Easy sourdough discard pizza dough

This right here is going to be the easiest sourdough discard pizza dough recipe you’ll find on the ole Interwebs — and it might just be the tastiest, too. I’m not even going to spend the first 1,200 words telling you how it’s going to change your Pizza Night forever. Even though it will.

What I am going to do, though, is start off by sharing the recipe and instructions for my sourdough discard pizza dough (that’s been at least six months in the making, by the way), then share the how-to video in case you’re a visual learner and THEN at the very end, I’ll share links to all of my other favourite sourdough starter discard recipes.

This sourdough discard pizza dough is going to change Pizza Night in the best way possible. (Shot on the iPhone 12 Pro)

Sourdough discard pizza dough: ingredients

In the order you’ll need them:

• 1 cup of warm/hot tap water (not boiling or anywhere near boiling)
• 2 tsp of active dry yeast
• 2 tsp of sugar
• 5 cups of flour (I use all-purpose because it’s inexpensive, but hard white bread flour, whole wheat flour or a flour blend will all work, too) — keep more flour handy
• 1 tbsp of dried oregano
• 1 tbsp of onion powder (NOT salt!)
• 1 tbsp of garlic powder (NOT salt!)
• Scant 1 tbsp of Kosher/sea salt
• 2 cups of unfed sourdough starter discard
• 1/2 tsp of extra-virgin olive oil

Note that this sourdough pizza recipe makes enough for eight medium-sized pizza crusts. My family of four uses half of the dough for Pizza Night and then we freeze the other half for another night.

Sourdough discard pizza dough: directions

You’ll need to pull out your stand mixer for this recipe along with its dough hook:

1. First thing’s first: we need to make sure your yeast is alive and kicking. In your stand mixer bowl, mix your water with the yeast and sugar. Stir well with a small whisk or fork until the water starts to look muddy. Cover with a proofing cloth or tea towel for five minutes.
2. In the meantime, grab a medium bowl and whisk together your flour, oregano, onion powder, garlic powder and salt. Set aside.
3. Stir your sourdough discard well to ensure there’s no hooch sitting on the top of it and measure it out so it’s ready to roll.
4. It’s time to check your yeast mixture. If it isn’t bubbly/foamy and smelling yeasty, give it another five minutes. If after 10 minutes of resting covered in your bowl it’s still not doing anything, your yeast is dead. Pick up some fresh active dry yeast and start over. This is the reason I separate this step from the rest of the sourdough discard pizza dough recipe — because at this point, all you’ve wasted is a cup of water and a bit of sugar. If your yeast is doing its thing, however, you’re good to move on to step No. 5!
5. Now take your sourdough discard and mix it into the yeast mixture with a fork or whisk until completely blended.
6. Dump your flour mixture into your yeast/discard mixture, attach your dough hook (and a splash guard if you have one), lock your stand mixer head in place and fire that puppy up — but only to “STIR” (or whatever your stand mixer’s lowest speed is…it’s STIR on my KitchenAid mixer). If you attempt a higher speed right out of the gate, flour is going everywhere — I guarantee it. Some may still escape even on the lowest speed, but you’ve got a better shot at not covering your entire counter in the stuff if you just start out on STIR. This should all come together in a couple of minutes and you want to start watching how the dough pulls away from the sides of the bowl. If it’s really sticky, even after 3-4 minutes, you need to add a bit of flour (half a tablespoon at a time). If it feels too dry or breaks when you tug at it gently, you need to add a bit of water (again, half a tablespoon at a time). The goal is a soft, elastic dough that leaves almost nothing on the walls of your bowl.
7. Once the dough is successfully pulling away from the bowl, turn up your speed a notch — just the next dial and nothing more. Let your dough hook knead the sourdough pizza dough for another 3-5 minutes.
8. Your bowl should be clean enough to keep using the entire way through this recipe, but you could switch to a different bowl at this point if you prefer. Either in the bowl or on a silicone mat or clean countertop, work the dough into a ball. If you removed it from the bowl for this step, put it back in and drizzle some extra-virgin olive oil on it and coat the ball lightly.
9. Cover the bowl with a proofing cloth or tea towel and set in a draft-free area of your home. I like the inside of my oven or microwave, but if we’re running the dishwasher, I’ll place the bowl on the countertop above it to take advantage of the gentle heat.
10. Let your dough rise. If your home is warm and humid, your dough may double in as little as an hour. In my home, which we normally keep at around 20-21C, it takes a good two hours (sometimes three). If your home is quite a bit cooler, it could take four hours. The key is that it doubles in size.
11. Once it’s doubled, it’s ready to be rolled out. At this point, I cut the dough in half and freeze half of it, but if you have a bigger family than I do, you may need two-thirds of the dough or the whole darn thang. Only you know how many pizzas (or calzones) you want to make at this point and what shape you want them, so I’ll leave the cutting and rolling to you.

There’s no need to pre-bake these. Just get your rolled dough onto your baking sheet, pizza tray or pizza stone and add toppings. I bake mine (which are 10-12 inch pizzas) at 425F for about 10 minutes before giving them a turn and popping them back in for another 2-6 minutes, depending on how many toppings are on it.

Your sourdough pizza crust should cut like a dream and stand up well to even the busiest pizzas (I have nine toppings on mine!). Enjoy!

Make sure you scroll to watch the how-to video and to check out more delicious sourdough starter discard recipes. (Shot on the iPhone 12 Pro)

Sourdough discard pizza dough: how-to video

If you’d rather make your sourdough discard pizza crust by following along with a video, this is your lucky day. I made this recipe from start to finish here:

Sourdough starter discard recipes

If you’ve made it this far and you don’t have yourself some sourdough discard, there’s really only one way to get it: make sourdough starter — this is a VERY detailed video that you can follow step-by-step as slowly as you need to. I promise you will never run out of discard if you stay committed to your starter.

And once you have both active “wild yeast” (your starter) and your unending supply of discard, you’ve got everything you need to make all of these sourdough discard recipes:

• Dutch oven sourdough bread recipe
• These sourdough cinnamon rolls will rock your world
• My sourdough English muffins are better than any store-bought ones
• A stellar use for discard — this dupe for Morning Rounds
• The sourdough brownies from Top With Cinnamon are easily the best brownies I’ve ever had
• Sourdough crepes are a less-sweet version of my Vitamix crepes
• Sourdough discard pizza crust
• Sourdough discard pancakes (I love these with buttermilk)
• Little Spoon Farm’s sourdough discard crackers are SO GOOD; I throw grated parm into the batter AND on top once it’s spread out
• Sourdough discard banana bread
• Sourdough discard blueberry muffins (cut the sugar by ditching the topping; still delish)
• The sour cream & chive sourdough biscuits from Feasting at Home go FAST in our house
• Sourdough discard cinnamon raisin bread

DISCLAIMER: There isn’t one. Just make the pizza already.