WHOLE GRAIN SOURDOUGH PIZZA

Steps:

• Levain/Starter
• Prepare your 160g of starter by mixing 30g starter with 65g water and 65g flour. This is approximately a 1:2:2 starter preparation, but other builds are fine too. Mark your jar with a rubberband and let it sit overnight or until at least doubled.
• Saltolyse
• Mix the flour, water, and salt together in a bowl. Cover and let sit about 1 hour.
• Fermentation and Gluten Development
• Add the ripe starter to the dough, stretching, folding, and gently squishing the starter into the dough.
• Cover and let the dough rest for about a half hour. Then do two rounds of coil folding or dough rolling, one lamination, and one final round of coil folding. Separate each of the four rounds of gluten development with a 20-30 minute covered rest. Here are videos showing how to coil, roll, and laminate dough.
• When the dough has expanded by 50-75%, end the bulk fermentation. For my warm ambient temperature, this was four hours after adding the starter to the dough.
• Preshape and Second Rise
• Lightly oil a baking pan, or several small bowls, or several 16-ounce round takeout containers (photo above) to hold the dough balls during the final proof.
• Scrape the fermented dough out onto a lightly floured work surface and divide the dough into four pieces of about 320g each. (You can make the pieces larger or smaller if you want.)
• Roll each dough piece into a ball, place it in your proofing container(s), and cover. If using a pan, you can put the entire pan in a plastic bag.
• The final proof can be at room temperature for 1-3 hours or in the refrigerator for 12-24 hours (possibly longer). Various combinations of room temperature and cold proofing work too, and duration depends on the dough and room temperatures.
• Oven Preheat and Topping Prep
• Set your oven and pizza stone to preheat at 500°F for at least 30 minutes. I use an infrared thermometer to confirm my stone's temperature before baking and sometimes between pizzas too.
• If your dough is refrigerated, you can bring it out to room temperature to start warming up for easier stretching. After a 24-hour refrigeration, I got good results with both warmed up dough and with the one dough I left in the refrigerator until the last minute.
• Set up your toppings, sauce, cheese etc. and the area where you will be forming your pizzas.
• Prep a small bowl of flour or cornmeal to put on your pizza peel, or several 14x14-inch sheets of parchment paper. I like to run coarse cornmeal through my Mockmill on a medium-fine setting to make the chunks a little smaller.
• Shaping
• Sprinkle flour and cornmeal on your pizza peel or lay out a square of parchment paper.
• Lightly flour your countertop. Remove a dough ball from your proofing container and lay it on the flour.
• Place your fingers in the center of the dough and gently push the edges outward.
• Flour your hands, and then grasp one side of the dough circle with both hands and lift the dough off the counter. Holding the top edges of the circle (10 o'clock and 2 o'clock), let the dough stretch downward while you rotate and re-grab the dough like you're turning a steering wheel. This will develop about a 1-inch crust edge and stretch the middle of the circle. Try not to let any part of the dough get thin enough to see through or you may end up with a hole. If you do tear the dough, re-roll it and move on to another ball while the gluten in the re-rolled ball relaxes for a minimum of 15 minutes.
• Lay the stretched out dough on your pizza peel or parchment. If using a peel, check that the pizza can move by jerking the peel forward and backward to see if the dough slides. If it doesn't slide, lift the stuck area of dough and flour underneath it, Do this until you have an easy slide. It's fine if the dough sticks to the parchment paper. If you need to adjust the dough on the parchment, reach under the dough with one hand and pull it outward.
• Now top your pizza dough to your liking. Try not to take a long time doing this, because the longer the dough is on the peel, the more likely it is to begin to stick. (Use parchment paper if you expect to top your pizza very slowly.)
• Before approaching your oven with the pizza, check again with the quick forward and backward motion of the peel that your pizza can still slide.
• Baking*
• Slide your pizza onto the hot pizza stone and bake for 8 minutes, then switch the oven to broil for 1 minute more.
• While this pizza is baking, shape the next ball of dough and put toppings on it.
• Remove the pizza from the oven with a peel or metal spatula, or even by tugging on a corner of the parchment paper. Put the pizza on a cooling rack if you're not eating right away to keep the bottom from getting damp.
• Leave the empty oven on broil for one minute to reheat the stone, then switch back to bake mode and load the next pizza.
• Repeat until all the pizzas are cooked.
• *For baking these pizzas in an Ooni pizza oven, see the instructions in the Sourdough Pizza recipe