Yes, that's a pizza with onions on it. No, it's not an onion pizza.
The Alpine Pizza has a white base made of grated gruyere mixed into crème fraîche, and is topped with salami and shredded red onion.
It is divinely indulgent. Pair with a bottle of strong red.
Sourdough Pizza Dough
Why use sourdough for pizza?
Because the flavour is awesome, and the texture is the fantastic.
Get it right and it bubbles up amazingly in a pizza oven.
Quantities must be exact!
This recipe makes 4 pizzas.
Unlike the bread recipes which you can't really screw up, when it comes to pizza dough:
→ hydration is critical.
Get the ingredients right to the gram, and make sure your pizza oven is at optimum temperature before you launch any pizzas into it.
- 120g starter
- 319g water
- 542g 00 grade flour
- 18g salt
Click to expand for pizza recipe:
Sourdough Pizza Dough
| Ingredients | Metric | Imperial | Cups / Spoons |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sourdough starter | 120 g | 4.23 oz | 0.50 cup (½ cup) |
| Water | 319 ml | 10.79 fl oz | 1.35 cups (≈ 1⅓ cups) |
| 00 grade flour | 542 g | 19.12 oz | 4.52 cups (≈ 4½ cups) |
| Salt | 18 g | 0.63 oz | 3 tsp (1 Tbsp) |
- Mix the ingredients - use your hand, a breadmaker, a mixer, whatever.
- Stretch and fold - just like our No-BS Bread. 1-2 times over the next 30-45 mins.
- Leave it covered at room temp. for 60-90 mins.
- Divide into balls - cut it in 4 equal pieces.
- Put them in some greased containers. They'll spread and smoosh together, but it's fine.
- Cover, and fridge for three days.
- Remove from fridge 2-3 hours before baking, remove then rest lids on top, allow to slowly warm to room temp.
- Using lots of flour, remove them from the containers and let them rest on a counter under a towel. Couple of hours is fine.
- Time to make your base - the dough will be very light and fluffy. Don't roll it, you'll squash out the bubbles and it'll go dense. Instead, flour your work surface, gently flatten your dough ball, and using your fingers, work the dough down from the centre outwards, trying to make it into a fairly evenly shaped and thickness, pizza-shaped circle. Try really hard not to crush out all of the air. If you're super-fancy, throw it in the air and whirl it to shape the pizza base.
- Now build the pizza. If you're looking at sourdough for home made pizza, I'm going to assume you know what you're doing here. If you dont: get a really nice jar or tin of pizza-base tomato sauce, some good quality shredded mozarella, some fresh basil, and keep it simple. Build it on a wooden launching peel. Flour it first so the dough doesn't stick.
- Cook the pizza. If you have a pizza oven, you probably have your own system, so do your thing. I use a wood-fired Ooni Karu, it's great.
→ If you don’t have a pizza oven and want to do this in a conventional home oven, that’s fine, but you’ll need to work out what's good for your equipment, which may take a bit of trial and error.
General pointers:- The oven needs to be hot, so be prepared to crank it up (250°C/fan 230°C would work on mine), and let it pre-heat for half an hour.
- If you have a pizza stone or steel, leave it in during the pre-heat.
- If you haven't got a wooden launching peel, build your pizzas on a floured tray, then slide them from that tray onto the pre-heated stone/steel/tray inside the oven.
- You're gonna burn yourself if you try using spatulas to get it back out, so get yourself a pizza peel.
- Eat the pizza. Sharing is optional.