Sourdough Pizza Dough: Wed, Jun 25, 2025

Recipe

Date/Time	Task	Notes
June 24 9:00pm	Mixed Levain	Used 200g flour / water & 50g starter
June 25 7:30am	Started mixing dough	Levain was very strong when mixed in. I didn’t autolyse, though I probably could have
June 25 8:00am	Bulk ferment start	Seemed to rise slower than expected
June 25 3:30pm	Bulk ferment end, shaped balls	Was able to get ~6 300g boules
June 25 4:00pm	Stored in fridge to start proving	Planning on storing till Friday @ 3pm
June 27 4:00pm	Done proving, removed from fridge	Dough balls expanded really well in the cookie sheet with a plastic lid
June 27 4:45pm	Start Ooni to preheat	I gave the Ooni 30-40mins to heat up, felt like it could have used longer.
June 27 5:00pm	At room temp, start assembling pizzas	The texture of the dough was a lot easier to work with.
June 27 5:30pm	Start baking

See the table above for additional notes about each step.

The dough ended up not having nearly enough gluten development, resulting in a pretty floppy bake. I attribute this to two things largely:
- I didn’t use very much bread flour. After later research, it appears that using bread flour for pizza dough (especially long-fermenting sourdough pizza dough is encouraged)
- Compared to other times when I’ve baked different pizza dough recipes, I didn’t mix or knead this dough nearly as much
  - In other recipes I’ve used a stand mixer + kneading, but this recipe I chose to go with some initial hand mixing and then stretch + folds.
On the other hand, the overall texture working with the dough to stretch it out was a LOT better
- The gluten wasn’t super tight, it had relaxed enough resulting in larger pizzas, which is what I wanted
Primary takeaways for experimenting with this recipe again next time:
- Use 100% bread flour
- Mix / knead more thoroughly