Sourdough Pizza Crust

I have a pot of sourdough starter sitting in my kitchen. His name is Beauregard, and that reminds me, I need to feed him. He had his first outing last night when I made sourdough pizza dough. The thing to remember about sourdough is that it’s not actually that sour. Commercial sourdough has god-knows-what added to make it overly sour, but if you’re making bread from a starter, you can sweeten it easily (using salt!), but making it more sour is actually a little tricky. So banish from your minds the sourdough from the stores; this is completely different. --AnglophileLV

For the sauce, I used around ½ cup of my homemade tomato sauce, 1 can tomato paste, a few dashes of dried oregano, a little garlic powder, and 3 teaspoons sugar (tomato tends to be acidic and tart so always taste your sauce to see if it needs sugar).

Note: If you pre-bake the shells, they will tend to stay fluffier. If you just top them and bake them, they will tend to be flatter.

Ingredients: (recipe source: Sourdough Home)

1 1/2 c mature Sourdough starter

1 T olive oil

1 t Salt

1 1/2 c Flour

Place your pizza stone in the oven if you have one and preheat oven to 450F. (Try 550F if your oven will take you there.)

Mix ingredients, working in the flour until you have a soft dough. If the dough gets too dry, add some more starter. If you've used all the starter, add a bit of water.

Once you've kneaded the dough, cover it with a damp paper towel and let rest for 1/2 hour. This lets the dough relax, so forming the pizza is easier. This recipe does not require the rising capabilities of sourdough, it just uses the taste of the starter.

Once the dough has rested, roll out into a flat round pie-like shape. I rolled my dough out on some kind of silicone parchment paper type thing, but non-stick aluminum foil would be my next best bet. Don’t use parchment if you plan to broil – I did that once, it burned to a crisp. Flames leapt. It was not good.

Once you have a nice round pie shell, you may pre-bake it or top it and bake it. To pre-bake it, bake about 5 minutes. It doesn't take long, so watch carefully.

After I prebaked the shell, I noticed that it wasn’t browning very nicely, so I brushed egg around the outer edge to make a pretty golden crust. Unfortunately, this made the crust a little crunchier, but it was still good. Then I dusted the egg covered portion with garlic salt.

When you're ready to top the pizza, rub a bit of olive oil on the surface, as this helps keep the crust from getting soggy. Then top with your ingredients. I went with mozzarella, parmesan (to help the cheese brown better), pepperoni, onions and green bell pepper. Then bake for 5 minutes and check – continue checking until the cheese is browned and bubbly on the edges. To get the veggies fully cooked, I had to put the broiler on for 40 seconds in addition to the baking time.