Sourdough Pizza Focaccia Bread

Sourdough Pizza Focaccia Bread combines sourdough focaccia bread and your favorite pizza toppings to create something truly special.

Baked in a cast iron skillet, this sourdough pizza focaccia bread gives you a crispy, golden base with a pillowy soft focaccia crumb, topped with tomato pizza sauce, mozzarella and everything you love on a pizza!

If you love all things sourdough pizza, then make sure you check out this sourdough discard pizza crust recipe, as well as these sourdough pizza rolls and sourdough pizza pockets!

Why You'll Love This Recipe

Bring Two Favorites Together - this sourdough pizza focaccia bread recipe brings together sourdough pizza crust and sourdough focaccia bread to create a delicious hybrid recipe! Throw in some homemade pizza sauce and you've got a match made in heaven!

Use Your Cast Iron Skillet - This recipe is another great way to use your cast iron skillet together with your homemade sourdough starter to create some sourdough magic! You might like this collection of sourdough recipes baked in a cast iron skillet for more ideas!

Create Your Own Flavor Combinations - The beauty of this recipe is you can add any flavor pizza toppings you like! It can be a fun way to use up what's in the fridge and garden too! I've put together a big list of sourdough pizza toppings here. And if you love lots of different flavored toppings, check out these sourdough focaccia bread muffins.

Sourdough Starter Or Sourdough Discard?

You can use active sourdough starter or sourdough discard for this sourdough pizza focaccia bread. I've written the timeline and recipe card as if you are using active sourdough starter.

If you want to use discard, simply swap out 100g of active starter with 100g of sourdough discard plus 7g of instant or active dried yeast. Using the yeast will mean that your dough will rise much more quickly, so you'll need to disregard the baker's timeline given below.

You can read more about the difference between active sourdough starter and sourdough discard here.

How To Make Sourdough Pizza Focaccia Bread

Making this sourdough pizza focaccia bread is pretty easy! You'll need at least 1 cast iron skillet, even better if you have 2 as you can bake both at the same time. This recipe makes 2 x 12" focaccia rounds - it is divided up once the dough has been through bulk fermentation.

Mixing The Dough

Weigh out your sourdough starter and water into a large bowl. Mix the water and starter together briefly. Then add flour and salt and mix whole lot together until it forms a sticky dough. You don't want any dry flour left at all. You can use a dough scraper or Danish dough whisk for this process.

Cover your bowl with cling film or a damp tea towel and let it sit for around 1 hour.

Strengthening the Dough

After the dough has been through autolyse you need to bring it together into a ball. Work your way around the bowl, grabbing the dough from the outside, stretching it up and over itself, into the centre. You should feel the dough strengthen as you do this. It doesn't have to be perfectly smooth or tight, just work around the bowl stretching and folding (around 10 - 15 times is perfect).

Bulk Ferment

Now you want to leave your dough to ferment. Cover it with a tea towel or plastic wrap and leave it alone to double.

Focaccia is super forgiving so it doesn't need to be perfectly doubled - near enough is fine.

Shaping Focaccia

Once the dough has doubled you need to shape the dough. Start by adding olive oil to your cast iron skillets - a generous covering on the base of the pan is necessary.

Now tip the focaccia dough out onto the counter and divide it into two using a bench scraper. Now, using oiled hands, lift each piece and place it into a cast iron skillet.

Rub your hands with a little olive oil and gently pull the dough out to fill the skillets. Again it doesn't have to be perfect as it will naturally fill the skillets as they proof.

Second Rise

Let your dough rise again. Leave it until it's spread out and filled the tray. It will be puffy and pillowy ... you might even have some gorgeous bubbles popping up.

Topping

Once the dough has filled the tray and is looking puffy and full of volume, you need to dimple the dough and add the toppings.

Pour olive oil and blobs of pizza sauce over the top of the dough and then push your finger tips into the dough to create dimples.

You might see some bubbles as you do this. Allow your fingers to squish some of the pizza sauce into the dough as you go.Now sprinkle cheese and your choice of pizza toppings. In the photos I have made a Margarita and Feta and Olive pizza. So good!

Let the sourdough pizza focaccia sit for around 10 minutes before you bake.

Baking Sourdough Focaccia

Preheat the oven to 200C (390F).Bake for 30 minutes or until golden brown.

Baker's Timeline

This is the rough timeline I use when making this sourdough pizza focaccia bread. You could adapt this timeline to suit your own situation. You might also find this article on creating a sourdough baking timeline helpful in adapting it.

The Night Before

9pm - Feed your sourdough starter (I do 1:3:3 to prolong the rise overnight).

The Next Morning

7am - Mix the dough, stretch and fold and allow to rise (bulk fermentation).

3pm - Shape the sourdough pizza focaccia bread, allow to proof.

6pm - Add toppings and allow to rest a little.

7pm - Bake and enjoy!

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