Pizza night is the best, especially when it’s homemade! Homemade pizza is great for a family dinner or if you want to impress some guests. Take-out pizza just can’t compare to homemade crust and fresh, high-quality toppings.
For this sourdough pizza crust, you will need an active sourdough starter. You can read about how to make your own sourdough starter in this post. I love making things that are usually made with yeast with sourdough instead. The cultures in the sourdough starter begin to break down the glutens in the flour, so not only do you get a pizza crust that is extra flavourful, but it’s also easier to digest. If you don’t want to make your own crust, or yours needs to be gluten free, you could use any medium / large size pizza crust. They sell frozen cauliflower pizza crusts that are ready to bake in the natural section freezer in most grocery stores.
I started putting goat cheese on pizza because my oldest daughter who is now four years old has always loved goat cheese so much that she would ask to eat it right out of the package! We put goat cheese on a lot of things in this house because of her. Goat cheese is tangy and very creamy and which makes it a more interesting topping for pizza instead of the traditional mozzarella. Goat’s dairy is also easier to digest for many people compared to cow’s dairy.
Make the sourdough pizza crust dough in the early afternoon and it will be ready for baking by dinner time. You could also make it the night before and leave it to rise slowly in the refrigerator, taking it out about an hour before baking to come to room temperature.
Pizza crust
½ cup of sourdough starter
1 ½ cups of unbleached flour
1 tablespoon of olive oil
1 teaspoon of salt
½ cup of water
Toppings
¼ cup of organic pizza sauce
100 grams of soft goat cheese, crumbled
5 mushrooms, stems removed then sliced
½ of a red bell pepper, sliced thinly
Contributed by Melanie Maxwell, R.H.N.