The Perfect For Me Sourdough Pizza Dough
When I was younger in my late teen years I basically lived off of pizza. My preference back then was Dominos. And when I was pregnant with my first child I could eat a whole Dominios medium pizza by myself. Being middle age I can’t even imagine doing that now. My body would probably go through anaphylactic shock if I had just one slice of Dominos pizza.
With age and having gone through a major compromise of my immune system, my digestive system is very sensitive to things like gluten, preservatives, artificial ingredients, sugar etc. However with all that being said, I found a way to enjoy pizza again by making it myself. I went through 8 days of pizza dough making to come up with the “perfect for me” sourdough pizza dough recipe.
The reason why I call it “perfect for me” is that everyone has their idea of their favorite, perfect pizza crust. For me I prefer a thin bottom crust, that’s a little crisp and can hold lots of toppings. The outer crust around the pizza, I like it to be crispy but inside soft and chewy.
I have to say the 8 days of making sourdough pizza crust, trying different cooking methods, experimenting with different toppings was so much fun! Through all of that I came up with a pizza dough I’m very happy with and is easy to digest. This blog post will go over my experience with perfecting my sourdough pizza recipe, the methods I used and the recipe I came up with to give me the perfect sourdough pizza crust for me!
Einkorn Flour
Before coming up with the pizza dough I use now, I tried several different gluten free pizza doughs. I’ve eaten cauliflower based pizza crusts, sweet potato, gluten flour based, zucchini based, nothing gave me that real pizza crust taste that I was use to. However I will say there have been a couple of gluten free pizzas I’ve tried that weren’t half bad. But overall the crust just wasn’t what I truly wanted in a pizza crust.
But then I started using einkorn flour, which changed everything! I’ve written about einkorn flour before in my sourdough English muffin post. But I’ll just touch on it briefly here. Einkorn flour comes from the einkorn grain. This grain has never been hybridized. And unlike wheat has never been cross bred. So this makes for a grain that can be easily digested. Everybody’s digestion system is different but I found that my body digests einkorn grain easily. This revelation opened the flood gates of what I could do with einkorn. One of the first thoughts was pizza dough! 🙂
Einkorn Sourdough Starter
The key to my perfect sourdough pizza dough is of course the sourdough starter. My sourdough starter is an einkorn starter. There are quite a few sites to go to for instructions on how to start an einkorn sourdough starter. Here’s a few I will reference right here:
- Jovial Foods How To Make An Einkorn Sourdough Starter
- Don’t Waste The Crumbs Einkorn Sourdough Starter
- Traditional Cooking School How To Make A Einkorn Sourdough Starter
An einkorn sourdough starter will provide the foundation for the pizza crust as well as increase digestibility. Before when my body could handle wheat gluten I would make regular wheat based sourdough pizza dough and later I switched over to spelt due to easier digestion. Then after a while my body couldn’t handle spelt grain. But now even if I could digest regular wheat properly I wouldn’t switch back to eating it or baking with it. I much prefer the clean, beautiful flavors of einkorn and I love the soft texture einkorn gives to my sourdough and non sourdough recipes.
Reference Points for My Pizza Dough
To create my perfect sourdough pizza dough I used a couple of websites for reference, the perfect loaf and jovial foods. With each site I found valuable information. On the perfect loaf site there was great information on the scientific method of creating a great sourdough pizza dough. This site explained the fermenting, shaping and baking process so well. The perfect loaf is definitely influential in how I bake my pizza now.
On the jovial foods site I made an adaptation of their einkorn levain starter recipe to use as the base for my einkorn sourdough pizza dough. This site also has a wealth of information concerning einkorn grain , how to bake with einkorn flour and where to buy it.
I also looked at a couple of YouTube channels like this one and this one to get more information on how to create a bomb a** sourdough pizza dough.
My Sourdough Pizza Dough
So with my research in hand it was time to get to work. I first started off with using 100% einkorn flour with an einkorn sourdough starter. I did this for a couple of my first pizzas.
As you can see with this pizza it was before following the methods I learned from the perfect loaf. 🙂
The 100% einkorn flour turned out well but I wanted a little more substance in my pizza dough. After my first three pizzas, I decided to add a little organic sprouted spelt flour into my dough. By doing this the spelt added more depthness of flavor. I also knew from adding only a small percentage of sprouted spelt that it would still be easy to digest. I knew this because of the long fermentation the dough wound undergo and I was using already sprouted flour (grains soaked before grinding into flour).
Having the right amount of einkorn starter for the pizza dough to come out thin, crispy but with a thick, chewy rim crust was an important step. I played around with the amounts of starter, ranging from 30 grams to 70 grams. I found 65 grams of einkorn sourdough starter to be the sweet spot. It provided me with the texture and rise I desired in a pizza dough.
Just as important the measurements are to getting great results, so is the fermentation process. Allowing the dough to rest overnight and then proof for up to 6 hours the following day is very important in getting great pizza dough results. More details on this process in the recipe below.
Pizza Making Tools
If you have a sourdough starter, flour, salt and filtered water you can make a pizza dough. However I found that certain tools definitely helped me in the process.
- kitchen scale A scale makes the measuring process easy and proficient.
- pizza peel – I found mine at Crate and Barrel. A pizza peel allows for easy placing and removing of pizza from the oven.
- pizza stone – Having a pizza stone helps the base of the pizza get nice a crispy. The stone helps to retain the hot heat.
- parchment paper– This helps with being able to slide the pizza off easily from the pizza peel to the pizza stone or oven rack.
- spray bottle- I learned this from the perfect loaf, misting the crust with water as soon as placing it into the oven helps the crust to maintain moisture which allows for a crispy but not dry crust.
Now if you don’t have any of the items above you can still make a great pizza. For example I made a pizza using my cast iron griddle. I placed my cast iron griddle on the stove on high heat. After I preheated the griddle. I then placed the pizza dough on top of the griddle and placed all my toppings on the dough while the pizza base was cooking. After about a minute I finished off the pizza in a 500 degree oven.
Look how crispy the bottom turned out!
The Recipe
AuthorDesireeCategoryBreads, Main Meals, SourdoughDifficultyAdvancedIf you're looking for an easy digestible sourdough pizza dough, look no further. All you need is an einkorn starter and just a little patience.
Place einkorn starter, water, flour, honey, sea salt and olive oil in a large bowl.
*Einkorn starter does not have to be fed first. It can be taken right from the refrigerator.
With your hand or a wooden spoon mix all together till it becomes a shaggy type dough.
The dough will still be sticky but do not add more flour. Form into a ball, cover and let rest on a counter for an hour.
After an hour place a little olive oil on hands and remove dough from the bowl. Stretch the dough and fold over a couple of times. Then form the dough into a tight ball. This is done by picking up the dough and tucking the dough into itself, stretching the dough to form a tight ball.
Grease a plastic resealable bag with a little olive oil and place the ball of dough inside the bag. Place in the refrigerator overnight.
Take the dough out of the refrigerator and cut in half to make two balls. Each ball of dough will be enough to make a 10 to 12 inch size pizza.
Shape each half of dough into tight balls. As explained above, take the dough and fold it into itself by stretching the dough and pulling the dough into itself. You can also place the dough on the counter and lightly pull the dough to you while shaping the dough into a ball.
The dough will not be sticky and no extra flour is needed to roll the balls of dough.
Place both dough balls into a lightly oiled container with a lid. Let rest on a counter for 6 hours to proof. The dough will spread into a nice disc shape. At this point the pizza dough is ready to use.
To make easy delicious pizza I would suggest investing in these items:
parchment paper
pizza peel
pizza stone or cast iron pan
water spray bottle with filtered water inside
Take some einkorn flour and sprinkle on the counter. Pat out the dough to make a round 10 to 12 inch circle.
Take a pizza peel and place a piece of parchment paper on the peel and transfer the round pizza dough circle on the peel. Stretching out any dough that became uneven in the process.
Build up the rim of the crust by dimpling the dough with your fingers up to a half inch of the outer circle
Here's the fun part! Add you toppings!
For this particular pizza I drizzled olive oil first, added slivers of garlic, fresh arugula, raw grass-fed cheddar cheese, sheep & goats milk grass fed feta cheese and red pepper flakes.
Turn the oven from high to broil after a couple of minutes, slide the parchment paper with the pizza on it onto the hot pizza stone.
Take a spray bottle and carefully spritz around the outer crust. This practice helps to maintain some of the moisture in the crust.
Bake with the broiler on for about a minute. Then turn the heat back to the highest temperature to bake another minute then rotate the pizza using the pizza peel to even out the baking.
Bake until you're happy with the color and doneness of the pizza. For me it was another minute. So in total my baking time was about 4 minutes.
With the pizza peel, slide the pizza out of the oven and place it on a cutting board. Without burning yourself, you can also pull the corner of the parchment paper to help remove the pizza out of the oven.
Ingredients
Directions
Place einkorn starter, water, flour, honey, sea salt and olive oil in a large bowl.
*Einkorn starter does not have to be fed first. It can be taken right from the refrigerator.
With your hand or a wooden spoon mix all together till it becomes a shaggy type dough.
The dough will still be sticky but do not add more flour. Form into a ball, cover and let rest on a counter for an hour.
After an hour place a little olive oil on hands and remove dough from the bowl. Stretch the dough and fold over a couple of times. Then form the dough into a tight ball. This is done by picking up the dough and tucking the dough into itself, stretching the dough to form a tight ball.
Grease a plastic resealable bag with a little olive oil and place the ball of dough inside the bag. Place in the refrigerator overnight.
Take the dough out of the refrigerator and cut in half to make two balls. Each ball of dough will be enough to make a 10 to 12 inch size pizza.
Shape each half of dough into tight balls. As explained above, take the dough and fold it into itself by stretching the dough and pulling the dough into itself. You can also place the dough on the counter and lightly pull the dough to you while shaping the dough into a ball.
The dough will not be sticky and no extra flour is needed to roll the balls of dough.
Place both dough balls into a lightly oiled container with a lid. Let rest on a counter for 6 hours to proof. The dough will spread into a nice disc shape. At this point the pizza dough is ready to use.
To make easy delicious pizza I would suggest investing in these items:
parchment paper
pizza peel
pizza stone or cast iron pan
water spray bottle with filtered water inside
Take some einkorn flour and sprinkle on the counter. Pat out the dough to make a round 10 to 12 inch circle.
Take a pizza peel and place a piece of parchment paper on the peel and transfer the round pizza dough circle on the peel. Stretching out any dough that became uneven in the process.
Build up the rim of the crust by dimpling the dough with your fingers up to a half inch of the outer circle
Here's the fun part! Add you toppings!
For this particular pizza I drizzled olive oil first, added slivers of garlic, fresh arugula, raw grass-fed cheddar cheese, sheep & goats milk grass fed feta cheese and red pepper flakes.
Turn the oven from high to broil after a couple of minutes, slide the parchment paper with the pizza on it onto the hot pizza stone.
Take a spray bottle and carefully spritz around the outer crust. This practice helps to maintain some of the moisture in the crust.
Bake with the broiler on for about a minute. Then turn the heat back to the highest temperature to bake another minute then rotate the pizza using the pizza peel to even out the baking.
Bake until you're happy with the color and doneness of the pizza. For me it was another minute. So in total my baking time was about 4 minutes.
With the pizza peel, slide the pizza out of the oven and place it on a cutting board. Without burning yourself, you can also pull the corner of the parchment paper to help remove the pizza out of the oven.
4 Comments
Avonlea
I was searching for a 100% whole grain sourdough pizza recipe and came across yours. It turned out so well!! Thank you for working on perfecting it and sharing your recipe. Much appreciated. This is now my go-to recipe!
Michael S Kaplan
Hello Desiree, Thank you for your very nice Einkorn Pizza recipe. I purchased 48 pounds of Einkorn berries and will try your pizza recipe soon. Do you have a recommendation for a good sifter. I have 40 and 50 screen sifter, but it is a lot of time , mess and work. I am looking for a better one. Try Sam’s club parchment paper. I found it to be the best. Have you tried using Durum flour in your pizza? I think Durum is very close to Einkorn.? In your Einkorn starter, do you use whole grain or All Purpose einkorn flour or a mix.? Thank you, Think about getting a Grain Mill , so your flour will be fresher and better for you. Best to you, Mike
Barbara
Will lthe recipe work with 100% whole grain einkorn flour? And if it will, how much would I use to replace the spelt in the recipe? Thank you.
Barbara
You said you used to make it with just einkorn flour. How much more would I add in instead of using the sprouted spelt flour? Thank you. I can’t wait to try your recipe!