Recipe Sourdough Pizza Base or Soughdough Garlic Bread

[SatNavSaysStraightOn]

Yesterday was the day when my 3 sourdough starters all needed replenishing at the same time. I have a windowsill starter and 2 ones in the fridge at the moment. One of the ones in the fridge I am suspect about, I don't like its smell and it was meant to be replacing the old one in the fridge, but I'm not sure it will now, so I have 3 on the go...

Anyhow, they all needed replenishing (feeding for the world not into sourdough) and that left me with a lot of starter to throw away and I hate throwing things away. So I made up some pizza bases and also had some dough left over... I have to say the dough was amazing. It was lovely and soft and really made a delicious pizza base. The excess I put on a baking sheet and had been planning on just cooking and having today as a flat bread, however my husband had other ideas and thought I had made them up to make into garlic bread similar to PizzaExpress style garlic bread.... It was fantastic. Lovely and soft, well risen but not too much and tasty without being overpowering.

So it is time to write down what I did before I forget!

Ingredients
100g spent sourdough culture
100g sourdough flour mix (currently 50% wholemeal chapatti flour, 25% rye & 25% white plain)
100g water

Then later on

250g white plain flour
1tsp ground salt
1tbsp Olive Oil
water as needed

Method

• As with all sourdough bread recipes, time is the key thing.
• I made up the culture around 9am and let it brew until around 12pm.
• I then made up the dough, mixing well and aiming for a soft almost runny dough, almost too soft to handle soft dough. It was well kneaded until lovely and soft and very pliable and then put into a greased bowl and covered with clingfilm (not greased because the bowl was plenty big enough) and left in a warm location for 2-3 hours until it was starting to rise but not too much. I brushed a light layer of oil over the top to stop a crust forming.
• Around 3pm, I lightly kneaded the dough and used around 3/5th for the pizza spreading it over the greased pizza tray so that it was roughly 4-5mm thick except at the edges where I made it a touch thicker. This was then covered with (recycled) greased clingfilm and left to rise/proof until 5:30pm
• The remaining 2/5th was divided into 2 and hand rolled/pushed into ovals about 1cm thick. These were also covered with greased cling film and left out on the counter (warm day for the UK!).
• The pizza dough was cooked (around 5:30pm) with ingredients on it at Gas 8 at the top of the oven for 25 minutes.
• The garlic bread was cooked in the middle of the oven at Gas 8 for 15-20 minutes. It would have been better at the top or with the temperature slightly lower because the base was slightly too crisp for my liking and the pizza one was spot on.

 

[Morning Glory]

I'm so envious of your sourdough. I bake bread every week but haven't yet done sourdough. Think I'm worried about keeping it going, as i go away for 10 days at a time to visit friends. I s'pose I could take it with me? I've heard its a bit like having a pet... and there are 'sourdough hotels' for when people go abroad on holiday! Sourdough pizza is just grand

I was surprised your pizza dough was cooked for 25mins. I do mine on a preheated ceramic pizza stone at 220 deg C for just 12 mins. Can't remember what Gas mark 8 is, so don't know if thats equivalent to 220 deg C. I just know it needs to be a very hot oven! Also, I never do a second rise with pizza dough. Just knock back and roll out and cook straight away. I roll mine out in semolina (top tip!) which makes a lovely crunchy crust.

 

[SatNavSaysStraightOn]

I'm so envious of your sourdough. I bake bread every week but haven't yet done sourdough.

I had thought it was going to be really difficult and hard and that there was some dark cult involved to make it work and that it was going to fail and never happen...
actually it was very easy and there is nothing to it. I have been experimenting much to my OH's dismay and after the first few loaves had pretty much cracked it. There are a few 'things' I haven't yet got sussed but I'm working on that. I'm not very good at tall loaves. I think I have the dough too wet for it to hold its shape when it is not in a loaf tin, but we both like the really moist loaves it makes so until I have a read of a recipe I think I want to make that meets our requirements, I will stick with our moist loaves in a tin. In fact I have just found a loaf I left proofing in the fridge and totally forgot about! It was meant to be in the fridge for 36 hours. I guess it may have been. I just can't quite remember if I made it on Saturday morning when I did the pizza dough. I will have to ask my husband. Anyhow, I have pulled it out, knocked it back a touch and it is now out warming up. I'll see if it is good for cooking later this afternoon!

Think I'm worried about keeping it going, as i go away for 10 days at a time to visit friends. I s'pose I could take it with me? I've heard its a bit like having a pet... and there are 'sourdough hotels' for when people go abroad on holiday!

They are a touch like a pet. The one on the shelf in the kitchen needs attention every 2 days if the weather is cool and every day when it is warm.
I have 2 in the fridge. 1 for some reason only needs attention (feeding) once a week. The other seems to be really active in the fridge which I don't understand and needs attention twice a week! Given they all started from the same culture this has me confused, but they do look slightly different and smell slightly different so I guess there must be some different moulds in there!
I haven't heard about the hotels though, I have to say, but I can see that it would be a problem if you were to go on holiday! My normal holidays (or at least what was normal in the past) it would be an issue and I would have to ask my parents to look after it if they were about. It isn't difficult. Tip most of it away, add 50g mineral water, mix well, then add 50g of the chosen flour mix (mine is 50% wholemeal chapatti flour, 25% rye and 25% white). Kept in the fridge this would be once a week...

I was surprised your pizza dough was cooked for 25mins. I do mine on a preheated ceramic pizza stone at 220 deg C for just 12 mins.

We don't have a pizza stone, and the dough is not desperately thin. It rose to give a pizza base of around 7-10mm so was quite chunky. Gas 8 I think is 245C or something, but our oven looses a lot of heat when you open the door (it is a very cheap oven and we are tenants) so takes a while to warm up again. Even scones are taking 15 minutes which is stupid!

 

[Elawin]

I had thought it was going to be really difficult and hard and that there was some dark cult involved to make it work and that it was going to fail and never happen...
actually it was very easy and there is nothing to it. I have been experimenting much to my OH's dismay and after the first few loaves had pretty much cracked it. There are a few 'things' I haven't yet got sussed but I'm working on that. I'm not very good at tall loaves. I think I have the dough too wet for it to hold its shape when it is not in a loaf tin, but we both like the really moist loaves it makes so until I have a read of a recipe I think I want to make that meets our requirements, I will stick with our moist loaves in a tin. In fact I have just found a loaf I left proofing in the fridge and totally forgot about! It was meant to be in the fridge for 36 hours. I guess it may have been. I just can't quite remember if I made it on Saturday morning when I did the pizza dough. I will have to ask my husband. Anyhow, I have pulled it out, knocked it back a touch and it is now out warming up. I'll see if it is good for cooking later this afternoon!


They are a touch like a pet. The one on the shelf in the kitchen needs attention every 2 days if the weather is cool and every day when it is warm.
I have 2 in the fridge. 1 for some reason only needs attention (feeding) once a week. The other seems to be really active in the fridge which I don't understand and needs attention twice a week! Given they all started from the same culture this has me confused, but they do look slightly different and smell slightly different so I guess there must be some different moulds in there!
I haven't heard about the hotels though, I have to say, but I can see that it would be a problem if you were to go on holiday! My normal holidays (or at least what was normal in the past) it would be an issue and I would have to ask my parents to look after it if they were about. It isn't difficult. Tip most of it away, add 50g mineral water, mix well, then add 50g of the chosen flour mix (mine is 50% wholemeal chapatti flour, 25% rye and 25% white). Kept in the fridge this would be once a week...



We don't have a pizza stone, and the dough is not desperately thin. It rose to give a pizza base of around 7-10mm so was quite chunky. Gas 8 I think is 245C or something, but our oven looses a lot of heat when you open the door (it is a very cheap oven and we are tenants) so takes a while to warm up again. Even scones are taking 15 minutes which is stupid!

My sourdough seems to vary each time I make it. Sometimes it rises nicely, and at other times it does not. I don't really care so long as it is edible - and I've never had a loaf which isn't edible.
I put it down to the temperature in my kitchen which can vary from in cold weather at about the same temperature as in my fridge to in hot weather like a furnace - a hazard of a north-facing kitchen in a timber-framed house. It's better when the temperature in my kitchen is about 66F/19C or thereabouts. When it is very cold I often leave it in my oven with just the oven light switched on, otherwise it goes in the fridge. Also, if the kitchen is too cool, I make a sourdough tin loaf - more or less the same but using all white bread flour and a teaspoon of instant yeast as well as the sourdough starter. Then it has to be cooked in a loaf tin otherwise it doesn't keep any sort of shape at all.
I keep the starter in the fridge and only take it out about 8 hours before I want to make my loaves. It then has a good feed of rye flour and water. After the 8 hours is up I take some out for making my bread and put the rest back in the fridge. It's fine in the fridge for 2 weeks. After 2 weeks it gets a pool of liquid on top of it, but I just stir this back in before feeding it.
I would also add, I've never thrown any of the starter away. I don't see the point. The only time I accumulated too much starter, I put 250 g of it in the freezer just in case I managed to kill it, but I haven't yet.
I also use tap water - the original recipe (from Baking School based in SE London) says to use tap water, and I've never had cause to query it. I did try using filtered water once and it was not nice. I had to feed it a couple of more times using tap water to get it back to "normal". But, then, everyone seems to have their own ideas. What works for one person does not necessarily work for everyone. Our water does not have fluoride added, and you can tell when the water is chlorinated by the smell. Our water comes from the local sewage works and is generally heavily chlorinated on a Wednesday, so I avoid making bread then and make it either over the weekend or start it on a Monday.