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I’ve made hundreds of pizzas in the past five years, but out of all of those pies, only two had a sourdough crust. (Until today.)

Once, I found myself with some leftover sourdough starter, which I combined with the pile of flour and dough scraps on the counter, plus a dash of olive oil. I paid no attention, haphazardly mixing it into a medium-wet dough. It made the best thin pizza crust I’d ever had: crisp and chewy, not soggy or limp. Later I laboriously attempted to recreate this crust, and failed utterly, creating a disk of flaccid dough that refused to spring in the oven, resulting in an unpleasant cardboard-esque material.

So although my success rate with sourdough pizza dough was only 50%, I was inspired today to create a new pizza dough using my apple-sourdough starter. In baker’s percentages, I used 90% levain, 4% salt, and enough water to make a medium-wet dough.

I kneaded only enough to mix the ingredients. This approach is novel, and was suggested by Evan Shively in an interview in the SF Chronicle in 1999:
"Crunch and gluten are at cross- purposes," Shively says. The more you knead, the less crunchy and the more breadlike your crust will be.

The results were fantastic. The baked crust was thin and crisp without being too crunchy, chewy without being difficult, and it had a great flavor. As experiments go, it was remarkable. My single regret is that I only made enough dough for one meal. Well… one large meal.