Sourdough isn’t for everyone. Making it, eating it, maintaining it. There are plenty of preferments that can add great complexity, flavor and texture to your dough – and extend its shelf life. I’ve made dough with most of these, but once I started experimenting with sourdough, there was no turning back. The difference is that while other preferments (such as a biga or poolish) are created by combining commercial yeast with flour and water, sourdough is a natural yeast.

Since sourdough is a living thing, there are a lot of factors that can alter how your dough turns out. Everyone’s starter will be a little different – even if you use the exact same flour and water. This is because sourdough feeds off the natural bacteria in the air and the sugar in the flour to create wild yeast. Just like all dough making, time and temperature are important considerations.

Before you try to make dough with sourdough, learning how to create and maintain your sourdough starter is essential. How well you do this will directly affect the quality and outcome of your dough. This means what you feed it, how often you feed it and the environment where it lives all contribute to its flavor and the activity of the yeast. All of this might sound intimidating for those beginning their journey with sourdough, but starters are incredibly resilient.

Broken down, a sourdough starter (also called a natural leaven, leaven or starter) is simply a mix of flour and water that hosts a stable blend of beneficial bacteria and wild yeast. All you need to make your own is flour, water and time – all things you already have in your shop! Maintaining a healthy starter requires regular feedings. A feeding is when you take out the majority of old starter and replenish it with fresh flour and water. I like to feed mine twice a day with equal parts flour and water. Your starter will stay healthier and more consistent the more often you feed it.

Since you only add two ingredients to a starter, the quality of each is important. If you live in an area that does not have drinkable tap water – or you’re in a city that uses chloramine or chlorine to clean the water – you might want to use bottled or filtered water in your starter. The flour you use also will impact the taste of your starter and pizza dough as well as the fermentation process. Using a flour that is higher in nutrients and sugars, such as whole-grain flour, will expedite the fermentation process. A white flour will form a stronger gluten net and has increased gas-trapping ability. By combining the two flours, you can get the best of both. Also: Make sure there aren’t any additives in your flour; they can kill the wild yeast and create mold.

One of the many great things about sourdough starters is that they are hard to ruin. If you forget to feed your starter for a day or even two, they almost always pop back to life once you refresh them. If you’re not a daily baker, you can put your starter in your fridge or even dry it out, then refresh it the day before you plan on making bread or pizza dough. The flavor, texture and digestibility that sourdough starters provide make the extra effort more than worth it.

It takes five to nine days to make your starter. As soon as you feed it, the yeast and bacteria in your culture will begin to metabolize the sugars in the flour, creating carbon dioxide gasses as a byproduct. These gasses cause the starter to rise throughout the day. Once they’ve eaten all the fresh food, the lactic and acetic acid begin to break down the gluten, causing the starter to fall and create a sour or vinegary smell. This is why I like to use my starter right before it peaks, when lots of gas is being produced and the fermentation activity is strong. It gives the final product a fresh, almost floral taste as opposed to a more acidic, sour flavor. Since the yeast is beginning to die when the starter falls, using it after its peak creates a very dense and flat crust that won’t brown in the oven.

The Sourdough Starter Guide (see table below) is a recipe to help get you started. Once you have an active starter and are regularly feeding it, the quality of your dough will become consistent. Keep in mind that the amount of fresh flour and water you feed your starter before making dough will depend on the quantity you need for your recipe. For example, if you are making a batch of dough with a 50-pound bag of flour and are using 8 percent starter, you would need 4 pounds of starter. To create this, you would feed your starter with
2 pounds of flour and 2 pounds of water.

I like to create starter out of freshly milled, whole-grain flour since it is rich in nutrients, bacteria and yeast. You will be able to see signs of activity much more quickly than if you use white flour alone. The temperature of the room and water you use also will affect the fermentation. Yeast proliferates more quickly in a warm environment than a cold one.

Audrey Kelly owns Audrey Jane’s Pizza Garage in Boulder, Colorado.

Read the August 2025 Issue of Pizza Today Magazine

In this issue, we announce Pizza Today’s 2025 Pizzeria of the Year. Find out how the owners turned a failing pizzeria purchase into a fast-growing pizza business. Learn how to make a sourdough starter. It’s Green Season! Green Chile, that is. Explore menu ideas that add New Mexican flavors to your pizza. Find out which strip mall locations work best for pizzerias – and how to maximize traffic. Discover why pizzerias are going with custom mobile apps to capture sales and return visits. Tap into addictive bar menu options to increase check averages. Go to the August Issue.

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Everyone knows, or at least they should, that the most important part of a pizza is the dough. It is what defines the style of pie you are making, holds up the gorgeous sauce you spoon on top and the bubbly cheese you smother it in. Yes, I know some people judge a pie by the latter two, but without crust there is just a sloppy mess of ingredients. The dough is also what makes each pizzeria unique. Flour, water, salt and yeast. All staple ingredients. What your process is can set you apart from others that are doing similar styles. Are you using a direct or indirect method? Do you use a mother dough? If so, is it a sourdough starter, biga or poolish? I’ve played around with all of these methods and each creates a different final product.

By using a direct method, all of your ingredients are incorporated in a single stage of production. With an indirect method, a pre-ferment such as a biga, poolish or levan is mixed in advance of the dough and allowed to ferment. It is then added to the dough, using multiple stages.

John Arena, owner of Metro Pizza in Las Vegas, points out that the method you use is often determined by time and space. “Crucial to either method is an appreciation for time as a major component of dough flavor and structure. Each method is actually just a different way to manipulate time. Direct method has the advantage of simplicity. If you have the space to do extended fermentation, direct method can yield outstanding results that are very manageable. Indirect method is a way to add depth and complexity to dough by manipulating time. In essence, adding a pre-ferment gives your dough maturity in less time because the pre-ferment has been allowed to age without a yeast inhibitor (salt).”

The direct method seems to be more common in a lot of old-school places. And, when done correctly, it can make a fantastic dough. That’s not to say that the younger generation of pizzaioli can’t master the method. Last year at the Caputo Cup in Naples, Italy, Laura Meyer of Capo’s in San Francisco not only competed with a direct dough … but won the whole competition. Her pizza had everything you want in a dough: great structure, complexity of flavor and texture. While she is normally a fan of using a starter method, by utilizing time and fermentation she created an outstanding pie.

However, not every pizzeria has the time or space for extended periods of fermentation. Which is why a lot of the new artisan pizza makers are utilizing the indirect method of making dough. Why would you use one pre-ferment over another? They are all very unique in their own way, yielding different results.

Sourdough starters are probably the most diverse. A starter is basically cultivating the wild yeast that is in the air by mixing flour and water together. Each will be a little different depending on what bacteria is in their air, what kind of flour they incorporate and how often they feed it. Maintaining a sourdough starter also takes a little more attention than some of the other methods. They require longer bulk ferments and a watchful eye depending on the temperature and time of year. However, I feel that it is well worth the added effort.

While a sourdough starter is a natural yeast, bigas and poolish are both pre-ferments using commercial yeast. The difference in the two is the hydration level. A poolish is much wetter, using a 1:1 ratio of flour and water. Meanwhile, a biga is a little drier using a 2:1 ratio flour to water. You can use instant dry yeast (IDY), Active Dry Yeast (ADY) or fresh yeast, but Arena points out that it is helpful to be consistent in the type you use. In his own wise words, “Using the same ingredient over and over will develop an almost intuitive sense of how the ingredient performs. In time you will develop a rhythm and relationship with your dough and your methods.”

Even if you use a set type of yeast and method, it’s always great to play around and know how to utilize other methods. Especially in times as uncertain as the pandemic. Sourdough has seen a bump in popularity and curiosity from pizza makers and home bakers alike. The idea of a looming commercial yeast shortage may have contributed to that.

Tony Cerimele of New Columbus Pizza in Pennsylvania recently started incorporating a sourdough starter into his mix of already diverse doughs. While he still uses a direct method with yeast for his famed New Forge Style pie that his family has been making and selling since the 1950s, he is exploring using a natural starter for his other styles.

“What the pandemic has made us do is learn to become efficient with a natural starter,” he says. “I always wanted to learn how to use and maintain one, so there is no better time than now. I am sure we will not run out of yeast. But, just in case, we will be prepared.”

What method you use depends on what you’re trying to achieve in your final product. Meyer tends to lean towards using a poolish because she likes the acidic content and flavor that comes with it. “I like the starter method because you make it the night before and then mix it into your dough … and then, voila! With the direct method there’s a little bit more work on the pizza maker’s part,” she says. By taking this simple extra step your dough has layers of added complexity in both flavor and texture. You can also manipulate a direct dough into getting these qualities by giving it a longer bulk ferment.

I’ve found over the years that my process of dough making is what affects the final product the most. When I switched from using a poolish to a sourdough starter, my overall recipe didn’t change very drastically. What changed was how I manipulated the process. Instead of giving it a short bench rest of only 30 minutes, we now do a five-hour bulk rise. We also do an autolyse, which is basically letting the dough rest after combing the flour and water. This strengthens the dough, gives it elasticity and forms the gluten structure. These changes are not exclusive to using a sourdough starter. But making this change forced me to become more knowledgeable about my own dough process and revisit techniques that I forgot about in the daily grind of my restaurant.

Cerimele echoes my feelings. He has also evolved his dough process from when he started: “(It used to be) everything in at one time when the mixer was turned on,” he says. “Now we start with a 30-minute autolyse, and the ingredients are all timed for best hydration and temperatures. I feel that really improved the quality of the dough.”

I guess what I’m trying to say is that, no matter what method you use, your dough can be improved by small tweaks in the process without changing the recipe. Even if you don’t want to use a sourdough starter or poolish, you never know what you’re going to learn from just exploring something new.

Audrey Kelly is the owner and pizzaiola at Audrey Jane’s Pizza Garage in Boulder, CO.

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