“I want to make sourdough, Daddy!” – what could I say? We have. And then made pizza with it.

“Tato, chcę zrobić zakwas!” – co ja mogłem powiedzieć? Zrobiliśmy. A potem użyliśmy go do pizzy.

Since I have three types of sourdough already, we made the fourth one using strong flour. We followed the steps from Sourdough. Zakwas., but used a smaller jar, half of the quantities listed and discarded most sourdough before feeding. We started on Monday and in Thursday it looked strong enough to use, so I asked Helena what she wanted to make: “Bread, this is a bread sourdough” – “But it’s universal Dear, you can also make other things like pizza”. Her face lit up. “Bread and pizza, then”. She called it Kwiatek (Polish for flower).

Helena’s sourdough

For pizza we used recipe from “Flour Water Yeast Salt” by Ken Forkish (Sources / Źródła). I used strong flour only (which I don’t recommend) and skipped stretch and fold completely (I forgot).

Planning

You’ll need around thirty hours from start to pizza. Some space in fridge will be needed after you make dough portions.

I used a cast iron baking stone for baking. It’s not essential, but the result will be better with some stone. To make sure I don’t make the base too big, I prepared baking paper sheets the size of  the stone. It also made it easier to transfer pizza onto the stone. Just make sure the dough doesn’t stick to the paper. I used a baking tray to transfer the dough on and from the stone.

Pizza

Ingredients

I divided the dough in six and four were more than enough (for two adults and two kids). We could have made three. The rest went into the freezer, and we used it a week later – took it out and and baked when it defrosted.

Levain

• 20 g sourdough
• 20 g wholemeal wheat flour
• 80 g white wheat flour (type 00 preferable, plain should be OK, strong flour will make you a flat bread)
• 80 g warm water (29-32 C)

Dough

• 900 g white wheat flour
• 620 g warm water (32-35 C)
• 20 g fine sea salt (Gosia thinks it’s too much, I think it’s OK)
• 200 g levain

Sauce

It’s up to you really. We usually prepare sauce using a tomato passata and  some spices like thyme, oregano etc. We simply mix them.

Pizza

Preparation

1. Mix the levain and leave in room temperature for 8-10 hours

2. If you want to do the autolyse, mix flour and water from dough and leave for 20-30 minutes. I mentioned it in Tarzynkowy Bread. Chleb Tarzynkowy.

3. Mix all dough ingredients by hand or using a mixer (I did)

4. Leave in room temperature for 12-14 hours (it should double it’s size, or even a bit more; I was surprised with so much time, but it did rise this long in my case)

5. If possible, stretch and fold the dough after 30 and 60 minutes from mixing. I did not, but I used strong flour and this may have more gluten so the structure and behaviour of the dough was as expected

6. Divide the dough, shape round portions (Mr Forkish recommends not degasing the dough, I didn’t really bother), coat them with olive oil or dust with flour to prevent sticking into one portion again. Pop them into your fridge for 5-6 hours (or more, if needed; 5-6 hours is the minimum, and after that they can sit refrigerated for longer)

7. Heat your oven. If you have a stone, preheat it for about 30-40 minutes. The temperature should be as much as possible. Mr Forkish suggests that you should even use a roast option in the oven (if there is one like that) and to turn it on right before baking for a couple minutes so that the stone gets even hotter. My oven has a maximum setting of 250 C degrees which I set, without fan

8. I was taking portions out of the fridge one by one. I placed each portion on a floured surface, flattened and made a round shape with the edge thicker than the middle. Then I lifted it and quickly rotated holding by the edge, letting the gravity do its work. The middle was getting thin. To finish shaping, I place the dough on my fists and made sure it expanded even more. Then I placed it on the baking paper and put sauce and toppings on

9. Transfer your pizza onto the stone and bake it. It took me about 5-7 minutes to bake one

   Pizza

As previously mentioned, I used strong flour. It gave a nice result, the base was tasty, but it felt like flat bread with toppings. It was quite firm. Next time I’ll try Italian 00 flour, or at least plain.

This may be obvious to some, but use a good baking paper. Mine was very bad and it stuck to the pizza. There wasn’t an amount of flour that could prevent it.