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This sourdough discard pizza dough is so easy that you can make with your eyes closed! It gives you a deliciously crispy crust and chewy interior and can be make with your favorite pizza toppings. I’ve also included options to make it fit your schedule, no matter how much time you have!
Table of Contents
- Why You’ll Love This Recipe!
- Ingredients
- Using Sourdough Discard In Pizza Dough
- Real Life Examples
- How To Make Sourdough Discard Pizza Dough
- Kneading Tips
- Go Easy On The Toppings
- How To Serve Sourdough Discard Pizza
- Baker’s Timeline for Sourdough Pizza
- Tips for Cooking Sourdough Discard Pizza
- Let’s Freeze Sourdough Discard Pizza Dough
- Frequently Asked Questions
- Sourdough Discard Pizza Dough Recipe
Why You’ll Love This Recipe!
Quick and Easy – This recipe is described as quick because you literally have to throw the ingredients into the bowl of a stand mixer and let it knead the dough. There’s very minimal hands on time. Of course you will need to shape the sourdough discard pizza dough, however this dough is such a pleasure to work with, you’re going to enjoy every minute!
Your Favorite Crust – I’ve been making this recipe for years and have tailored it to suit many pizza preferences, from thin and crispy to a thick-crust pizza that’s out of this world!
Freezes Well – No matter how you choose to make this sourdough discard pizza dough recipe, it’s so easy to freeze! You’ll never have to order pizza again!
We love this quick sourdough discard pizza served with this delicious sourdough garlic bread or as sourdough pizza bianca! And don’t forget to make this delicious homemade pizza sauce to take your sourdough pizza to the next level! Or for something different, try this white pizza sauce made with sourdough starter.
Ingredients
- Sourdough Discard – I’ve made this recipe with sourdough discard, however you can use an active starter if you prefer. If you’re wanting a quick sourdough discard pizza, you can add commercial yeast.
- Instant Yeast – This is completely optional. You can just use discard, if you have a mature starter. If you don’t have a lot of time, you can of course make it super fast by adding a little commercial yeast, but it’s definitely not essential.
- Water – This recipe is not super high hydration, however, if you aren’t used to working with pizza dough, I would recommend holding back just a little of the water. It’s better to have to add than trying to fix wet dough.
- Honey – I’ve always used honey in my sourdough discard pizza dough recipe. It adds flavor and color to the crust and it speeds up the doubling of the dough for a quicker dough rise. If you don’t want to use honey, you can substitute with a little sugar or leave it out entirely. Adding diastatic malt powder to your dough can also enhance the flavor and color of the pizza crust.
- Olive Oil
- Bread Flour
- Salt
- Semolina Flour – I highly recommend using semolina flour when you are shaping sourdough discard pizza bases.I use semolina on all of my pizza peels to ensure that the pizza bases are easy to slide into the pizza oven. You can read more about the best flour for sourdough pizza dough.
Using Sourdough Discard In Pizza Dough
This recipe has been made using sourdough discard but I do want to explain why and how you should use discard in this recipe so you have the most success possible! Basically, the success of this discard pizza dough will depend on the age and strength of your sourdough starter, so here’s a quick chart so you know what to use and when.
| Sourdough Starter Age | How To Use It In Pizza Dough |
|---|---|
| Sourdough Discard [no yeast] | If your sourdough starter is mature and doubling regularly, you can use your unfed discard with no yeast. It will just take a bit longer to double than if it was active. |
| Sourdough Discard + 4g yeast | If your sourdough starter is only young and not doubling consistently, add 4g of yeast to help it along. If you want super fast pizza dough, add 7g of yeast. |
| Active Fed Sourdough Starter | If you have a mature sourdough starter, this recipe works perfectly with an active, bubbly starter. It will take less time to double than discard will. |
Real Life Examples
Here are a few real life examples of how you could use your discard in this sourdough discard pizza dough:
- Your starter is mature and has been around for a few years. Use 200 grams of fed, active starter to make this delicious sourdough pizza dough.
- Your starter is two weeks old. You have 200 grams of discard in a jar in the fridge from the last week of feeding your sourdough starter. You use 200 grams of sourdough discard from the fridge with an additional 4 g of instant yeast in your dough.
- Your starter is 6 months old. You haven’t fed the starter in the fridge for a week but you want to make pizza. Take 200 g of starter from your jar and use that for your bake (no yeast needed). Then feed your sourdough starter before you put it back into the fridge.
How To Make Sourdough Discard Pizza Dough
This sourdough discard pizza dough is described as quick because it is really easy to pull together – you can literally throw it in a bowl and you’re half way there. You can of course make it super fast by adding a little commercial yeast, but it’s definitely not essential.
Here’s how to make sourdough discard pizza dough:
Measure out the sourdough starter, water and honey (and yeast if you want to add it). Stir together until the sourdough starter and honey are dissolved into the water.
Now, add the oil, flour and salt into the bowl and gently stir together with a dough whisk or knife. Cover with plastic wrap and allow the dough to sit for around 30 minutes.
Now, tip the dough out onto the counter and knead it really well using your hands. This is a lovely dough to work with and with the right kneading, it will become soft and silky.
Kate’s Pro Tips
Kneading Tips
This dough can kneaded by hand or using a stand mixer or spiral mixer.
Kneading by hand – Knead for around 10 minutes, or until the dough becomes soft and supple. It will be quite elastic and stretchy. You shouldn’t need any flour on your counter top, however, you can add a little if the dough just isn’t coming together. A metal dough scraper can be handy in this situation as well.
Stand or Spiral Mixer – I prefer to knead this dough using a machine. If I’m doing a single batch, my Thermomix or KitchenAid handle the dough well. For double or even triple batches, I alway use my Ooni Halo Spiral Pro Mixer at speed 30 for around 5 minutes.
Once the dough is silky and elastic, pop it into a warm bowl (I warm a bowl with water and then dry it – this speeds up the rising). Cover with a plastic cover and leave to rise until it has doubled.
Once the dough has doubled, separate the dough into smaller balls so they are ready to be rolled out. I use 200 -260 g per pizza (this fits my pizza oven perfectly) but anywhere from 200 g to 300 g is good for a pizza. Leave the balls on your counter top, covered with a tea towel, for around 30 minutes to allow the gluten to relax.
Once you’re ready to make your bases, use your fingers to press your dough into a pizza round. If you need to stretch the dough, pick it up and move your hands around the edges, allowing the dough’s own weight to stretch it out into a round. Avoid using a rolling pin if you can to maintain your dough’s character and give it good structure when baked.
Place your pizza dough onto pizza peels ready to top with your favorite sourdough pizza toppings.
Kate’s Pro Tip
Go Easy On The Toppings
To ensure the base cooks evenly and all the way through, don’t pile on the toppings. Use half as much sauce as you think you need and try to use a low moisture mozzarella cheese. If you place toppings sparingly, it avoids the dough underneath the cheese from boiling and being dough and soft when you take it out of the oven. No one wants a floppy pizza, right?
When you are ready to bake, pre heat your oven to 230ºC/450ºF and make sure it’s HOT!! Place your pizzas into the hot oven for around 15 minutes or until toppings are cooked and bases are crispy on the bottom. These bases are especially good baked in a wood fired pizza oven.
How To Serve Sourdough Discard Pizza
I love serving these sourdough discard pizzas alongside these sourdough discard garlic knots and a dish of homemade pizza sauce to dip them all into! It also goes really well alongside some sourdough pasta and sourdough garlic bread!
My sons’ favorite way of eating these pizza crusts is with a dish of bread dipping oil alongside them. They use this to dip their pizza crusts in at the end of the meal. In Italian, this is called “cornicione”. My boys call this “pizza bones”.
Baker’s Timeline for Sourdough Pizza
One of the questions I get asked the most is around creating sourdough timelines. Here’s the timeline I use when making this sourdough discard pizza dough with no commercial yeast – sourdough discard only. If you are going to add instant yeast, the timeline will be much shorter because the dough will double quickly.
| TIME | PROCESS |
|---|---|
| 7 am | Mix pizza dough with sourdough discard. |
| 8 am | Place kneaded dough into a warm bowl, cover with plastic cover. Pop the bowl into the microwave with the door ajar. |
| 5 pm | Turn the risen pizza dough out onto the counter and divide into balls. Allow them to rest for 30 minutes. |
| 5:30 pm | Shape pizza bases and place onto the pizza peels. Allow to rest while pizza oven heats up. |
| 6 pm | Top pizzas and take to pizza oven to bake. |
Tips for Cooking Sourdough Discard Pizza
I have cooked a lot of sourdough discard pizza crusts. We have pizza every single Friday night (and sometimes we have it during the week and on a Saturday too!). And that adds up to a LOT of sourdough pizza! Here’s what I’ve found helps to get the best results from each style of cooking.
Gas Pizza Oven – Our gas pizza oven is small and easy to fire up. The stone inside does take quite a while to heat up, but it’s definitely worth waiting until it’s fully heated through so that it cooks the base from underneath, not just the toppings. For the best results, I find you need to wait around 10 minutes between each pizza to ensure the oven comes back up to temperature. You also need to turn the pizza constantly to stop it burning on one side.
Electric Pizza Oven – I’ve also just started using the Ooni Volt 2 Electric Pizza Oven and I’m so excited by how well these sourdough discard pizza bases cook in there! I use this oven at 430ºC (800ºF) for 2 to 3 minutes. You do need to try not to use as much semolina when using this oven as it tends to create a lot of smoke.
Home Oven – The best way to cook these pizzas in a home oven is to use a pizza stone. Just like the gas pizza oven, the trick is to make sure the pizza stone is super hot before you put the pizza in. You want the crust to cook almost instantly on the searing hot stone! I set our home oven to 230ºC/450ºF and this gives us a fairly good result, although definitely not as good as our wood fired pizza oven! You can also use a perforated pizza tray in your home oven to make these pizzas and this gives a fairly good result, although definitely not as good as the stone.
Wood Fired Pizza Oven – This is my favorite way to cook sourdough discard pizza bases, although it is only something we do if we have a quiet weekend because it is a lot of work to light the oven and get it to the right temperature.
Let’s Freeze Sourdough Discard Pizza Dough
Yes! Sourdough pizza dough is so simple to freeze and it can free up so much time! I’ve got two options for freezing your pizza dough, depending on what you’d prefer:
Freeze Sourdough Pizza Dough Balls
If you want to have some pizza dough in the freezer at all time, you can divide the pizza dough into balls after it’s doubled. Place each ball into a zip loc bag and then place into the freezer.
When you want to make a pizza, a bag of dough out of the freezer and allow it to defrost at room temperature. Once the dough is at room temp, shape it into a pizza base as you normally would.
Freeze Sourdough Pizza Bases
For an even faster frozen sourdough pizza, shape your dough into pizza bases. Place each pizza base onto a piece of parchment paper and then onto a pizza peel. Snap freeze the base by allow the base to freeze uncovered in the freezer for around an hour. Once all the bases are frozen, stack them (ensuring you leave the parchment paper between them) and then wrap the stack in aluminium foil or place into a large zip loc bag.
When you want to use one, take out a base and top it with whatever you like – you don’t even have to let it defrost, it will defrost as you add the topping! You’ll never have to order pizza in again!
You can also check out my ultimate guide to freezing sourdough pizza dough which details my method for par-baking bases for freezing too!
Frequently Asked Questions
No, you do not have to use honey in this recipe but it definitely adds flavor and color to the crust and it speeds up the doubling of the dough for a quicker pizza. If you don’t want to use honey, you can substitute with a little sugar or leave it out entirely.
Sourdough pizza crust can become tough if you use too much flour. The dough should be silky and elastic (no wet and sticky) but never be tempted to add extra flour as you will risk a tough crust. Knead the dough until the gluten develops and stops it from being wet and sticky.
Absolutely! You can use sourdough starter fed or unfed. The wild yeast contained in sourdough starter is perfect for a pizza crust. It will give you an amazing bubbly pizza dough perfect for oven or wood fire baking.
As with most things, you don’t have to use a pizza peel, however it does make it much easier to transfer the pizza from the counter to the oven and out again. I have two types of pizza peels I use. The wooden peels are great when coated in semolina. They let you lay out your pizza dough and add the toppings. They’re also wonderful for serving your pizzas. Metal pizza peels are great for transferring pizza into hot ovens and out again.
I often have portions of sourdough discard pizza dough leftover, so I’ve created a few recipes to make sure we don’t have any food waste! You can use leftover dough in Easy Sourdough Pizza Rolls, Fried Sourdough Pizza Dough, Sourdough Pizza Pockets and Sourdough Zucchini Pizza.
The great thing about sourdough discard pizza dough is that it’s really forgiving. If you want to make sourdough pizza dough in advance and store it in the fridge until you’re ready to shape, place the dough in the fridge once its doubled. It will last for up to 24 hours like this. If you’ve used commercial yeast with your discard, you can leave it in the fridge for up to 3 days after doubling.
Sourdough Discard Pizza Dough
Equipment
- Digital Scales
- Mixing Bowl
- Pizza Trays
Ingredients
- 200 g Sourdough Discard
- 7 g Instant Yeast, optional
- 280 g Water
- 20 g Honey
- 30 g Olive Oil
- 500 g Bread Flour
- 20 g Salt
Instructions
- Measure out the sourdough discard, water and honey (and yeast if you want to add it). Stir together until the sourdough starter and honey are dissolved into the water.
- Now, add the oil, flour and salt into the bowl and gently stir together with a dough whisk or knife. Cover with plastic wrap and allow the dough to sit for around 30 minutes.
- Now, tip the dough out onto the counter and knead it really well using your hands. This is a lovely dough to work with and with the right kneading, it will become soft and silky. I find it takes around 10 minutes to come together when kneading by hand.
- Once the dough is silky and elastic, pop it into a warm bowl (I warm a bowl with water and then dry it – this speeds up the rising).Cover with cling wrap or a damp dish towel and leave to rise until it has doubled.
- Once the dough has doubled, separate the dough into smaller balls so they are ready to be rolled out. I use 200 – 260 g per pizza (this fits my pizza oven perfectly) but anywhere from 200 g to 300 g is good for a pizza.Leave the balls on your counter top, covered with a tea towel, for around 30 minutes to allow the gluten to relax.
- Once you're ready to make your bases, use your fingers to press your dough into a pizza round. If you need to stretch the dough, pick it up and move your hands around the edges, allowing the dough's own weight to stretch it out into a round. Avoid using a rolling pin if you can to maintain your dough's sourdough character and give it good structure when baked.
- Place your pizza dough onto pizza peels ready to top with your favorite toppings (see my notes in the article above for my best tips on using pizza peels).When you are ready to bake, pre heat your oven to 230ºC/450ºF and make sure it's HOT!! Place your pizzas into the hot oven for around 15 minutes or until toppings are cooked and bases are crispy on the bottom.
Notes
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
Like this? Rate and comment below!
Hi! Can I bake these and then freeze baked so I can pop them in the oven at a later date to bake? Or bake later in the day?
I just needed the dough after letting it sit for half an hour. It is soft and sticky rather than soft and “silky”. What did I do wrong?
I don’t want to rate this because I’m sure I did something wrong!! My dough was VERY sticky.
I followed the directions—and added yeast. It rose/doubled in size beautifully—but when baked—it turned out flat and hard crusted (but not burned). It was more of a flatbread than a beautiful pizza dough as so many others have made!!
Any ideas/suggestions as to what I did wrong?
I’ve made this a few times and love it, I’ve been using KA Bread flour and each time I’ve made it when shaping the dough to make the pizzas it tends to retract a bit, is this due to using bread flour , could I use AP and get a similar result ?
WOWWWW- so I’m new to the sourdough world but I’ve been trying new things and I was nervous for this but I used discard & this pizza was THE BEST pizza I’ve ever had! That says a lot because I bartend at a pizza restaurant. I am OBSESSED! I ate the crust and everything! I even saved two dough balls for lunch the next day! I’ll be making this weekly! Thank you!
I love this dough—makes a great crust just how I like it? I I bake iit on my pizza steel after preheating steel in oven at 550 F for an hour. Then I turned on the fan. It was perfect in 6 minutes. I love having dough balls in the freezer. Took one out last night and let thaw in fridge. Then took it out of fridge 2 hours before ready to bake. Don’t laugh, but because I’m one person, I portion out all my toppings, including homemade sauce, and freeze little topping kits. I set those out to thaw when I take the dough out of fridge. By doing this, I can have almost instant pizza anytime I want!
Can you give me the ingredients in measures of cups and spoons please? I struggled with the grams.
Hi!! My dough is sticky, is it because I did in knead it well or I overproof???
I have made this recipe a few times now but it’s only ever enough for 2 large thin pizzas. Am I doing something wrong?
Hello! Can I use all purpose flour instead of bread flour?
the pizza goes in middle of the oven? or closer to the bottom? Thanks!
This was so deliciously yummy!
Will make this again and again!
Can you use AP unbleached organic flour instead of bread flour.
I made this in my stand mixer and had it kneading for at least 10 minutes. I added 2 1/2 TBSP of extra flour bc my dough was still super sticky. I finally just called it and stopped kneading and am letting it rest. Is this supposed to be a sticky dough? Super excited to bake it since everyone seems to love this recipe! Thx!
My dough is SUPER sticky – what have I done wrong?
Does anyone have any idea how long you would cook these on a grill and if that works ok on a pizza stone?
How long are the dough balls good for in the freezer?
I wouldn’t leave longer than 2 to 3 months 🙂
I’ve made this before, but this time the dough was a lot more sticky than last time. I will be freezing them in separate balls. Hopefully it will still turn out great.
If I only have active starter, do I use the same about you indicate for discard in the recipe?
Yes it’s just a straight swap 🙂
Can I use only sourdough starter? I don’t have discard.
Absolutely you can 🙂
I made this dough this morning with discard from a young starter, and I must have added way too much commercial yeast because my dough doubled in about an hour. I weighed it, but it must have been an inaccurate measurement because it was probably a tablespoon or two. Do I need to throw away the dough? How long might it take to make this dough with the 7g of commercial yeast added?
Why does this recipe call for so much salt
Salt gives the dough flavor and helps to strengthen the gluten network. You can reduce it if you prefer.
This recipe is absolutely amazing!! How would you recommend doing a long ferment? I’m always looking for discard recipes which tend to be quick but am cutting down the gluten as much as possible and not all translate well to extra delayed baking. Skip the yeast altogether and let it double in the fridge? I’d also like to make some ahead to freeze so I could keep it thawing longer but I feel like it wouldn’t make a difference at that point. I use so many of your recipes and can’t begin to show my appreciation of your knowledge! ☺️ Thanks!!
Hi Emily – you might find this post on how to freeze sourdough pizza dough helpful. In terms of a longer ferment, you could use discard, skip the yeast and just let it ferment until the dough is doubled. This would give you a long ferment, but also cut down on as much gluten as possible. All the best x
Can you make this recipe with whole grain flour or part whole grain flour?
Yes either one would work, or you might like this post on how to make a whole wheat sourdough pizza dough 🙂
Used this recipe multiple times it’s AMAZING, but it seems that my frozen dough gets very tough ( I am using cling wrap and Tinfoil) Any idea how to remedy?
I just made this recipe and it’s the best homemade pizza crust I’ve ever made. I’m starting the sourdough journey and these instructions were easy to understand and follow. My dough took longer to come together, longer than 10 mins. If your dough still feels sticky after kneading for 10 mins, just keep going!
I’ve tried hand kneading and using my stand mixer and I can never get to a point where the dough isn’t sticky. I tried adding a bit more flour in the stand mixer, but that still didn’t work. Any thoughts/suggestions? Is the answer just knead longer? 😀
I use this recipe with active starter once a week for my large family. It’s so delicious. We love it! Grateful for all your active starter recipes.
I’ve tried this twice now. Once by kneading by hand and once in the stand mixer. Both times I ended up with super sticky dough.
There are many different reasons for sticky dough. This post on Why is my Sourdough Wet & Sticky goes through a bunch of troubleshooting that should help.
I have the same issue as Jennifer. In fact, this dough gets stickier as I knead it. None of the troubleshooting notes in your “sticky sourdough” article are relevant here. My starter is exceptionally strong, my kitchen is between 71 and 74 degrees during the day, I am not at high altitude and it is not over fermented because it hasn’t had any time to ferment. I had to add more flour just to make the dough able to be handled. We’ll see how the pizza comes out…
Same here, too wet and sticky to even knead it. I watched the video on how to make the dough and it looks much less sticky than what I made. So I added more flour when kneading. I don’t know how much it was, but about 3/4 – 1 cup I think.
The stickiness can come from the type of flour you use and the hydration of your sourdough starter. Next time you make the sourdough pizza dough, try adding extra flour when mixing, or less water and see if that helps. Kate makes this recipe at least once a week, sometimes twice as they adore sourdough pizza and it’s an easy family dinner and never have issues with this dough at all. It’s one of the most tried and tested recipes on the site 🙂
This has become my family’s go-to pizza dough recipe (gotta use that discard!) Every time I make it, I get great results. Tonight, we’ve just tried using dough that had been frozen and it still worked great. In future, I will definitely shape the dough prior to freezing so I can go from freezer to oven faster. I don’t have a pizza oven or even a stone but I’ve found that flipping one of my large, rimmed baking sheets upside down on the rack works great. I usually just leave my dough on a piece of parchment and use that with a pizza peel to get it in/out. I also give them a quick spin half way through since my oven seems to have a hot spot at the back – very easy when it’s sitting on a piece of parchment.
Can I refrigerate the dough after it has doubled? Going to make pizza pockets tomorrow!
Hi, I’ve kneaded the dough by hand for about 20 minutes but can’t get it to be silky, it’s still sticky. Can I still let it double and use it?
Yes you can still let it double and use it. Semolina is really helpful for shaping pizza dough that is a little sticky x