Sourdough pizza – Neapolitan dough without baker’s yeast
Levain percentage, hydration and a schedule for a cold sourdough ferment. How to tell when your starter is ready and how to avoid a sour aftertaste.
Quick answer: a sourdough pizza replaces baker’s yeast with levain – typically 15–30 % of the flour weight – and needs a longer, colder fermentation (24–48 hours or more), because wild yeasts and lactic acid bacteria work more slowly and less predictably than commercial yeast.
What you need before you start
You need an active, well-fed starter that doubles within 4–8 hours at room temperature – a sluggish or newly started one gives a dough that never finishes fermenting in a reasonable time. The hydration of the levain should match the main dough so you don’t accidentally change the total amount of water.
Flavour and timing
Neapolitan sourdough should have a mild tang in the background, not a pronounced ”sourdough loaf” flavour – if it gets too sour, the fermentation has gone too long or too warm. Because the speed varies more than with commercial yeast, the poke test (see the fermentation guide) matters more than the clock here – more than in any other recipe on the site.
See the full commercial-yeast version for comparison in Neapolitan pizza dough, and work out a starting point with the calculator.
