Learn how to make this easy sourdough discard 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.
Key Takeaways: Sourdough Discard Pizza Crust
- Prep Time: 2 minutes
- Bake Time: 20 minutes
- Total Time: 22 minutes
- Servings: 8 slices
- Cook Method: Baked on a preheated cast iron skillet or pizza stone
- Flavor & Texture: Thin and crispy with a lovely sourdough tang.
- Difficulty: Super easy! There are only four basic ingredients that come together with minimal effort.
- Why this Recipe? This recipe is easy, versatile, and uses up sourdough discard, which is perfect for the home sourdough baker.
Chicken Alfredo pizza and easy breakfast pizza are some of our favorite repeat meals around the homestead. 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.
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!
Table of Contents
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 as I do, you probably have some discard on hand. Check out my collection of sourdough discard recipes for even more ways to use up this plentiful ingredient!
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. 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 Sourdough Discard Pizza Crust
Step 1: Preheat a pizza stone or cast-iron skillet to 425 degrees Fahrenheit.
Step 2: When the oven is preheated and the pans are scorching hot, take them out of the oven. Drizzle your baking vessel 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. It will start baking as soon as it makes contact with the pan. This is totally normal and expected.
Step 5: Drizzle some olive oil over the top. Sprinkle it with salt and Italian seasoning.
Step 6: Pop it back in the oven until crispy and pulls away easily 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 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 bake for about 10 minutes. Add the other toppings and cheese. We especially enjoy this option in the summer, when the garden is bursting with fresh 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 meal of all time and really is one of the best pizzas ever.
- Option Three: Just add the tomato sauce (try my homemade marinara recipe) and eat it a little soft. We do this often, and it still tastes great.
Lisa’s Expert Tips
- 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.
- Switch up your cheeses for some fun flavors. While a classic pizza with homemade mozzarella is delicious, I love to add some homemade ricotta or even homemade cream cheese for a dessert pizza!
Sourdough Discard Pizza Crust 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 a few hours before you plan to bake it. When you want to make pizza, preheat your oven to 450 degrees Fahrenheit, take out the sourdough pizza crust, top it with your favorite toppings, and bake until everything is bubbly and melted.
Yes, as long as it is cooked. Using sourdough 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. You can learn more about how to store sourdough starter in this post.
More Delicious Recipes from the Farmhouse
- Sheet Pan Gnocchi With Chicken And Vegetables
- Easy Buffalo Chicken Salad Recipe
- Easy And Delicious Beef Taco Skillet
- Easy Tomato Galette with a Buttery Crust
- 10 of the Best Instant Pot Recipes
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.
Quick Sourdough Discard Pizza Crust Recipe
Video
Equipment
- 1 12 inch Cast Iron Skillet or Pizza Stone
Ingredients
- 2 teaspoons olive oil, 9 grams (Split in half – 1 tsp for the pan, 1 tsp for drizzling on top.)
- 1 ½ cups sourdough discard, 375 grams (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 of Italian seasoning
- pinch of salt
Instructions
- Preheat a pizza stone or cast iron skillet to 425 degrees Fahrenheit.
- When the oven is preheated and the pans are scorching hot, take them out of the oven.
- Drizzle your baking vessel of choice with a little extra virgin olive oil (about 1 teaspoon).
- Ladle sourdough starter onto the hot pan.
- Spread it out until you have a nice thin layer in the size that you want.
- Hit it with another drizzle of olive oil (about 1 teaspoon).
- Sprinkle it with salt and Italian seasoning.
- It will start baking as soon as 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 baking, because the crust will be basically done baking 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.
Hey Lisa, these continue to be my favourite pizza crusts. So easy and so flavourful. Thanks for sharing!
So glad to hear this! Thanks for sharing!
I made this for dinner tonight and it was delicious and super easy! I got around the soft crust issue by adding the cheese first to the crust after baking it, then the other toppings, then baked again. After it came out of the oven I put the sauce on top, sort of Chicago-style. So delicious!
So glad you enjoyed it! And thank you for your tips!
Some of the best pizzas are made with this dough recipe! My family loves getting to make their own! Great recipe.
Love to hear that!
I’m also confused about using discard,fed sourdough starter. I have discard in the fridge that is about 1 week old. I could pull out of fridge and use, or I must feed first????
If it hasn’t been fed in over a week I would feed it first and then use it.
I want to make this but I am confused. It claims to be a discard recipe, but in the ingredients it says fed sourdough starter. Isn’t fed the active bubbly one and discard is the extra stuff that is cold and not bubbly in my fridge? I’m confused
I found a way to use sauce and keep the crust crispy. Once the crust has cooked I use a pastry brush and spread a thing layer of sauce on the crust. Then I put it back in the oven and let that bake on 5- 10 minutes. After that I spread miners sauce and add my toppings and put in to melt the cheese. Crust is still nice and crispy.
Hi Lisa
I started baking sourdough bread late last year. I was diagnosed with type two diabetes and recently discovered that sourdough bread has zero effect on my glucose levels because it is such low GI. (I can’t eat regular bread at all).
Pizza had to be relegated to very occasional and two slices only.
I am now using my discard to make a pizza once or twice a month, thankyou for giving me back one of my favourite foods.
You mention in your recipe that a regular tomato past base turns the pizza base soggy, and you offer a few alternatives.
I would like to show you my alternative. I simply place a few very thin slices of cheese straight on the pizza base before adding the sauce. (Reduce the amount of cheese on the top by a little)
Also, after slicing up the pizza on a board, I place a paper napkin on the serving plate, this stops and juices which Leak out of the sliced edge from sogging the pastry.
I had pics but could not seem to add them
Warren, Adelaide Australia
So glad you enjoy this recipe! And thank you for sharing your tips and tricks as well!
I am having great success with my starter and making sourdough bread – thank you so much for the tutorials.
However, on the discard pizza attempt, I followed your instruction to the letter with a well seasoned cast iron skillet and the sour dough stuck terribly. What should I do next time?
Oh bummer. Did you oil the pan before adding the starter? Also, starting with a hot pan can also help.
Thank you for this discard recipe. We love this pizza crust. We use pesto for the sauce and it works great. Sometimes soft, sometimes not. Ha! We love all your recipes. We make your sandwich bread recipe artisan style and cinnamon rolls each week!! My husband is the cinnamon rolls man. He likes to take this to work to share. 😊
So glad you are enjoying those recipes! And pesto sauce sounds amazing! I may have to try that myself! Have a great day!
Hi Lisa,
I love all your YouTube videos. I tried this pizza today and the discard stuck to the sides of my cast iron skillet. I added avocado oil to the pan prior to preheating. I’m wondering if my pan isn’t seasoned enough. Keep on producing content. Thanks, Judy
I can’t work quickly enough with the wooden spoon so I roll it around in the pan. Works perfect…I love these!