The best round pizza I’ve ever made. Sourdough. Perhaps the best tasting one I’ve eaten from anywhere, and I’ve had a few from all over during my decades of existence.
It’s 15 inches of sourdough pizza and delivers a mouth flavor bomb. I’ve been to NYC many times, but have never had Di Fara’s, though I’ve seen many pictures of it. This one seems to be “Di Fara-esq” in appearance, but I don’t know about the taste or texture since I’ve never had it.
After 40+ years since my last sourdough bake, I decided to make a new starter the first week of September, mainly to see how it works out for pizza, but to also make breads. The breads have been a big hit with friends. This pie is the first I’ve made using sourdough, and it won’t be the last.
I wanted to make a 14 inch pizza, so calculated for a 328 gram dough ball with a .075 TF. Yes, thin, and definitely not an American style pizza. Since my stone is 16x14 inches, I was going to use my 16 inch screen to start it off on the stone, then slide it off the screen after the pie had a bit of structure. That takes about 2 minutes. The Lloyd screen makes it easy to “shake and break” the pie free of the screen, then slide onto the stone.
Of course, since I was using the screen to handle the precision needed to put a 14 inch pizza on a 14 inch stone, I knew I was going to see how far I could stretch this, and it ended up at 15 inches for the 328 gram ball. That lands the TF just above .065. Yes, it was mighty thin, scary thin for me.
I’m sure that it could have been stretched to the full 16 inches by more experienced pizzaioli, of which I’m not. I was amazed that I could get it this far without tearing. The gluten structure was definitely working overtime to keep this one together. Once the dough sets enough to slide off the screen directly to the stone, a little hang off the stone edge doesn’t seem to affect the bake much. This is how I normally bake 16 inch pies on a 14 inch stone.
The dough handled very well. As you can see in the photo of the unbaked pie, it was extremely thin near the center, especially in the 10 to 11 o’clock area, and the “window pane” showing the screen underneath is obvious. The dough held up under fire during the entire process. One day, after a few hundred more pies, I’ll figure out how to keep the center from getting too thin. Everything in its due time and place.
The flavor that sourdough brings to the dough party is simply in a league of its own. I’ll list the dough recipe below. No magic, it’s the straightforward basic Lehmann dough recipe at 58% hydration, with two modifications since I’m dealing with sourdough.
First, my sourdough culture is 100% hydration. Equal parts flour and water by weight. My starter always brings equal amounts of extra water and flour to the party, so that has to be factored in. In this recipe, I dropped the hydration to 54%, since the sourdough starter at 20% was going to be bringing about 4% hydration along with it. This gave the dough a 58% effective hydration.
Second, I increased the salt from the 1.75% standard in the Lehmann recipe, to 2%, since the starter has no salt, just flour and water. I wanted to ensure that the dough was not under salted. It not a critical thing at this level, but I’d rather have a bit too much salt than not enough. I preheated my oven, with the stone on the bottom rack for one hour before the bake. The max my oven will do is 525F, and when I checked the stone with the IR thermometer at bake time, it was sitting at 525.
As most of us that have baked pizzas long enough come to realize, less is more when it comes to topping the skins. I made the sauce using simple ingredients and cooked it a bit, mostly to bloom the dry ingredients. No serious or long term simmering or boiling was done. Just a low simmer for about 15 minutes to let it all get happy then off the burner to cool.
After I made the skin, I gave it a light brushing with refined olive oil, then a few grinds of black pepper. The cheese is about 4 ounces of shaved LMPS mozzarella off the block, about 2 ounces of whole milk fresh mozzarella torn from the ball, and about an ounce of fresh grated Pecorino Romano cheese sprinkled about.
The sauce was dolloped on instead of spread around, as I’ve found that I like the taste better from a heterogenous topped pizza more than its topping being homogenous. A little bit of something different on each bite keeps the pie interesting. It’s all about the ratios experienced on each bite. When the sauce and cheese are evenly spread across the pie, each bite is basically the same, and can become monotonous. Not so when topped as shown here.
Since this was my first ever sourdough pizza, I kept is simple. Sourdough, sauce, and cheese. After tasting it, it seems that it would almost be a crime to add anything else to this. It was so good. I’m sure that I will add a topping or two on future bakes, but they too will be minimal and heterogenous in application. Keeping the toppings in balance to each other, while letting them all do their own thing on each random bite, seems to work out best for the overall eating experience.
An oven set in mid-600F range like Di Fara uses may offer a faster bake, but I’m not sure that it’s a better bake. Especially after seeing some of the burned pizza photos uploaded by their customers to Yelp and Trip Advisor. At very high oven temps, 30 seconds too long can take a pizza from done to oops.
I put this pizza in the oven at 525F, shook the pie off the screen around 2 minutes in, turned it 180 at 5 minutes in, and pulled it at 8.5 minutes. The pie was fully baked around the 6.5 minute mark, and could have been pulled then for a less brown and crisp crust. I pulled this one at 8.5 minutes because it looked as I wanted. It could have likely gone close to 10 minutes for those that the like darker crusts.
On my own scale, since I have nothing to compare this one to other than my own past bakes, I’m giving it a 9.1. There is room for improvement, but if I could hit this mark every time I made a round pie, I could die happy.
For a 328 gram sourdough ball, TF .075 for a 14 inch pizza:
Flour, KAAP, 182 grams. Feel free to sub your fav flour.
Water, 98 grams at 85F
Salt, sugar, oil, 4 grams each
Sourdough starter at 100% hydration, 36 grams
I stretched mine to 15 inches, so it worked out to about a .065 TF
Lehmann recipe with IDY for 328 gram dough ball:
Flour 200 grams, 100%
Water, 116 grams, 58%
Salt, 3.5 grams, 1.75%
Sugar, Oil, 4 grams, 2%
IDY, 0.75 gram, 0.375%
I used King Arthur all purpose flour as it’s a strong AP flour, and I didn’t think that I needed to have a higher protein/gluten content at this lower hydration level. It seemed to work out well. The 36 grams of sourdough starter brings 18 grams each of flour and water to the party, effectively making the flour 200 grams, and water 116 grams, or 58% hydration.
The standard Lehmann recipe calls for 0.375% IDY. Since this is sourdough, it brings its own yeast and microbes, so no commercial yeast of any kind is used. It’s all mother nature. If IDY had been used, it would have been about ¼ teaspoon or 0.75 grams for this batch. But, since it’s sourdough, it’s hard to be exact and know how much yeast and microbes are coming to the party. However, I figure that the 36 grams of sourdough starter brought in the equivalent of 1/16 to 1/8 teaspoon of IDY.
I mixed the dough in a stand mixer, adding the water first, then the sourdough starter to throughly stir in by hand, then the flour and dry ingredients. All was mixed for two minutes at low speed to loosely incorporate. Then the bowl covered to sit for 10 minutes to let the flour hydrate a bit.
After that, I continued mixing on a medium speed, drizzling in the oil at the start. The dough looked good around six minutes, so I stopped mixing and balled it. A lightly oiled bowl with cover was used, and left to sit at RT for 8 hours. This is sourdough, not commercial yeast, so it takes longer to get happy.
After the RT time, into the fridge for 16 hours, then out to the counter for 3 hours to warm up before making the skin and topping. This dough could have easily sat in the fridge for 3 more days and not over proofed. If I had left it on the counter from the start, it would have been ready to bake with additional 3-4 hours of RT time. It just depends on what you’re looking for as to which way to go.
What ever pizza I make next will also be sourdough, whether round, square, or rectangular. Stay tuned.
For those wondering, I ate every square inch of this pizza.
