Sourdough Pizza Crust (no added yeast)

Sourdough pizza crust is our new favorite Friday night tradition! Made with sourdough starter and no added (commercial) yeast, it is truly the best pizza we have ever had.

Who has jumped on the sourdough bandwagon? 🙋🏼‍♀️😆 Side note: You can see my complete exhaustive tutorial for making your own sourdough starter here.

Timeline for making sourdough pizza crust

One difference in using sourdough starter is that it is a slower process than using commercial yeast. It actually is not a ton of work, but more of a timeline adjustment.

It is 100% worth the effort, in my opinion. Because you get to eat this beautiful creation for dinner. 😍😍😍

I have my pizza-making timeline/ routine down, though.😎👌🏻 Here is what I do.

First things first! You will want to use fed sourdough starter. This just means that it has been fed and is bubbly and fermented.

I have a very robust, well-established starter, so I can feed mine first thing in the morning, the day I want to make it. I get up around 6:30, and I feed it right away. This gives my starter around 6 or 7 hours to ferment before I mix up the dough.

I mix up the dough around lunch time. This works well for me, since I am already in the kitchen at that time, preparing lunch for myself and my kids. I use my KitchenAid mixer with the dough hook, which makes is suuuuper easy. More on that in a sec!

After you mix the dough up, it will need to rise for about 4 hours prior to rolling it out into crust.

So I try to have mine made by about 1:00 – 1:30pm, so I can roll it out around 5:00 – 5:30ish in time to start making dinner. We usually eat between 6:00 and 6:30, FYI.

How to assemble sourdough pizza dough

Ready to start making the BEST sourdough pizza crust? Let’s go!🙌🏻

Basically, you are going to measure all ingredients into your mixer bowl. The only order I suggest is saving the dry flour for LAST, right on top of the other ingredients. It looks like this.

I have found it just mixes better that way.

I prefer (and highly recommend) to use a digital food scale to measure the ingredients, but I have included both types of measurements for those of you who are using measuring cups.

What type of flour to use

My favorite flour for this crust is unbleached organic bread flour. I have also made it successfully with all purpose white flour, and I have also done half wheat, half all purpose.

I do not recommend doing any more than half whole wheat because the dough just does not stretch as well and become difficult to work with.

If you can find it, 00 flour is also supposed to work great. I have never bothered with this, but it is what the most authentic Italians use. So it deserves a mention here. I am happy with my bread flour.

How to measure flour correctly

Spoon flour into the cups and level it flat over the top. The grams measurements I am providing are for the bread flour, spooned and leveled. 

I did look at the official weights and measures chart from King Arthur flour. Mine varied slightly. So I recorded them exactly as they appeared on my digital food scale.

Mixing the dough

Mix the dough until it all comes together in one ball. This will take several minutes. If it is still in pieces after 3 or 4 minutes, add a little more water (not much!). I would try a half teaspoon, or less. 

The dough should all hold together in a ball and be slightly sticky to the touch, but not goopy. It will look like this.

From there, pour a half teaspoon of additional oil over the top, and spread it around with your fingers. I like to flip my dough ball all the way around to completely coat it with oil. This keeps it from drying out during rise time. 

Cover it with a towel, and allow it to rise for four hours.

After four hours, mine looked like this.

Shaping the dough into pizza crust

There are several ways you can do this. Many people like to use a pizza stone and a pizza piel. In that case, you can shape your dough on a clean, dry, lightly floured surface – counter top or pastry board.

I prefer to roll out my dough right on the baking pan. I have used nonstick pizza pans for years and years. And I have made this very sourdough pizza crust recipe on the nonstick pan, so I can confidently tell you that it works great.

But! I must admit I am newly converted to this beauty – a cast iron pizza pan. 😍 (👈🏻Amazon affiliate link, but I purchased one myself and LOVE. It.)

If you are using a cast iron pizza pan like me, you will want to pour about a half teaspoon right on it, and use your hands to coat it.

If you use a nonstick pan, you can spray it with cooking spray. Then for either type of pan, put your pizza dough in the center and start mashing it outward.

It will take some pressing. Just press outward, toward the edges. The dough will try to shrink back, but just keep working with it. Don’t be intimidated, though. This whole process takes about five minutes, or less.

Press the edges of the pizza dough up a little to form that raised bit of the crust that we all love. It looks like this.

I like to wait until I am done forming the dough until I preheat my oven. This allows the sourdough pizza dough to rest and even rise a tiny bit more.

Right before I put my sourdough pizza crust in the oven, I like to poke holes. This is optional. It prevents those large bubbles that result in domes of burnt crust and cheese. If you love those, skip the holes. If you want a smoother, more uniform pizza, poke away. I just use a fork.

I prefer to pre-bake my sourdough pizza crust. I have always done it this way (even prior to sourdough).

Technically, I think this makes it a flatbread. Call it what you want.🤷🏼‍♀️ It’s just how I like doing it. I bake for 10 minutes in an oven preheated to 425 degrees F.

Dressing the pizza

I spoon my sauce right on top of the sourdough pizza crust. You can make your own, or use store bought.

Today I am just using the Kirkland brand organic tomato sauce from Costco. I use half of a 15 ounce can and save the other half in the fridge or freezer for the next pizza!

Next up, cheese!

You can use fresh mozzarella if you prefer. I am using a thicker cut (traditional cut is what the bag says).

I reeeeally dislike using the finely cut mozzarella.😬  That being said, we have even used that a bunch of times if that is all the store has, and it is still great. It just melts and browns a bit faster than the thicker shreds, FYI.

Toppings

And finally, toppings! Some people put their toppings under the cheese, and feel free to do that if you wish.

We are toppings-on-top-of-cheese people in our house. You can use anything you like.

I just used what I had on hand to make mine similar to a pizza Margherita. I used some tomatoes and fresh oregano instead of the traditional basil.

You will know why I did this, if you are a regular watcher of my Instagram stories. Short version: I have a huge patch of oregano in my yard that went crazy and took over everything.😜

I always recommend using fresh herbs after you bake the pizza. Dried oregano is really yummy too. If I am using dried, I put it on the pizza before baking.

I bake mine (in that same 425 degree F oven) until the cheese looks about right to me, which is right around 10 minutes. A pizza slicer is a must for us. And we have had no issues using it right on the cast iron pan, FYI.

I hope y’all enjoy this sourdough pizza crust recipe as much as we have.❤️ Let me know if you try it!

Sourdough Pizza Crust Recipe

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Also, if you want to double this recipe and make two pizzas, use the slider in the recipe card to adjust. I have doubled it with great results. One pizza is the default recipe setting, and it is 8 slices. So to make two pizzas, bump it up to 16.