I’m obsessed with salad pizza. I started making giant salads on pizza night and found myself scooching the lettuce closer and closer to my actual pizza slice with each bite. Eventually I just dumped an entire container of microgreens directly on the pizza and finally realized how much of a time saver and actual joy it is to eat salad directly on top of pizza.

The truth is, once you’ve had a big gorgeous spring salad directly on top of your sourdough pizza, you really won’t be able to eat pizza any other way every again. The acid from the salad dressing brings balance and freshness to the dough and it looks pretty dang pretty too.

Spring Salad Ingredients

Gertie the greenhouse is pumping out spinach and microgreens right now, so those are the base for my salad this week. You could definitely use regular lettuce, chard or kale, but make sure it’s light and tender. A crunchy romaine could be cool but it would definitely change the soft spring vibe of this recipe (sounds like a killer summer salad pizza to me).

Making sourdough pizza crust with a sourdough bread baking schedule

This crust is actually a sourdough discard crust with inspiration from King Arthur Flour’s recipe. What’s super fun about this recipe is that I build it into my weekly sourdough baking schedule for Friday night pizza nights, and the ingredients are discard from feeding the sourdough starter for bread. Love a two-fer! There is zero discard waste and we get two pizzas out of the deal. Here’s what my schedule looks like:

Thursday am: Remove sourdough starter from the fridge to feed it. Use all of the discard to make pizza dough. Feed sourdough starter and let sit at room temp for the day. The pizza dough will be ready in about 4 hours, after which I transfer it to the fridge for tomorrow.
Thursday pm: Mix sourdough bread dough and feed starter again. Keep starter and dough at room temp until tomorrow morning.
Friday am: Move starter back to the fridge until next week. Form sourdough bread dough and place in a banneton to retard in the fridge.
Friday pm: Make pizzas! Remove the pizza dough from the fridge about an hour before using. It will be easier to roll.
Saturday or Sunday: Bake bread.

Tips for making sourdough salad pizza

Bring the pizza dough to room temp about an hour before you plan to use it. If it’s too cold, it just won’t move (which is exactly how I am on the couch in the winter so I get it)
When you are mixing and kneading the dough, it will feel like there is just too much flour. You must believe and just keep kneading and eventually it will come together. Believe!
If you don’t have a sourdough starter or just didn’t get it together in time, use whatever pizza crust makes you happy, even if it’s straight from the freezer.
You can bake this on a pizza stone in the oven, or you can bake it directly in a cast iron pan. I prefer using cast iron pans because you can bake multiple pizzas at once and don’t risk any sticking/sliding emergencies when transferring to the oven. You don’t need to pre-heat the cast iron pans.
Pre-heat your oven to 500 for about a half hour before you plan to cook the pizzas. You want that puppy to be hot, hot, hot.
Right when the pizza comes out of the oven, add the heartier greens to gently wilt them. Dress and toss the salad in a separate bowl before sprinkling on top of the pizza.
This recipe will make two 12” pizza crusts.