Sourdough Discard Pizza

I LOVEEEE PIZZA!!! I don't think I've ever met anyone who doesn't! But pizza places these days charge so much for just dough and some measly toppings.... and not to mention you have to wait for your pizza delivery...... 

Well, I guess you'll have to wait for this pizza too but nothing beats eating a fresh slice of pizza straight from the oven, with the crispy crust and tender base! There are endless customizable flavours and pizza is just a really great way to use up leftovers in the house! Left over chicken? Add some barbeque sauce and BAM - barbeque chicken pizza! Leftover meatballs? Throw it on there with some sausage and ham for a meat lover's pizza! It's truly a canvas for flavour. I'm planning a post for pizza topping ideas soon so stay tuned for that if you are interested!! 

For this particular pizza, I decided to try and recreate one of my favourite pizzas from Spizza called the Quinta - it's just truffle and egg in the middle, but I spruced it up with flavours that I love too. I topped this pizza with pineapple, ham, tomatoes, mushrooms, arugula and it's baked on a rosemary truffle sourdough base made of discard! 

Interested? Here's the recipe! This is a basic dough recipe adapted from King Arther Flour but I tweaked the ratios for Singapore's humidity and included instructions for the flavourings too:

Ingredients:

- 250g sourdough discard (discard from mature starter has a tangier sourdough-esque flavour)

- 110g lukewarm water

- 330g all purpose flour

- 1 tsp salt

- 1/2 tsp yeast (optional if your starter is mature/quite fresh and active)

- 2 tsp butter/oil

- Flavouring for the dough base

- Some oil and butter for greasing the bowl/baking pans

Steps:

1. Mix discard, water, flour, salt, yeast, butter/oil and flavourings (see note) together in a big bowl. Stir with a wooden spatula until dough starts to come together and then knead the dough for 5-10 minutes, until it forms a cohesive and smooth ball. You could knead it with a stand mixer, but there's really no need, it comes together so quickly and the dough is really easy to work with!

2. Place the dough in a oiled bowl and cover the bowl. Leave the dough to rise in a warm spot for 2-4 hours until doubled in size. Mine took around 3 hours! If you would like a faster rise you could double the yeast. 

3. Gently punch down the dough and knead it lightly, and then shape it into the rough shape of your baking pan. I used the base of a cake tin and a cookie baking sheet! 

4. Grease the baking pan or tin and leave the dough to rest in the baking pan or tin for 15 minutes. You could also bake the pizzas on a pizza stone (or upside down cookie baking sheet), in which case you would shape and rest the pizzas on parchment paper sprinkled with semolina flour for extra crunch!)

5. Gently stretch the dough to fit the entirety of the pan and shape the dough into the shape you would like. This will be the final shape of the pizza. 

6. Rest the dough until it rises to the thickness you would like (I prefer thicker pizza so I rested mine for ~30minutes) 

7. Preheat your oven to 230 degrees celcius 

8. Top the pizza dough with sauce and toppings but don't top with the cheese yet 

9. Par bake the pizza for 5 mins for thin crust and 10 mins for thick crust.

10. Add cheese and bake until the cheese is bubbly or until your preferred doneness. I like to remove the pizza from the pan and bake it right on the rack to achieve an extra layer of crispiness on the bottom of the pizza! 

11. Remove from the oven and consume your fresh sourdough discard pizza! It's to die for! 

ENJOY! 

Note: 

- For flavourings, you can put garlic powder, onion powder, cheese powder etc anything you would like, really. For rosemary truffle pizza, I added fresh rosemary and used truffle oil to coat my bowl. I also drizzled some truffle oil on the pizza once it was out of the oven. Yum!

- If you would like to add an egg to your pizza, par bake the pizza with sauce and toppings WITHOUT the egg first, add the egg after 5 minutes or the egg will likely be overdone and we don't want that, we want oozy yolks here! 

- This texture of the pizza is really up to you, if you spread the dough thinner it will be a crunchier, crispier thin crust pizza but if you spread a thicker layer and allow more time for rise, it will be doughier and more reminiscent of focaccia. Super delicious either way!