Sourdough Discard Pizza: How to Sourdough-ize a Recipe

Jump to Recipe

Updated 06/06/23

If you’ve hopped on the sourdough pandemic bandwagon, first of all, welcome. And whether you’ve baked the bread or quick pancakes or the world’s simplest chocolate cake, you likely now understand what all the fuss is about. But you still may wonder just what else you can bake with either your bubbly starter or the discard left over from feeding it (but probably both).

Fortunately you can substitute sourdough starter for a portion of the flour and water (or possibly juice or milk) called for in many non-sourdough recipes—quick breads, yeast breads, muffins, tortillas, focaccia, pizza and more.

A note of caution: You can’t sub in sourdough starter for EVERY recipe you come across. But for many, it works very well.

The types of recipes that work best for a starter swap

Because it contains water, sourdough starter works well as an addition to very wet recipes, like doughs and batters, although my daughter Charlotte did make sourdough cookies on the weekend with discard and reported back that they tasted delicious. (I’ve added those to my long to-blog list.)

Generally however, if a recipe doesn’t call for liquid—such as a classic chocolate chip cookie recipe—in order to compensate for the water present in the starter that you add, you’ll have to substantially tweak the original recipe.

As you tweak your recipes, keep in mind that if you remove some juice to compensate for the additional water of a starter, the result will taste less sweet. If you remove some milk, the finished product will have a drier consistency without the fat from the milk that’s no longer in it.

For this post, I’ve chosen a simple, foolproof recipe to adapt—pizza dough.

Do the math

Bob wants to add 1 cup of sourdough discard to his favorite pizza dough recipe for a bit of sourdough flavor. He uses a 100 percent hydration sourdough starter, meaning his starter contains equal parts flour and water—by weight.

Bob doesn’t own a scale. He wants to try cooking a few things with his new starter before even thinking about buying more stuff. Bob does, however, have this blog post and the following approximate conversions to which he can refer:

Sourdough starter substitute

250 grams (1 cup) stirred down sourdough starter

Replaces

Over time, starter does become runnier as the bacteria and yeast eat the sugars, break down the starter and excrete alcohol, but let’s just keep things simple for Bob. Reading about himself in this post he’s following for his dough has confused him enough as it is.

By the way, when a recipe calls for a certain volume (cups) of sourdough starter rather than weight (grams), stir the starter down to remove the air bubbles before measuring. The air bubbles can easily double the volume—at least. One cup of bubbly starter can deflate to less than ½ cup after stirring.

Now let’s see how Bob will add his 1 cup of discarded sourdough starter to his favorite pizza recipe.

Sourdough discard pizza

Below are the ingredients in Bob’s favorite pizza dough, based on this recipe.

• 2¾ to 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 teaspoons active dry yeast
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 1 cup warm water (105° to 115°F)
• 2 tablespoons olive oil plus more to grease the proofing bowl

Bob will adjust the above list of ingredients as follows: he’ll add 1 cup of discard and remove both a scant cup of flour and a generous ½ cup of water. His edited list of ingredients now looks like this, with the changes shown in bold:

• 1¾ to 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 teaspoons active dry yeast
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• scant ½ cup warm water (105° to 115°F)
• 2 tablespoons olive oil plus more to grease the proofing bowl
• 1 cup discarded sourdough starter, brought to room temperature

Commercial yeast versus wild yeast

I added sourdough discard to this dough for flavor, not for leavening, hence I kept the commercial baker’s yeast in the recipe. The sourdough starter you remove for feedings and store in the refrigerator does not contain enough yeast to leaven dough. But it tastes good and has fermented for a long time, making it more easily digestible.

I included a naturally leavened sourdough pizza recipe in my book, which will be published April 13th, 2021. (You can learn more about the book and preorder here.)

I prefer the very chewy naturally leavened dough. My daughter MK has a medical condition that makes chewing difficult so she prefers this less chewy sourdough discard version. We both love that this pizza dough uses up an entire cup of sourdough discard.

Pizza and french fries

MK made a batch of very runny hummus last week. She worried that she had wasted beans, expensive olive oil and other ingredients. To salvage it, we spread it on the pizza. The heat of the oven thickened up the hummus (as it will all sauces), creating the perfect consistency. If you want to try this, thin out your hummus with the water you cook the chickpeas in.

I thought potatoes would go well with the hummus (plus we had very few vegetable toppings and use whatever we have on hand during quarantine). I parboiled a peeled potato for about 10 minutes, sliced it thinly, spread the slices across the pizza, brushed them with olive oil and sprinkled them with salt. So I essentially topped this pizza with french fries. So good! We made this pizza a few times and now need more extra-runny hummus for more pizza.

Lately, I’ve been topping my pizza dough with cultured cashew cheese. You can find the recipe for that here.

---

Check out my award-winning cookbook!

• Taste Canada silver for single-subject cookbooks 
• Second-place Gourmand cookbook award in the category of food waste 
• Shortlisted for an award from the International Association of Culinary Professionals

Learn more about my book here.