Easy Sourdough Pizza Recipe - An Italian in my Kitchen (2024)

FAQs

What makes Italian pizza dough different? ›

The original Italian pizza is usually thinner and made with mozzarella and tomatoes. People usually eat this dish for dinner. Italians take extra care and time to create their pizza dough. They allow the dough to sit and rise for three days to make it light and fluffy.

Simple Sourdough Pizza Crust: The details

You absolutely can use bread flour or tipo 00 flour (read more about tipo 00 flour here) if you can get your hands on either. If you have been having a hard time finding flour, Baker's Authority is a great option — great prices, too, even with shipping tacked on.

Although not all Neapolitan pizza is made from sourdough, there's no reason it can't be. In fact, sourdough starter is mentioned in the official Neapolitan pizza guide (AVPN) as one of the ways to prove pizza.

The main difference is that pizza dough is often made with a higher protein flour (bread flour is perfect). Bread dough can also be made with bread flour (of course) but some types of bread dough are better made with a lower protein flour like all purpose flour.

Authentic Italian pizzas are based with nonna's special fresh tomato sauce (which doesn't get cooked at all!). This rich sauce must be prepared with peeled Italian tomatoes, preferably with San Marzano peeled tomatoes, and then blanched with salt, fresh basil and extra virgin olive oil to get an original taste.

The combination of tomatoes, spices, and cheese on the dough gives it a unique flavour that sets it apart from other types of pizzas around the world. Italian Pizza can be eaten as an appetizer, main dish, and even dessert! And, has many variations to suit different tastes.

If you are using an active sourdough starter, then no, your sourdough pizza crust does not need yeast. There are many sourdough pizza crust recipes that use yeast to speed up the process and skip the long-fermentation, but my sourdough discard recipe is a true no-yeast sourdough pizza crust.

Is Sourdough Good for Pizza? Yes, sourdough (natural leavening) can be used to make pizza. I find sourdough pizza is more flavorful, easier to digest (thanks to the lengthy fermentation process), and has an improved, tenderer texture.

Born in Napoli, la pizza Napoletana is one of the most famous types of Italian pizza. Protected by a Traditional Specialty Guaranteed (TSG) certification, this style must be made in a very particular way. The dough is comprised of wheat flour, yeast, salt, and water and is left to rise for up to 24 hours.

Do Italians use yeast in their pizza? ›

Traditionally, pizza dough is made by allowing yeast to ferment the flour and water until air bubbles form in the dough. But scientists in Naples are developing a new approach – one that doesn't rely on yeast. Ernesto Di Maio is severely allergic to the yeast in leavened foods.

The Italian pizza crust is thin but perfectly balanced. It's not too crunchy and made with wheat flour and olive oil. Sometimes they may add herbs to the dough as well as the sauce. Many people don't know this, but there's a chance they may have never tried Italian pizza, even if they've eaten pizza a hundred times.

Most “00” flour that we see in the United States is ground from durum wheat and has a mid-range protein content of about 11 to 12%, similar to all-purpose white flour.

Higher protein content means higher gluten content, as we now know, so using bread flour in your pizza dough will result in a stretchy dough that's less likely to tear. You get a very chewier, more bread-like pizza crust when you make your dough with bread flour.

Pizza Napoletana

The dough is comprised of wheat flour, yeast, salt, and water and is left to rise for up to 24 hours. It's shaped by hand into a flat, round disk, about 3 millimeters thick.

Authentic Italian pizza dough is rolled out and placed on a flat stone for baking. Greek pizza is laid in a shallow dish. The difference? A Greek pizza will typically have a crust that is much thicker than an Italian pizza.