Sourdough pizza/bread

[armac]

Universal Sourdough bread/pizza dough

This is a simple, full flavored, high hydration dough, that works well for both pizza and bread. It gives good oven spring and a nice crust, and has great texture with a good hole structure. It initially seems stupid wet but after some fermentation handles beautifully on a well-floured board. The timing works out well for Saturday evening pizza and Sunday morning bread.

Begin with 250 g sourdough starter. Refresh with 125 g water and 125 g flour, let ferment at warm kitchen temperature (70 to 85 f) for about 4 hours until nice and bubbly.

Add 200 g whole wheat flour, 700 g white flour, 500 g water and mix until combined. Let rest (autolyze) for 20 to 30 minutes. Mix on slow (I use a KA mixer) adding 23 g salt. Increase speed and continue to mix (knead?) for about 5 minutes. Pour/scrape into a bowl with about ¼ cup evoo and roll the floppy ball to completely cover with oil. Cover and let ferment, again in a warm spot for about 2 hours.

Turn dough out on well floured board and cut off desired chunks for pizza, 200 g to 300g each. Roll into balls and cover with a cloth. Form remaining dough into loaf (or loaves), and put into form lined with a very well floured cloth, and cover with same very well floured cloth. Refrigerate for 12 to 24 hours.

I’m using a FB pizza stone, which I preheat for at least an hour. For the pizza, form the round with traditional technique-no rolling pin, place on well-floured peel, dress, and slide onto the hot stone. It takes about 5 minutes in my oven . For bread, remove from refrigerator about an hour before baking, transfer from form to well cornmeal covered peel, slash, and slide onto the hot stone. Reduce oven to 425 f, give it a few spritzes of water at 2 minute intervals (maybe 3 times in all), bake for about 35 minutes and cool on a rack.

This dough works really well on a pizza stone in a regular oven, at this point I can only imagine (dream), sliding it into a hot brick oven. Enjoy.

Rob

[CanuckJim]

Rob,

I bake a lot of wild yeast breads, so I always have an active starter at hand. I'll definitely give your recipe a try for pizza. Thanks for the precise measurements.

Jim