Learn how to make this easy discard sourdough pizza crust. It only has four basic ingredients, no kneading or rising required. You really can’t get much simpler than this delicious pizza crust recipe.
Pizza is a family favorite and some of our favorite kinds include chicken Alfredo pizza and easy breakfast pizza. While I love making our sourdough pizza dough recipe when I have the time, sometimes we need something super quick and delicious on the table. That is where this discard sourdough crust recipe comes in handy!
All you need is sourdough starter, Italian seasoning, salt and a little bit of olive oil and you are left with a delicious crispy crust that is ready in no time at all. No need to roll out dough, clean up after a floured work surface or wait for hours while your dough rises. It is the perfect recipe for busy days and the options for how you can use it are endless.
Top your crust with fresh thinly sliced tomatoes, cheese, and your favorite pizza toppings like fresh basil and pepperoni. Serve it alongside a fresh salad with homemade kefir ranch and a glass of fermented lemonade for the perfect lunch or dinner, ready in minutes!
Why You’ll Love This Recipe
Easy – This sourdough discard pizza crust recipe is as easy as spreading some starter in a preheated cast iron pan with some seasonings and olive oil. It really is as simple as it gets!
Sourdough discard – I’m a big fan of sourdough discard recipes. And if you make a lot of sourdough bread like I do, you probably have some discard on hand. This is a great way to use that jar of sourdough discard, plus I love the sourdough flavor that is featured in this crust.
Versatile – This thin crust is the perfect base to fill with your favorite toppings for your next homemade pizza night. It is a great meal for picky eaters since you can adjust the fillings to your family’s preferences.
Ingredients
Fed sourdough starter or discard – You can use unfed sourdough starter or active and bubbly starter. Most of the time I just pull my sourdough starter right out of the fridge and use it. If you are new to sourdough, check out this post to learn how to make your own sourdough starter.
Italian Seasoning – The Italian seasoning is optional, but it adds the delicious Italian flavor that we all love and come to expect on pizza.
A full ingredient list with exact amounts can be found in the recipe card below.
How to Make Discard Sourdough Pizza Crust
Step 1: Preheat a pizza stone, or cast iron skillet, to 425 degrees.
Step 2: When the oven is preheated, and the pans are scorching hot, take them out of the oven. Drizzle your baking vessel (stone or skillet) of choice with a little extra virgin olive oil.
Step 3: Ladle sourdough starter onto the hot pan.
Step 4: Spread it out until you have a nice thin layer in the size you want.
Step 5: Hit it with another drizzle of olive oil. Sprinkle it with salt and Italian seasoning. It will already start to bake when it makes contact with the pan. This is totally good and expected.
Step 6: Pop it back in the oven, until crispy, and easily pulls up from the pan. About 10 minutes.
Step 7: Remove the crust from the skillet (if using a skillet) and add to a baking sheet. Add your favorite sauce and toppings. Pop it back into the oven.
Step 8: Bake another 8-10 minutes or until the cheese is bubbly. Slice and enjoy!
Note On Avoiding a Soft Crust
There is one downside to this impossibly easy sourdough discard pizza crust. You can’t pour regular pasta/pizza sauce on it without it getting soft, even when it is nicely browned before you add the sauce. There are a few options you can go with to get the best results out of your crust.
- Option One: Thinly slice fresh tomatoes. Spread them out in a thin layer on your baked sourdough pizza crust, and drizzle with olive oil, salt and pepper. Put it in the oven and roast for about 10 minutes. Add the other toppings and cheese. We especially enjoy this option in the summer, when the garden is bursting at the seams with fresh tomatoes. Something about roasted tomatoes!
- Option Two: Make a homemade cream sauce with cheese, cream, garlic, and salt. Spread it on the crust and top with chicken, mushrooms, and cheese to make a chicken Alfredo pizza. This is just about our favorite meals of all time and really is one of the best pizzas ever.
- Option Three: Just add the tomato sauce and eat it a little soft. We do this often and it still tastes great.
Tips
- This recipe is super simple because it utilizes sourdough starter (active or discard); the downside is you can’t use a regular pan. You must use a cast iron or pizza stone.
- The secret to cooking this recipe is preheating the stone or cast iron skillet.
- Chop up your veggie toppings while the stone or cast iron is preheating. Then sauté your veggies and/or meat while the crust is cooking, because the crust will be basically done cooking after the first bake.
Recipe FAQs
You can’t use a normal pizza pan, because the liquid starter would stick to it. You would have quite the mess on your hands. Cast iron and pizza stones are wonderfully nonstick, when preheated. Plus, this ability to preheat a pan that is so heavy is what makes for a crispy crust. The way that it starts baking upon contact makes a crispy crust like no ordinary aluminum pizza pan ever could.
It tastes a lot like regular pizza crust, but the crust itself has a delicious, slightly tangy flavor that you would expect from sourdough.
Yes! Sourdough pizza crust can be stored in the freezer in an airtight container for up to 3 months. Bake it first and then let it cool.
Allow it to thaw in the fridge just a few hours before needing it. When you want to make pizza, just preheat your oven to 450 degrees, take out the sourdough pizza crust, top it with your favorite toppings and then bake until everything is bubbly and melted.
Yes, as long as it is cooked. Using discard in recipes is an easy way to use up excess discard and a good way to eat fermented grains. For this recipe baking discard turns it into pizza crust. You can also bake discard and turn it into delicious homemade sourdough crackers.
Sourdough discard can stay fresh in the fridge for up to a week before it will need to be fed again or thrown away. Personally, I don’t throw away any sourdough because I use it in sourdough discard recipes like this one.
More Sourdough Recipes from the Farmhouse
- Sourdough English Muffins
- Sourdough Monkey Bread
- The Best Sourdough Pancakes
- Sourdough Skillet- Healthy One Pot Meal
- The Best Sourdough Tortillas
If you try this recipe and love it, I would love it if you could come back and give it 5 stars! Tag me on Instagram @farmhouseonboone.
Sourdough Discard Pizza Crust
Video
Equipment
- 1 12 inch Cast Iron Skillet (You can also use a pizza stone or any size cast iron skillet you'd like. Just remember that the size of the skillet or stone will alter how much discard to use.)
Ingredients
- 1 tsp Olive oil, Split in half – 1 tsp for the pan, 1 tsp for drizzling on top.
- 1.5 cups Sourdough discard, The amount you use will depend on how big your skillet or pizza stone is. I used a 12" cast iron skillet and scraped some of the starter up the sides.
- pinch Italian seasoning
- pinch Salt
Instructions
- Preheat a pizza stone, or cast iron skillet, on 425 degrees F.
- When the oven is preheated, and the pans are scorching hot, take them out of the oven.
- Drizzle your baking vessel (stone or skillet) of choice with a little extra virgin olive oil (about 1 teaspoon).
- Ladle sourdough starter onto the hot pan. Now, this is the part that will really bother my recipe-lovin, rule-abidin blog readers. I am not going to give you an amount. I can't. You just spread it out until you have a nice thin layer in the size you want. If you want to see how this looks, watch the video in the blog post.
- Hit it with another drizzle of olive oil (about 1 teaspoon).
- Sprinkle it with salt and Italian seasoning.
- It will already start to bake when it makes contact with the pan. This is totally good and expected.
- Pop it back in the oven, until crispy, and easily pulls up from the pan. About 10 minutes.
- Remove the crust from the skillet (if using a skillet) and add to a baking sheet. Add your favorite sauce and toppings. Pop it back into the oven.
- Bake another 8-10 minutes or until the cheese is bubbly.
Notes
- The amount of discard you use will depend on the size of your skillet or pizza stone. The amounts above are what I used for a 12″ cast iron skillet.
- You can use unfed sourdough starter or active and bubbly starter. Most of the time I just pull my sourdough starter right out of the fridge and use it. If you are new to sourdough, check out this post to learn how to make your own sourdough starter.
- The Italian seasoning is optional, but it adds the delicious Italian flavor that we all love and come to expect on pizza.
- This recipe is super simple because it utilizes sourdough starter (active or discard); the downside is you can’t use a regular pan. You must use a cast iron or pizza stone so it doesn’t stick.
- The secret to cooking this recipe is preheating the stone or cast iron skillet.
- Chop up your veggie toppings if using while the stone or cast iron is preheating. Then sauté your veggies and/or meat while the crust is cooking, because the crust will be basically done cooking after the first bake.
- There is one downside to this impossibly easy homemade sourdough pizza crust recipe. You can’t pour regular pasta/pizza sauce on it without it getting soft, even when it is nicely browned before you add the sauce. See the post for a note on how to avoid this.
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
Where are your tips for adding sauce? Sorry, could not see them
I just add sauce once the crust is finished baking.
It turned out so good! I’m thrilled to have such an easy pizza crust recipe in my back pocket. I didn’t find the crust particularly soggy, either. One I made with pizza sauce, mozzarella and pepperoni, and the other with pesto, mozzarella and pepperoni.
This may seem a little silly, but I just started my first sourdough 12 days ago. It hadn’t risen yet until later in the evening, but the discard seemed perfectly fine, so I tried making pizza. It could have been the discard, but it was in the fridge and it was super thick when I poured it in. It was cooking on my new, seasoned cast iron skillets too fast for me to spread it much. When the 10 minutes were up, both crusts were completely adhered to the skillets. It took me an hour of scraping to get them clean. Do you know what went wrong?
That’s interesting! It may be best to start with a little olive oil in your pan before adding the sourdough starter. My starter is usually thinner, as it is a 1-1 ratio. That may play a part in it as well.
I will try that and report back. Thank you!
It’s a hit! I was worried bc my son has gotten super picky lately, but he loved the crispy crust.
This was a fun and delicious pizza rendition. I have to admit, I was a wee bit skeptical about how good this recipe might be, but was very pleasantly surprised. No, it’s not a traditional pizza, but it was very good, with a pleasing chew and so little work, not to mention, it’s sourdough. I get around the sauce making the crust soggy by using a trick I’ve been using for years now. Start with putting the cheese on the baked crust, then slices of Roma tomatoes, or spoon some sauce, not too much, over the cheese, followed by any other cooked toppings or herbs desired. I did bake the crust ahead of time followed by putting the pizza crust on a baking sheet and baked for 12 mins at 425. Tonight was Smoked Gouda with roasted broccoli, halved cherry tomatoes and the 2nd, was fresh Mozzarella, sliced Roma tomatoes, pepperoni slices and some fresh basil when removed from oven. Thank you for sharing this recipe with all of us!
Tried this the first time today. It’s very fast and easy. To combat a soggy crust, once I lined the cast iron pan, I baked it alone for 5 or so minutes then removed to put in toppings, once the crust was dried somewhat. I’d say unless I’m making a deep dish pizza, I won’t make the crust come up the sides. Thanks for sharing
I found a way to prevent a soggy crust. Put the cheese on first then the sauce and then toppings.
Just love this and so does my family!
So easy and delicious!
Awesome pizza dough