When I still studied in Paris, at Le Cordon Bleu we did pizza and to our surprise, our French Chef’s pizza doesn’t look like the ones we used to have at any pizza outlets in town, it looks like a cake with anchovies but the taste is awesome! So since then I don’t mind how does it look pizza if it tastes good!
Back home from time to time I also do pizza based on our school’s recipe, firstly I tried to keep the traditional round shape but then I realized many stores in Italy prepare huge rectangular-shaped pizza, so I prefer the rectangular shape, much bigger size and it’s good when you have friends gathering, like last Sunday at my place!
Due to the pandemic, many imported stuffs are no longer available in the market, one of my favorite items is dry yeast Allison, so for over the past few weeks I tried to bake bread, brioche and pizza with sourdough starter. I’m so happy because maybe I don’t need Allison anymore and it’s easy to prepare! Especially I can keep any dough in the fridge for few days, even a week!
Ok, today let’s make a sourdough pizza for friends!
Step 1 Preparation for babka starter
- Mature sourdough starter 70 gr.
- Bread flour 70 gr.
- Water 70 ml.
Mix all together in a bowl, cover it with cling film and leave it at the room temperature (over 25º C up to 30º C) for at least 12 hours. Even after 12 hours, I can keep it in the fridge for another hours or even for next day!
Step 2 Preparation for pizza dough
- Bread flour 450 gr.
- Semolina 100 gr.
- Salt 10 gr.
- Herbs (Parsley & Basil) 2 gr. each (optional)
- Sourdough starter 210 gr.
- Water 325 ml.
- Olive oil 50 ml.
Make the dough by mixing the flour with the salt, and semolina in a clean bowl, pour the water into the flour along with the olive oil and sourdough starter. Combine all the ingredients to form a rough dough. This dough requires just few minutes of kneading.
After 30 minutes in the kitchen and after one fold, I place the dough into a plastic box, cover it and keep in the fridge for slow fermentation until next day or even longer. Next day I take out the dough, knock it back and cover the dough with a some clean towel, allow to prove for about 30 minutes if the kitchen is warm.
I use the fingertips to flatten out the dough, gently moving the dough from one hand to another, stretch and shape the dough, I also use a rolling pin to flatten it out with dust flour (mixing with some semolina). I don’t have pizza stone so I quickly transfer pizza base onto a baking tray and cover the surface, after making holes with a fork, with tomato sauce and top the pizza base with any my favorite toppings. And let it rest for 15-20 minutes before baking.
Preheat the oven to 250ºC , as I use the baking tray to bake my pizza, so after 30-40 minutes, I need to adjust the heat more from the below to make the pizza more crunchy!
While friends enjoy the first pizza and I quickly bake the second one with different toppings and cheese!
Before the pandemic, actually I had a plan to travel to Napoli for a very short course of making pizza with Italian chefs, but it didn’t happen. I’m sorry for this but feel happy as I would have a problem there in Mar. Forget about our hard time and please enjoy the super crunchy sourdough pizza with us!
Le petit renard 
Yes, I remember making the ‘Pisadaliere’ at LCB Paris.I remember the anchovies and I didn’t make enough of the topping, so my pizza looked a bit bare! It’s hard to find yeast now at the supermarkets- I ordered some ‘Platinum’ yeast from Amazon recently.
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Hi, I and some other classmates have exactly the same problem as we never tried pizza with anchovies before, it’s quite expensive! But after tasting our chef’s pizza, we regretted that… I stick to Allison for so long so hard to switch to another brand, but will see! Thank you for visiting my blog!
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