In this article I provide an easy recipe for sourdough pizza starter as well as explaining exactly what it is and how it works. It may seem like magic (and it kind of is!) but it’s actually really straightforward.
Once you’ve made your sourdough starter you’ll be ready to make incredible sourdough pizza. Keep reading for more information and don’t miss the recipe at the bottom of the page.
You should have a wonderful sourdough starter for your pizza in no time!
A sourdough starter is needed to make sourdough pizza. It is basically just flour and water mixed together, and kept in such a way that natural (wild) yeast is encouraged to grow in it.
A sourdough starter for pizza (or any dough) is basically just a mix (usually 50/50) of flour and water – a wet dough. This dough is “topped up” with more flour and water regularly, to encourage yeast growth. This starter dough is then added to your other ingredients in order to make pizza dough.
Topping up your starter is known as “feeding”. This is because you are feeding the yeast culture living inside your starter each time you top it up.
There are trace amounts of yeast present in flour. By providing the yeast with additional flour, you are allowing it to feed on plenty of fresh nutrients, encouraging growth.
And by adding an equal amount of water, you are providing a moist environment for the yeast, allowing it to flourish.
Over time, the yeast grows into a healthy culture. At this stage, the starter is ready to bake with. It is easy to tell once the starter is ready because it will be very bubbly – “active” is the technical term!
A sourdough starter can be kept indefinitely when fed regularly. In fact, some bakers have a starter which is hundreds of years old! It can be passed down through the generations, and used as many times as you like.
Actually, the older a starter is the better it is, in general. Older starters tend to be more active (produce a better fermentation), more resiliant, and produce more flavour. Keep hold of your starter as long as possible and don’t be afraid to feed it with different flours from time to time. This may help to improve the depth of flavour your starter offers.
Whilst a sourdough starter doesn’t require any yeast to be added, it still has yeast in it. Yeast is a key ingredient to great pizza, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise!
Yeast makes pizza dough light and airy, and easy to eat, as well as producing a wonderful flavour. Without yeast, pizza would be dense and chewy, difficult to eat, and nowhere near as tasty!
The beauty of sourdough is that the starter contains natural yeast (wild yeast), so we don’t need to add any to it. A sourdough starter also helps to produce more flavour in the dough when compared to commercial yeast, thanks to the natural bacteria inside it. Think of it a bit like yogurt that naturally contains good (and tasty) bacteria. The bacteria helps to give it the sour taste.
A sourdough starter should be fed regularly to keep it active and ready to prove pizza. To feed it we basically just stir in some more flour and water.
At room temperature a starter should be fed every day ideally. But when stored in the fridge, feeding every 1-2 weeks is fine.
When we’re ready to make pizza, we remove it from the fridge and feed it for 2-3 days, building it up to the amount we need. This is known as building a levain (pronounced “le van”) – which is French for “rise” (ie “prove/ferment”).
The best ratio of flour to water for a sourdough starter is generally accepted to be 1:1, or in other words, equal parts flour and water. This ratio is known as the “hydration”, since it tells us how much water is in the starter.
There are 2 reasons for the 1:1 hydration ratio. These are as follows:
Let’s go over these in more detail.
Firstly, the high moisture content (high hydration) provides excellent conditions for yeast growth. This makes it easy to achieve a very “active” starter, which is capable of producing a light and airy pizza crust, thanks to an excellent fermentation (prove).
Secondly, having a starter with equal amounts of flour and water makes recipes easy. This is because calculating how much flour and water is in the starter is very straight forward.
For example, let’s say we have a 200g starter. Because we have a 1:1 ratio, we know there is 100g water and 100g flour in our starter, without having to do any complex calculations.
The easiest way to achieve this 1:1 ratio is to simply weigh out the flour and water. I like to use digital scales (and grams), as these are the easiest and most accurate.
The ratio of water to flour (the hydration) in a starter is often expressed as a percentage. The weight of water is compared to weight of the flour, in what is known as baker’s percentage.
As a percentage, the 1:1 ratio is 100%. This is because there is as much water as there is flour, or in other words, there is 100% as much water as flour.
For more information on this, check out my article on baker’s percentage here.
As well as the hydration of the starter (100% or 1:1 water to flour), you also need a ratio for how much to feed your starter – or the “feeding ratio”.
Many people choose to use a ratio of 1:1:1 when feeding. The first 1 represents our starter, the second 1 represents the flour to be added, and the third 1 represents the water to be added. For example, let’s say we have 50g of starter, a 1:1:1 feeding ration would mean we would feed the starter 50g of flour and 50g of water, for a total starter size of 150g.
However, I prefer to feed the starter in a 1:2:2 ration as it tends to result in a more “active” starter (or levain). This is particularly useful when feeding a starter that has been in the fridge. It will “wake up” quicker and will tend to produce a better fermentation.
With the 1:2:2 ratio, we are effectively feeding the starter twice as much, since we should feed our starter twice its weight in flour and twice its weight in water. The flour is the main “food”, with the water being there to ensure the same hydration. For example, with the same 50g starter, we would feed it 100g of flour and 100g of water, for a total starter size of 250g.
Notice that in both cases, we still feed the starter with equal parts flour and water. This ensures our hydration is always 100% (as mentioned previously) and should never change (except for advanced use cases).
Also notice that with the 1:2:2 feeding ratio, we end up with more starter after feeding (when compared to the 1:1:1 ratio). This allows us to keep less starter in the fridge (taking up less space) and still end up with a nice amount after feeding. This is a nice added benefit to this feeding ratio, but the main reason I recommend it is for the more “active” fermentation that it encourages.
It is also generally good practice to keep feeding your sourdough starter in the same ratio (eg 1:2:2). This should keep your sourdough consistent in terms of it’s flavour and fermentation. But of course you can feel free to experiment if you like. There are many ways to make great starter!
Your starter is ready to use when it is nice and bubbly, and it has roughly doubled in size. This is known as the “peak” of your starter and normally takes around 8-12 hours to reach (following feeding), depending on how “active” your starter is.
In general, the more your starter has been fed, and the older it is, the more “active” it will be. Some active starters can be ready in as little as 6 hours, especially if it is warm.
A good way to tell if your starter has reached its “peak” is to put a rubber band around the jar to indicate your starters level just after feeding. You should then be able to tell easily when your starter has risen to twice its initial size.
The “peak” is the moment just before the starter starts contracting (falling back down the jar). Take note of roughly how long your starter takes to reach its peak and then you will know for next time. Bear in mind that temperature can have a significant impact on this time. The warmer it is, the faster your starter will ferment.
The feeding ratio and hydration of the starter can also effect this time, so it’s important to keep these consistent. As mentioned previously, I recommend a 1:2:2 feeding ration and 100% hydration, or 1:1 hydration.
There is a common myth that sourdough starter needs to be open to the air – ie not have a lid on it. The reasoning is usually that the starter takes yeast from the air, but this is not the case.
Flour naturally has trace amounts of yeast in it. When given a moist environment (by adding water), this yeast can grow. The yeast feeds off the carbohydrates in the flour. When topped up regularly, or fed with fresh flour, this yeast can grow into a healthy colony of wild yeast and good bacteria.
This is why developing a starter takes some time – around 1-2 weeks. Initially there is only a tiny amount of yeast in the flour – not enough to prove pizza. By providing it with more carbohydrates in the form of fresh flour, we can encourage it’s growth. The addition of water alongside the flour ensures that we always keep a nice moist environment for the yeast.
So, a sourdough starter doesn’t need to be exposed to the air. In fact, I recommend that you keep a lid on your starter. This will prevent flies or any other foreign material from accessing your beautiful yeast culture. It will also ensure that your starter doesn’t dry out and should extend it’s life should you forget to feed it.
The recipe below is possibly the best recipe for sourdough pizza starter that you will find. I have developed the recipe from lots of trial and error! What’s more, I go into detail on every step along the way.
Making sourdough starter for pizza is much easier than most people think. And now you have an idea how it works, let’s get into how to make it!
It is worth mentioning that in this recipe, I recommend keeping a very small amount of sourdough starter. The reason for this is that as we top the starter up (feed it), it is easy to end up with too much starter which ends up getting waisted. Of course, you can give any leftovers to friends and family, but there’s only so much you can gift until they get sick of it!
Also, we can easily add to our small starter and build it up before making our pizza dough. This will be covered in more detail in the next article on making sourdough pizza. In this, I’m focussing on making the starter itself.
With that being said, let’s get into the sourdough pizza starter recipe.
Follow this recipe and feeding schedule for 1-2 weeks for the perfect pizza sourdough starter.
The quantities listed below are enough for feeding your starter every day for 2 weeks. This should be plenty to establish a healthy sourdough starter.
270g flour (oo flour or strong white bread flour)
270g water
Here’s the method for making a healthy sourdough starter which can then be used to make incredible sourdough pizza.
This starter can be kept indefinitely, as long as it is fed (topped up) from time to time. Storing it in the fridge means it will only need to be topped up every 1-2 weeks, as opposed to every 1-2 days at room temperature.
Some sourdough starters have even been known to survive months without feeding in the fridge! But they will need to revived with regular feeding for a few days before using for sourdough pizza.
Mix it with a knife or the wrong end of a spoon
Levain is the French word for a sourdough starter that is intended to be used for making a dough. It literally translates as “rise”. You may be asking: “isn’t all starter intended to be used for making dough?”, but the answer is not necessarily.
In my experience, it is better to build your small amount of starter into a larger “levain” each time you want to make sourdough pizza. This method ensures that you have a very healthy and active starter each time you make pizza. It also means that we don’t have to worry about feeding our starter everyday – we just have to feed it well in the 2-3 days before making pizza. It also means that we don’t end up with lots of waste.
Your levain should look something like this – the band shows how much it’s grown
00 flour works just fine in a starter
Keep reading for more detailed information on sourdough starters for pizza.
Hopefully this article and recipe has giving you an excellent starting point for sourdough pizza (pun intended)! If you think I’ve missed anything out or you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment below. I try my best to answer them as quickly as I can.
Congratulations on taking your first step towards amazing sourdough pizza with this sourdough pizza starter recipe. Also, bear in mind that you can use your starter for other doughs too, such as loaves of bread.
Now, time to get started on that sourdough! Over and out.
I’m Tom Rothwell and I’m super passionate about all kinds of homemade pizza! In the last few years I've been on a quest to find the perfect pizza. Now I'm sharing what I've found out with the world!
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Time to make some amazing pizza!
I’m Tom Rothwell and I’m super passionate about all kinds of homemade pizza! In the last few years I've been on a quest to find the perfect pizza. Now I'm sharing what I've found out with the world!
Hi Tom, couple of questions if you could clarify please. Looks like you end up with around 500g of starter, so using a jar of that capacity or a little more is ideal I assume? Is the removing 40g in step 3 a one-off, or do you remove some each day you feed it? Appreciate any response you can provide
Hi Rodney, thanks for the questions. I only ever keep 50g of starter and then I build it up (make a levain) when I mant to make pizza.
To do this, I remove 40g each time I feed it. Although this may seem wasteful, it prevents us from having a huge starter which leads to more waste.
Also, be sure to check out my sourdough pizza recipe which is out now!
Hope this helps.