Sourdough Focaccia Pizza with Freshly Milled Flour

Whole Wheat Sourdough focaccia pizza has a thicker crust and a rectangular shape similair to Sicilian pizza or Chicago-style pizza. This recipe is a staple for pizza night with a soft and crispy crust it’ll quickly become a family favorite! It’s so simple and wholesome, using 100% freshly ground wheat, bake it the same day or refrigerate until needed. This is seriously the best pizza crust!

Homemade focaccia pizza is so quick and incredibly easy to make. Considering that it’s made with freshly milled flour, this focaccia bread pizza is hard to distinguish from a white flour version!

This is my go-to pizza dough recipe! I love everything about this sourdough recipe. Start the dough in the afternoon, and it will be ready to be baked in the evening or vice versa. After four hours of fermentation, refrigerate it to keep it in the fridge for a quick lunch. It’s so delicious, and the best part is that it’s gut-healthy and a quick, wholesome meal for the whole family. Everyone loves this pizza, including kids!

If you think about it, this is a no-knead pizza dough recipe that is primarily hands-off. It develops gluten simply by fermenting the grains and allowing the flour to hydrate and get stretchy. Give it time to do its thing while you work on other homemaking tasks. How incredible is that?!

No mixer, pizza stone, or fancy equipment is needed.

Not only does it look appealing and as if it came from a pizzeria, but I get asked for the recipe, too! Look no further if you’re looking for an easy sheet-pan pizza to feed a crowd!

Get out the sheet pan, use plenty of olive oil, top it with a chunky tomato sauce and lots of cheese, and then watch it rise high. This melty, gooey creation is so tasty you’ll be going in for seconds!

Pizza and Focaccia

Focaccia-style pizza is more hydrated than typical pizza dough, hence its bread-making use. However, you need not be a baker to make this focaccia pizza recipe! It is the easiest Italian sheet pan pizza ever!

Some Italian pizzerias even use focaccia as their pizza dough base because this fluffy dough is fantastic for making deep-dish-style pizzas. Making it thick allows for large amounts of sauce and toppings, so cook it in a round cast-iron pan for an authentic pizza shape. Use a large sheet pan to spread the dough thinner for a thinner crust. It will still be fluffy; it just won’t be as high.

My Sourdough Focaccia Pizza Schedule:

My schedule is busy; being a mom of six, a full-time blogger, and a homeschool family that eats three meals a day—meals have got to be easy! Yes, natural yeast takes longer than commercial yeast, but really, all I’m doing is letting my dough sit out for more extended periods of time. This takes no effort. The dough will turn into a soft, stretchy dough as long as I do a few stretches and folds sometime in the beginning and let it bulk rise for the rest of the time.

I typically pull out my sourdough starter in the morning, feed it, and let it activate by a sunny window or on the dishwasher until noon.

Once the starter has risen and is bubbly, I’ll mix the focaccia dough and let the grains hydrate (autolyze) for 30 minutes before adding the salt. Then, I’ll mix in the salt, give it a rest, and do up to 4 stretches and folds every half hour or so. Often, I lose track, and it still turns out. This is a very forgiving dough to work with.

Let it bulk ferment, then put it into a pizza pan and give it another rest so it stretches more easily. If you’re not ready to use your dough or want to let it cold ferment for more probiotics, refrigerate it in the bowl it was mixed in or place it in a greased bag.

Top the pizza and bake.

Ingredients for Sourdough Focaccia Pizza:

• Active Sourdough Starter- I feed my starter 4-6 hours before beginning pizza.
• Hard white wheat grain- to make freshly milled flour. Use an electric grain mill to make flour from wheat. You’ll need a hard wheat variety for pizza dough.
• Salt- add the salt after hydrating the flour so it doesn’t interact with the starter during hydration.
• Chunky Tomato Sauce—I like this homemade pizza sauce so much better than the bought ones because it has Sicilian flavors with a little kick. However, you can use any store-bought tomato sauce if you’re in a pinch.
• Pizza Toppings: Our favorite version is mozzarella cheese and pepperoni; however, you can make this plain cheese, supreme, or veggie!

How To Make Focaccia Pizza:

This focaccia pizza dough recipe makes a sheet-pan pizza cut into squares instead of slices. I like to keep my pizza dough in a glass Pyrex bowl with a lid to prevent it from drying out. You do not need a pizza stone or fancy equipment to make this. The key to a crispy crust for focaccia pizza is to use a generous amount of oil when baking.

1. Mix the ripe starter, wheat flour, and water using your hands or a dough whisk. The dough will look very wet. However, it will hydrate and strengthen after the autolyze. Cover the bowl and rest for 30 minutes.
2. Add the salt and mix it in well, then let the dough rest for 30 minutes.
3. Pull up each side of the dough and bring it to the middle of the dough to make the first stretch and fold. Repeat three times every 30 minutes or so.
4. Bulk ferment the dough, which means allowing it to rise for 2-3 hours. If your room is warm, it can be quicker. The dough should pull away easily and be smooth and elastic in texture.
5. If baking the same day, grease an 18×13 pan with oil and place the dough on top. Allow the dough to rest in the pan for 1-2 hours, then stretch out and dimple the dough with your fingers.
6. Top with plenty of tomato sauce and all the pizza toppings of choice.
7. Bake at 400°F until cheese is nicely browned and the bottom is golden (about 25-30 minutes).
8. Cut into squares.

Shaping: There is nothing complicated about shaping focaccia pizza dough. Just make sure oil covers the entire bottom of the pan and stretch it out. If it springs back, let the dough rest and try stretching it again. The goal is to fill the pan with the dough as far to the edges as possible.