchase)
- 1 – 1.5 C whole wheat flour
- Equipment:
- Stand mixer or mixing bowl
- Baking sheet and a Silpat type non-stick baking mat OR baking stone
- Rolling Pin
- Plastic Wrap
Instructions
- Mix the ingredients together, working in flour until you have a soft dough. If it gets too dry add more starter or water.
- Once kneaded for about 5 minutes, cover and let rest for 30-60 minutes.
- After resting, roll out the dough on your Silpat or baking stone. I then transfer the Silpat with the dough onto the baking sheet. Cover with plastic wrap to prevent it from drying out and leave at room temperature for at least seven hours. The crust will rise some as it soaks. (You can also bake right away without the extra “soak” time.)
- (I make this recipe into one oblong pizza crust that fits on my Silpat in a jelly roll baking pan. Divide the dough as you desire to suit the baking equipment you have on hand.) And Katie is in love with her baking stone, always, for pizza!
- Seven or more hours later, heat the oven to 450 degrees F. Bake the crust for 5 minutes. Then add sauce and desired toppings to pizza. Put pizza back in oven for about 10 minutes or until the cheese is bubbly and starting to brown. And check out Sarah’s baking instructions for the way Katie likes her pizza nowadays.
Notes
* Save your plastic wrap and reuse it every time you make pizza dough. I’ve been using the same piece of plastic wrap for months!
* You can also freeze the pizza crusts after they have been par-baked and save them for future use.
* Remember that you can always put your sourdough starter in the refrigerator if you’re not baking often; just feed it once a week.
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(Katie back; thanks, Sarah!) Refrigerating the starter gives you more timing choices. That way you won’t end up with a ton of starter taking over your house. On the other hand, if you are encouraged to make this awesome pizza because you have too much starter, maybe it’s better to let it take over a bit!
I found a few other tempting pizza dough recipes in my forays through the blogosphere lately. I have no idea which one to try first!
- King Arthur Flour never seems to fail me with great products and recipes. Here is their sourdough pizza recipe.
- Pam at Adventures in Homemaking wrote recently of trying my friend
Sarah(no longer available)’ssourdough pizza(no longer available): “This was by far one of the best pizzas I’ve ever put in my mouth. Remember the scene from “What About Bob?” when he was eating dinner with his therapist’s family? That’s kind of what we felt like eating this pizza.” It’s fun to hear others acknowledge Sarah’s mastery of sourdough! - No one seems to remember to take a photo of their pizzas, though – they must be so tasty they just get eaten!

Sarah Wood has one more “discarded starter” guest post recipe for you tomorrow – muffins – and then (drum roll, please!) it’s bread time on Friday!
Can I make the dough to day and refrigerate till tomorrow? Will it work in an outdoor pizza oven (Fire)?
You can let it ferment for up to 1 day. So instead of 7 hours as the recipe says, you could leave it out overnight and during the day tomorrow to cook in the evening. I’ve experimented with putting sourdough in the fridge before if I need to mix it up well in advance, and I’ve had mixed success, so I personally wouldn’t try that, but maybe you’ll experiment and find out that it is fine! Should work just fine in an outdoor oven.
Do you know if you can let this soak/ferment/sit for 1 to 2 days before using. And if so, refrigerate or not?
Typically that’s fine Shana, at least for one day room temp – but the only way to find out is to try it I guess (I haven’t). Enjoy! 🙂 Katie
I made this last night. Turned out great!! And I took a few pictures if you’re interested.
http://voogtrecipes.blogspot.com/2011/01/sourdough-pizza.html
Finally got around to making my starter now that we’ve moved, and this is the first thing I’m trying! Hope the starter is up to it — it’s a week old and pretty bubbly and smelly, so I thought it was worth a try.
I’ll be using the pizza dough to make garlic knots, which are a delicious snack. If it works, I’ll post the recipe with pictures!
.-= Sheila´s last blog ..Mark’s progress =-.
Sheila,
Way to go! If you get good photos, email me – I could add them to this post with credit, that would be fabulous. 🙂 Katie
Here’s the post I wrote about it, with a couple pictures:
http://agiftuniverse.blogspot.com/2010/05/sourdough-garlic-knots.html
You’ll see I didn’t get complete success, but they were good enough that I mean to try again, with more flour and a longer rising time.
.-= Sheila´s last blog ..24 years …. =-.
Sheila,
You are a hoot! What an adventure with your poor dough. 🙂 We were very surprised that our pizza dough didn’t taste sour at all, but that was with sauce and cheese and stuff on it… I hope you get better results next time! 🙂 Katie
I did get better results this time! The pictures are here: http://agiftuniverse.blogspot.com/2010/06/garlic-knots-take-2.html
Pouring off the separated liquid at the top of my starter was the trick to deal with the sourness. And they rose MUCH better this time, too.
.-= Sheila´s last blog ..Garlic Knots, Take 2 =-.
Sheila,
yay!
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We are having this for dinner tonight! It’s soaking right now. Can’t wait!!!
Thanks for including a link to my sourdough pizza as well! We love it – it’s addicting!
Best,
Sarah
.-= Sarah´s last blog ..Whole Wheat Brown Sugar Chocolate and Almond Biscotti =-.
Sarah,
Yours is the one I went with on Sunday – the solemnity so we could have seconds – and OH! was it awesome!
🙂 Katie
you could probably split it up into two or more bowls/containers and feed each one to rapidly increase the amount of starter you have. I don’t know for sure what would happen if you did feedings that would more than double the starter at a time… I’d imagine that it might actually slow it down as I get the impression that proportion is important… just a hunch though!
I seem to be having the opposite problem! I want to try all of the recipes, and I don’t have enough starter! It seems to be healthy (for such a young one), but I keep using it. How much can I feed it in a day? Is it possible to overfeed it?
Laura,
If I’ve just made bread and still want pancakes the next day, I might feed it a cup and a half of flour. Most recipes say to replace what you took out – like if you use a cup of starter, mix in a cup of flour and a cup of water. As long as you give the lactic acid bacteria time to take hold, I don’t *think* you can overfeed. That’s a good question, and one I didn’t address!
Thanks!
🙂 Katie
Excellent–we have a pizza night scheduled for Friday. Thanks for the dough tips!