A great sourdough pizza crust does not need a long list of ingredients. Flour, water, salt, and a lively sourdough starter can create a dough with a beautifully puffed rim, tender interior, lightly crisp exterior, and the subtle fermented flavor that makes homemade sourdough pizza so satisfying.
This recipe takes its inspiration from Neapolitan pizza while adapting the process for a sourdough starter and the realities of home baking. The dough is soft enough to stretch easily by hand but strong enough to hold a thin center and airy cornicione, or outer rim.
Give it time to ferment, resist the urge to flatten the edge with a rolling pin, and bake it on the hottest surface your oven can safely provide.
If you have an outdoor pizza oven capable of reaching traditional Neapolitan temperatures, this dough works beautifully there too.
🍕 Is This Authentic Neapolitan Pizza Dough?
It is best described as Neapolitan-style sourdough pizza dough.
The Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana, or AVPN, publishes detailed specifications for Vera Pizza Napoletana. Its current guidelines call for flour, water, salt, and leavening and allow either commercial yeast or lievito madre, a natural sourdough culture.
The association specifies dough balls in roughly the 200- to 280-gram range and traditional pizzas no larger than about 35 centimeters across.
True Vera Pizza Napoletana is also defined by how it is baked: at approximately 430–480°C, or about 806–896°F, for only around 60 to 90 seconds.
Most home ovens cannot approach those temperatures.
So although the ingredients and shaping method here draw strongly from Neapolitan practice, pizza baked at 500–550°F in a conventional home oven is necessarily an adaptation.
That distinction does not make it inferior. It simply means we should call it what it is.
🌾 The Dough Formula
This recipe produces approximately 924 grams of dough, enough for four pizzas.
Each dough ball weighs about 230 grams, which is right in the useful range for an individual Neapolitan-style pizza.
Ingredients
- 500 g Tipo 00 pizza flour or strong bread flour
- 310 g water
- 100 g active 100% hydration sourdough starter
- 14 g fine sea salt
That is all you need.
No sugar.
No oil.
No commercial yeast.
The sourdough starter does all the leavening.
💧 Understanding the Hydration
Pizza bakers often describe dough using baker’s percentages, with flour always treated as 100%.
Because sourdough starter contains both flour and water, its contribution needs to be included when calculating the true hydration.
A 100-gram portion of 100% hydration starter contains approximately:
- 50 g flour
- 50 g water
That means this dough contains about 550 g total flour and 360 g total water.
The resulting hydration is approximately 65%.
That is soft enough to create an airy crust while still being manageable for home bakers.
❗ Why the Old Recipe Wasn’t Actually 65% Hydration
The previous version used:
- 500 g flour
- 325 g water
- 100 g starter
On the surface, 325 divided by 500 looks like 65%.
But once the flour and water inside the starter are included, the actual calculation becomes 375 g water divided by 550 g flour.
That produces approximately 68% hydration.
There is nothing inherently wrong with 68% pizza dough, especially for a home oven. Higher hydration can produce an excellent crust.
But if a recipe calls itself 65% hydration, it is worth making the numbers genuinely match.
🌾 Tipo 00 Flour vs. Bread Flour
Tipo 00 refers primarily to how finely Italian flour is milled, not simply to its protein content.
Pizza-specific 00 flour is designed to produce a smooth, extensible dough that stretches beautifully without tearing.
If you have good pizza 00 flour, use it.
Bread flour is an excellent alternative, particularly for a conventional home oven where the pizza needs to bake considerably longer than the 60 to 90 seconds used in a very hot pizza oven.
King Arthur’s naturally leavened sourdough pizza recipe likewise uses pizza flour and a long fermentation to create an extensible, flavorful dough.
Most importantly, use flour with enough strength to tolerate the fermentation schedule without turning slack and weak.
🌱 Your Starter Should Be Active
Because this recipe contains no commercial yeast, the condition of the starter matters.
Use starter that has recently been fed and is showing clear signs of activity.
It should be bubbly, expanded, and pleasantly fermented in aroma.
Ideally, use it near or shortly after its peak, when it has risen substantially but has not completely collapsed.
A weak starter may eventually ferment the pizza dough, but the timing becomes much harder to predict and the crust may lack the airy rim you are looking for.
🫙 What Does 100% Hydration Starter Mean?
A 100% hydration sourdough starter contains equal weights of flour and water.
For example, feeding:
50 g starter + 50 g water + 50 g flour
maintains a 100% hydration culture.
Because sourdough recipes depend on the amount of flour and water inside the starter, knowing your starter’s hydration makes the dough formula much more predictable.
If your starter is considerably stiffer or wetter, you may need to adjust the water slightly.
🥣 Mix the Starter and Water
Pour the 310 grams of water into a large mixing bowl.
Add the active sourdough starter.
Use your fingers, a dough whisk, or a sturdy spoon to disperse the starter through the water.
It does not need to dissolve perfectly.
A milky-looking mixture with small pieces of starter floating through it is fine.
🌾 Add the Flour
Add the 500 grams of flour.
Mix until there are no large pockets of dry flour.
The dough will look shaggy and rough rather than smooth.
That is exactly what it should look like at this stage.
Cover the bowl and let the mixture rest for about 20 minutes.
This short rest gives the flour time to hydrate and allows gluten development to begin before much physical work is required.
🧂 Add the Salt
Sprinkle the 14 grams of salt over the dough.
With slightly damp hands, pinch, fold, and squeeze the dough until the salt is thoroughly incorporated.
The dough may briefly feel slippery or seem as though it is coming apart.
Continue folding gently.
It should begin coming together again after a minute or two.
Salt does more than provide flavor. It also strengthens gluten and helps regulate fermentation.
👐 Develop the Gluten
You do not need to knead the dough aggressively for 10 or 15 straight minutes.
Instead, work it briefly until it begins feeling cohesive, then use a series of folds during the early part of fermentation.
Stretch one side of the dough upward without tearing it and fold it over the center.
Rotate the bowl and repeat on the remaining sides.
That counts as one set.
Perform approximately 3 sets of stretch-and-folds, spaced about 30 minutes apart.
As you progress, the dough should become smoother, stronger, and more elastic.
⏰ Bulk Fermentation
After the final fold, cover the dough and allow it to continue fermenting at room temperature.
The exact time depends heavily on the starter and room temperature.
At around 70–75°F, bulk fermentation may take roughly 4 to 6 hours from the time the starter is incorporated.
But do not blindly obey the clock.
Look at the dough.
It should become somewhat expanded, smoother, aerated, and noticeably livelier.
For pizza dough destined for a long cold fermentation, I would not necessarily wait for it to double.
An increase of roughly 50%, along with visible fermentation and bubbles, is a better stopping point.
🌡️ Temperature Changes Everything
Sourdough does not follow a rigid timetable.
A dough fermenting in a 78°F summer kitchen can move dramatically faster than the same recipe in a 66°F winter kitchen.
Your starter strength matters too.
This is why experienced sourdough bakers watch the dough rather than relying exclusively on the clock.
If fermentation seems extremely fast, move to the next stage earlier.
If almost nothing has happened after four hours, give the starter more time.
✂️ Divide the Dough
Turn the fermented dough onto a clean work surface.
Weigh the entire mass if you want especially consistent pizzas.
Divide it into four pieces of approximately 230 grams each.
A bench scraper makes this much easier.
Try not to tear and crush the dough unnecessarily while dividing it.
You want to preserve some of the gas the sourdough culture has worked to create.
⚪ Shape the Dough Balls
Take one piece of dough and fold its edges gently toward the center.
Turn it seam-side down.
Cup your hands around the dough and drag it lightly across an unfloured portion of the work surface to create surface tension.
Rotate and repeat until you have a smooth ball.
The surface should feel taut without tearing.
Repeat with the remaining pieces.
🧊 Cold Fermentation
Place the dough balls in covered individual containers or a covered dough box with enough room for expansion.
Refrigerate for approximately 12 to 24 hours.
You can extend the cold fermentation somewhat longer if your dough and flour tolerate it, but watch carefully for over-fermentation.
King Arthur’s sourdough pizza recipe uses an even longer 24- to 48-hour refrigerated fermentation, demonstrating how useful cold fermentation can be for both flavor development and scheduling.
For this more Neapolitan-style formula, I prefer beginning with 12 to 24 hours and learning how your particular starter behaves.
🍕 What Does Cold Fermentation Do?
Refrigeration slows fermentation rather than stopping it.
During that slow rest, the dough continues developing flavor and its gluten structure gradually becomes easier to stretch.
Cold fermentation also makes pizza night more convenient.
You can prepare the dough the day before and leave only warming, shaping, topping, and baking for the following evening.
This is one of the biggest advantages of sourdough pizza.
🕑 Bring the Dough to Room Temperature
Remove the dough balls from the refrigerator approximately 2 to 3 hours before baking.
Keep them covered.
The dough should lose its refrigerator chill, relax, and become easier to stretch.
If you try shaping a very cold dough ball, it may repeatedly spring back.
A relaxed dough should feel soft, aerated, and extensible.
The exact warming period will depend on your room temperature.
🔥 Preheat Much Earlier Than You Think
For excellent home-oven pizza, the baking surface needs to become thoroughly saturated with heat.
Place a pizza steel or pizza stone in the upper third of the oven.
Preheat the oven to its maximum safe temperature—ideally 500°F to 550°F—for at least 45 to 60 minutes before baking.
King Arthur similarly recommends a preheated stone or steel in the upper portion of a 500°F oven for sourdough pizza.
If your oven reaches 550°F, take advantage of it.
Pizza loves heat.
🔩 Pizza Steel or Pizza Stone?
Both can make excellent pizza.
A pizza steel transfers heat into the bottom of the dough extremely efficiently. In a conventional home oven, that can help compensate for temperatures far below those of a Neapolitan pizza oven.
A pizza stone stores plenty of heat too, but transfers that heat more gently.
King Arthur’s home-oven testing demonstrates why a steel can create particularly strong bottom browning at home.
Use whichever you own.
A thoroughly preheated stone is far better than no heated baking surface at all.
🔥 Using an Outdoor Pizza Oven
If you have a pizza oven capable of reaching 800°F or higher, you can get much closer to a true Neapolitan-style bake.
Heat the stone thoroughly according to the oven manufacturer’s instructions.
At temperatures approaching the traditional Neapolitan range, the pizza may bake in approximately 60 to 90 seconds.
It will need to be turned during the bake because the side facing the flame browns quickly.
At these temperatures, toppings should be light and the dough should be watched continuously.
The difference between beautifully charred and burnt can be seconds.
🍕 Don’t Use a Rolling Pin
Place one dough ball onto a lightly floured work surface.
Starting in the center, gently press outward with your fingertips.
Leave approximately 3/4 to 1 inch around the perimeter untouched.
That untouched outer edge contains gas that will expand dramatically in the oven and create the puffed cornicione.
Continue stretching the dough by hand until it reaches roughly 10 to 12 inches across.
Do not use a rolling pin.
A rolling pin squeezes much of that carefully developed gas from the rim.
AVPN’s own shaping method calls for pressing from the center toward the outside by hand.
🫧 Protect the Cornicione
The raised outer rim is one of the defining visual characteristics of Neapolitan-style pizza.
You do not need to manufacture it by rolling a thick ring around the edge.
Simply avoid pressing it flat.
As you push gas outward from the center, some of it accumulates around the perimeter.
In a very hot oven, that gas and moisture expand rapidly and inflate the crust.
Good fermentation and gentle handling do most of the work for you.
🌾 Use Flour Sparingly While Shaping
A little flour prevents sticking.
Too much flour creates other problems.
Excess flour stuck to the underside of the pizza can scorch on a hot steel or stone and taste bitter.
Use just enough flour to keep the dough manageable.
Fine semolina can also work well on the peel because its small grains behave almost like ball bearings underneath the dough.
Before launching the pizza, lift an edge and blow gently underneath or shake the peel to make sure the dough is still moving freely.
🍅 Keep the Toppings Light
Neapolitan-style pizza is not designed to hold a mountain of toppings.
Too much sauce, cheese, or wet vegetables can overwhelm the thin center before it has time to bake properly.
For a simple Margherita-style pizza, use:
- A thin layer of crushed tomatoes
- Small pieces of well-drained fresh mozzarella
- Fresh basil
- A drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil
You should still be able to see areas of dough between the toppings.
Less really is more here.
🍅 Do You Need San Marzano Tomatoes?
Traditional Neapolitan pizza has close associations with Campanian tomatoes, and AVPN specifies appropriate Italian tomato products for certified pizza.
At home, genuine San Marzano tomatoes can be wonderful, but they are not essential to making a delicious pizza.
Choose good-quality whole peeled tomatoes with a fresh, bright flavor.
Crush them by hand and season simply.
A heavily cooked, sugary pizza sauce would overwhelm the delicate fermented crust.
🧀 Drain Fresh Mozzarella
Fresh mozzarella contains considerably more water than low-moisture mozzarella.
That moisture can collect on the middle of a pizza.
Cut or tear fresh mozzarella ahead of time and allow it to drain on paper towels or in a strainer.
Fior di latte and buffalo mozzarella are traditional choices.
For a conventional home oven with a longer baking time, you may find that well-drained fresh mozzarella works better if added after the pizza has been baking for a couple of minutes.
🥄 Don’t Build the Pizza Too Early
Once sauce is spread over stretched dough, moisture begins soaking into the surface.
Prepare your toppings before shaping.
Then stretch one dough ball, transfer it to the peel, top it quickly, and bake immediately.
Do not shape all four pizzas and leave them sitting covered in tomato sauce while the first one bakes.
Work one at a time.
🔥 Home-Oven Baking
Slide the topped pizza onto the fully preheated steel or stone.
At 500–550°F, the pizza may take roughly 5 to 10 minutes, depending on your oven, baking surface, dough thickness, and toppings.
Watch the crust rather than relying solely on the clock.
The edge should puff and develop deep brown spots, the bottom should be cooked and browned, and the cheese should be bubbling.
If the bottom finishes before the top, use the broiler briefly at the end.
Watch constantly while broiling.
🔥 The Broiler Trick
A conventional oven often struggles to provide enough top heat for Neapolitan-style pizza.
Once the bottom is nearly done, switching the broiler on for the final minute can create stronger blistering and browning around the cornicione.
This works especially well with a steel positioned in the upper third of the oven.
The exact technique depends on your oven, so monitor the first pizza closely.
Never walk away from a pizza under the broiler.
🐆 What About Leopard Spotting?
The small dark blisters associated with Neapolitan pizza are often called leopard spotting.
They form most dramatically during extremely fast baking at pizza-oven temperatures.
A conventional 500°F oven cannot perfectly reproduce a 900°F, 90-second bake.
You can still develop attractive blistering by using well-fermented dough, a very hot steel, and the broiler.
Do not intentionally burn the entire crust in pursuit of a few spots.
Flavor matters more than Instagram aesthetics.
😕 Why Didn’t My Crust Puff?
Several things can suppress the cornicione.
The starter may have been weak.
The dough may have been under-fermented.
You may have flattened the edge while shaping.
A rolling pin may have squeezed out the gas.
The oven may not have been hot enough.
Or the dough may have fermented too long and lost the strength to contain expanding gases.
Good pizza dough depends on the intersection of fermentation, shaping, and heat rather than one secret trick.
🫠 Why Is My Dough So Sticky?
At roughly 65% hydration, this dough should be soft but reasonably manageable.
New sourdough bakers sometimes interpret normal tackiness as a sign that more flour is needed.
Avoid adding large handfuls of flour.
Instead, use slightly damp hands during mixing and folds, and use a bench scraper during dividing.
As gluten develops, the dough should become smoother and less unruly.
If it is truly flowing like batter, double-check your measurements and starter hydration.
🏀 Why Does the Dough Keep Springing Back?
The gluten is too tense.
Stop stretching.
Cover the dough and let it rest for 10 to 15 minutes.
Then continue.
Trying to force resistant dough usually produces tears or an uneven crust.
Adequately fermented, room-temperature sourdough pizza dough should stretch with relatively little resistance.
🕳️ Why Does My Dough Tear?
Over-fermentation can weaken gluten until the dough becomes fragile.
Insufficient gluten development can do the same thing.
Extremely rough handling is another possibility.
If the dough is otherwise healthy, small holes can simply be pinched closed.
If every dough ball feels soupy and tears when lifted, fermentation probably went too far.
Shorten the warm fermentation or cold-proofing period next time.
🧊 Can the Dough Stay in the Refrigerator Longer?
Usually, yes—but there are limits.
A strong flour and healthy dough may handle 24 to 48 hours of cold fermentation very well.
King Arthur’s sourdough pizza formula deliberately uses this range.
But sourdough fermentation continues in the refrigerator.
Eventually the acids and enzymes begin weakening the gluten structure.
If dough balls flatten into puddles, become extremely sticky, or tear easily, they have probably gone too far.
For your first batch, start with an overnight 12- to 24-hour proof and adjust from there.
❄️ Can You Freeze Sourdough Pizza Dough?
Yes.
For convenience, freeze individual dough balls after they have developed some fermentation but before they become fully proofed.
Lightly coat each ball or container to prevent sticking and freeze well wrapped.
Thaw overnight in the refrigerator.
Then give the dough several hours at room temperature before stretching.
Freshly fermented dough gives the best texture, but frozen dough is extremely useful for spontaneous pizza nights.
🌾 Can You Use Whole-Wheat Flour?
You can replace a small portion of the white flour with whole wheat.
Start with about 25 to 50 grams.
Whole wheat adds a deeper grain flavor but also absorbs more water and can make the dough less extensible.
I would not replace all of the 00 flour with whole wheat if your goal is a light Neapolitan-style crust.
King Arthur’s sourdough pizza recipe uses small amounts of whole wheat and rye precisely to add flavor without turning the pizza into a dense whole-grain loaf.
🫒 Why Isn’t There Olive Oil in the Dough?
Many excellent pizza doughs contain olive oil.
New York-style dough and many home-oven pizza recipes often use it because fat tenderizes the dough and influences browning.
Traditional Neapolitan dough is different.
AVPN’s dough formula is based on flour, water, salt, and leavening.
Olive oil belongs on the pizza, not in the dough.
Since this page specifically targets Neapolitan-style sourdough, I would leave the oil out.
🍬 Why Isn’t There Sugar?
For essentially the same reason.
Sugar is useful in some home pizza doughs because it promotes browning in ovens that operate at lower temperatures.
But Neapolitan-style dough is meant to derive its flavor from flour and fermentation.
There is already plenty of browning potential when the pizza meets a properly preheated steel, stone, or high-temperature pizza oven.
No added sugar is necessary.
🧂 Why 14 Grams of Salt?
Salt affects both flavor and fermentation.
The old recipe used only 10 grams.
Once the flour contained in the starter is included, that represents less than 2% salt relative to total flour.
This revised version uses 14 grams, approximately 2.5% of the total flour weight.
That fits naturally within Neapolitan-style dough formulas and gives the crust noticeably better flavor without becoming aggressively salty.
AVPN’s current published formula specifies approximately 40 to 60 grams salt per liter of water, depending on the dough formulation.
🍕 Sourdough Pizza vs. Yeast Pizza
Commercial yeast offers predictability and speed.
Sourdough contributes a broader population of yeasts and bacteria, creating more complex fermentation and often a more distinctive flavor.
Neither method is automatically superior.
The appeal of sourdough pizza is partly flavor and partly process. If you already maintain a starter, pizza dough is one of the most enjoyable ways to use it.
And unlike a large loaf of sourdough bread, pizza does not have to stand alone. Even a slightly imperfect crust becomes delicious beneath good tomatoes, mozzarella, basil, and olive oil.
🍕 Try a Classic Margherita
Once the dough is ready, the simplest topping combination is often the best test.
Lightly crush good canned tomatoes and spread a thin layer across the center.
Add pieces of well-drained fresh mozzarella.
Bake until the crust is puffed and charred in spots.
Finish with fresh basil and a small drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil.
The simplicity lets you actually taste the fermented dough rather than burying it beneath several pounds of toppings.
🌿 White Pizza
Skip the tomato sauce.
Brush or drizzle the stretched dough very lightly with olive oil and add mozzarella, ricotta, Parmesan, garlic, and fresh herbs.
Because ricotta contains moisture, use small spoonfuls rather than covering the entire surface.
Fresh arugula can be added after baking for peppery contrast.
🍄 Mushroom Pizza
Mushrooms release substantial water as they cook.
For the best crust, sauté particularly watery mushrooms briefly before adding them to the pizza.
Pair them with mozzarella, Parmesan, thyme, and a little garlic.
Finish with black pepper after baking.
A thinly sliced fresh mushroom can work raw in a very hot pizza oven, but home-oven pizzas generally benefit from moisture control.
🥒 Summer Zucchini Pizza
Thinly sliced zucchini makes an excellent seasonal topping, especially when paired with lemon, thyme, and a hard Italian cheese.
Use the zucchini sparingly so it does not release enough water to soften the center.
Pop & Thistle already has a zucchini, lemon, and thyme pizza that would work beautifully with a naturally leavened crust.
🍕 What Makes This Recipe Worth the Wait?
The ingredient list takes seconds to read.
The dough itself takes a day.
That contrast is the beauty of sourdough pizza.
Most of the time is passive. Wild yeast and bacteria ferment the flour while gluten gradually develops and relaxes. The refrigerator handles the overnight portion while you do something else entirely.
The following evening, those four humble ingredients have become something extensible, aerated, and full of flavor.
Then comes the fun part: stretch a ball by hand, add only a few toppings, slide it onto a blazing-hot surface, and watch the rim inflate.
Pizza night does not get much better than that.
🍕 Neapolitan-Style Sourdough Pizza Dough Recipe
Active Prep Time: About 30 minutes
Bulk Fermentation: Approximately 4–6 hours
Cold Fermentation: 12–24 hours
Final Warm Proof: 2–3 hours
Yield: Four approximately 230 g pizza dough balls
Ingredients
- 500 g Tipo 00 pizza flour or strong bread flour
- 310 g water
- 100 g active 100% hydration sourdough starter
- 14 g fine sea salt
Instructions
- Combine the water and active sourdough starter in a large bowl.
- Add the flour and mix until no dry patches remain.
- Cover and rest for about 20 minutes.
- Add the salt and work it thoroughly into the dough with damp hands.
- Cover the dough and perform three sets of stretch-and-folds approximately 30 minutes apart.
- Continue bulk fermentation until the dough looks aerated, feels lively, and has increased in volume by approximately 50%. At moderate room temperature, total bulk fermentation may take roughly 4 to 6 hours.
- Turn the dough onto a clean work surface and divide into four pieces of approximately 230 grams each.
- Shape each portion gently into a taut ball.
- Place the balls into covered containers and refrigerate for 12 to 24 hours.
- Remove the dough from the refrigerator approximately 2 to 3 hours before baking.
- Place a pizza stone or steel in the upper third of a conventional oven and preheat at the oven’s maximum safe temperature, ideally 500–550°F, for at least 45 to 60 minutes.
- Place one dough ball on a lightly floured surface.
- Press gently from the center toward the outside, leaving a 3/4- to 1-inch rim untouched.
- Stretch by hand into a roughly 10- to 12-inch round. Do not use a rolling pin.
- Transfer the dough to a lightly floured or semolina-dusted pizza peel.
- Add a thin layer of sauce and a modest amount of toppings.
- Slide onto the fully heated stone or steel.
- Bake until the bottom is browned, the rim is puffed and deeply colored, and the toppings are cooked, usually about 5 to 10 minutes in a conventional home oven.
- If necessary, use the broiler very briefly toward the end to increase top browning.
- For a high-temperature pizza oven, bake according to the oven manufacturer’s instructions; near traditional Neapolitan temperatures, the pizza may cook in approximately 60 to 90 seconds and will need to be rotated during baking.
- Repeat with the remaining dough balls and serve each pizza while hot.
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