Sourdough Series: Artichoke à la mode Pizza

We have a tendency to spend our Friday evenings making homemade pizza. Carry out pizza is awesome when we're super busy. But, there's something about the taste of homemade that can't be duplicated.

Which brings me to yet another handy use for my sourdough starter... pizza dough.

Unlike a sourdough loaf, which requires a longer, slower rise than ordinary bread dough, sourdough pizza dough actually requires far less rising time than average. What this means is that, if I've thought far enough ahead to feed my starter, I can have pizza dough in less than an hour.

This past week, we made one of our absolute favorite pizzas, the artichoke à la mode. We first tasted this pizza at Pizza Man in Milwaukee. And we decided that we had to figure out a way to make it at home. The biggest pitfall seemed to be the fresh artichokes, since we can only get those a few times a year when they're in season. However, thanks to the discovery of fresh frozen artichokes from Trader Joes, we are now able to make this year round.

Now, you're probably curious about how this recipe actually works. So, let's get started.

First, you make the dough (an easy mix of sourdough starter, flour, oil, and salt). Once the dough is mixed up, it needs to rest for about 30-40 minutes. During this time, it rises a bit; but, it doesn't double like a typical dough.
When it's well rested, you can roll the dough out into the desired shape. We like to make oblong pizzas, which fit nicely on my rectangular pizza stone.
This particular pizza was topped with homemade pizza sauce, artichokes, and chunks of cream cheese.
Because you can never have enough cheese, we top that with a good mound of delicious mozzarella.
In the past, we ordinarily topped this pizza with thinly sliced fresh tomatoes (like Pizza Man). But, we found that the flavor was infinitely improved by the addition of some of those little roasted cherry tomatoes we made earlier in the week. So, they'll be a "must have" in the future. After adding the cherry tomatoes, the pizza looks something like this.Thinking that it might taste best if cooked, we put the topped pizza in a 450º oven, and bake it until the cheese is golden and the crust is crispy.
What comes out of the oven is one serious pizza... that smells even better than it looks.

Sourdough Pizza Dough


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