I apologize if this question has already been asked. To build the levain, do the 40g each flour and water come from the total flour and water amounts? Or are they separate?
Thanks!
They’re separate. The levain is additional flour and water.
Coincidentally, I just mixed up this dough. I did 400g bread flour and 200g white kamut. I threw in 1 tsp of diastatic malt powder for kicks, and I probably needed 2 more Tbsp of flour on my counter for kneading.
I’ve used this recipe many times and I don’t know why this time I couldn’t figure out if the levain was separate! Gotta take notes.
I’ve slowly been increasing the amount of whole grain and the latest was 75% home milled hard white, 25% bread flour. It’s not as bread-like as most people like, but we find it really good. It fermented in the fridge for three days before we got around to making it. I make a big batch with over 1000g flour and we make two big rectangular pizzas on full size cookie sheets that amazingly fit in our 30" oven. Half way through the bake, when it’s firm, the master pizza maker (not me) slides it out of the pan and onto the rack for a few more minutes to get the bottom nicely browned. Some is for dinner, and the rest is cut up and put in the freezer for lunches.
That is awesome – I need more attractive leftovers like that as lunch offerings in my house.
Here’s the pizza I mixed up Monday and baked Weds. I tried something a little new: put the pizza stone lower in the oven, and then after 7-8 minutes on bake, I moved just the pizza to a higher rack and hit broil for 2 minutes.
I usually do that timing and bake/broil combo, but the low stone position and moving the pizza up was new.
My topping was a fra diavolo-like spicy red sauce and pesto shrimp, no cheese, some additional olives, peppers, and onions. Didn’t look pretty but tasted great.
I looked back at my notes; it was 50:50 white kamut and bread flour (not 40:60 as I wrote earlier).
I am following the Breadtopia Sourdough Pizza recipe. My question is about forming 4-5 balls of dough, and then baking all 4-5 pizzas at once. I would prefer to make one pizza at a time. Could I freeze some of the balls? How long could the individual balls stay in the fridge if the bulk ferment had been several days?
We make big-ish batches of pizza dough and then freeze individual pizza portions in zip-lock bags. On future days when we want pizza we usually set a couple of the frozen bags out on the counter to defrost in the mid-morning for early evening pizzas. Works great.
I know what you mean about not needing 4 or 5 pizza dough balls at once. Great when all the kids are home but not so much when they are not.
I starting doing single size recipes using a modified Forkish technique. In essence, you mix the flour, salt, olive oil and water from whatever recipe you use (scaled to make a single 250g dough ball) by hand and give it time for a long autolyze. I will do some gentle folds and make sure to break up any dry flour. After the autolyze (maybe overnight), I do a lamination and spread on the sourdough starter. Fold a few times while it rises and ferment as per your usual recipe.
The key is the long autolyze/saltolyze and getting the recipe (especially the olive oil) scaled down correctly.
Followed the instructions as written and took no shortcuts this time (admit first time made it last year and used more of regular flour and didn’t give it a chance to double all the way). This time I used all the listed ingredients and allowed the dough to rise properly. This pizza was best I’ve made so far. The oven baking directions were spot on. It never occurred to me to broil before, but makes a difference. The tip about resting the dough at the tip of the peel is invaluable, never again will have mishaps of sliding it into the oven. My toppings were tomato passata, parmigiano, burrata cheese, mortadella and basil it was delicious and best of all I didn’t feel bloated afterwards.
After kneading together the ingredients I divided the dough in half and allowing the second half to ferment longer since I’ll be making it again in couple of days with leftover ingredients. Curious to see if there will a difference in taste with longer fermentation. Thank you again for sharing this recipe, your thorough instructions and helpful videos!
You’re welcome. Thanks for sharing your experience with the recipe. I’m so glad the tips helped. It’s hard to decide where to stop with the hopefully-helpful words vs my wish to keep things concise.
Your toppings sound amazing 
It’s valuable to read about tips and tricks people share about their recipes, it makes all the difference when cooking or baking.
The longer fermentation did not do much for the taste, but love that I can make it again and use up left over ingredients. However, this time I used Buffalo Mozarella and a bit more tomato sauce. In short, the Burrata cheese and keeping tomato sauce a bit light so it doesn’t make the baked pizza soggy was tastier. Thank you again I finally have a pizza recipe that is worthy of writing in my recipe book.
Hi Melissa,
At which stage in the fermentation and proofing process would you recommend freezing; bulk, shape, and freeze or bulk, shape, final proof, and freeze? Have you tried freezing this dough before? I’m wondering if you can see or taste a difference in the result?
Thank you!
Hello, thanks for this amazing post. I’m looking at the pizza stones you sell and would like to get the largest one I can to keep in one of my ovens for other sourdough breads as well.
Our oven dimensions are 19x25 and the largest stone is 18x24. The note you have says to allow at least an inch on the sides for air flow. Would
I be okay with the large or do you really think I should go with the medium size?
Thanks so much and I love all your pictures!
I’m glad you found this post helpful. You might look at your oven rack itself and measure how much flat surface you have.
Most oven shelves have a curved edge in the back, and you don’t want the stone to butt up against it and then on the other side to touch your oven door.
If you have plans for baguettes and ciabatta on the stone in addition to pizza, getting that inch on all sides is even more important to allow steam to come up from a pan of water that you set underneath.
I noticed when making this recipe that I got the best looking breads on the sides of my stone versus the center.