Recipe: Quick Mini Sourdough Pizzas
After a busy morning at the market, nothing beats the feelgood combination of tomato sauce and melted mozzarella cheese. We’re big fans of these sourdough mini pizzas, which use thick slices of sourdough as an alternative to traditional pizza crust. That makes them healthier, quicker, and easy to rustle up with the remains of your favourite sourdough loaf.
One of the best things about this recipe is its flexibility. You can use different combinations of toppings to suit your personal tastes, and vegans can easily swap in a vegan cheese alternative to make this suitable for their diet.
The recipe below uses plain sourdough to avoid overpowering the toppings. Even that can be changed if you’re feeling adventurous, though – olive and rosemary seems like a natural substitution.
Ingredients
For the base:
One loaf of sourdough (makes around 8 slices)
Olive oil (2 tbsp)
For the sauce:
400g chopped tomatoes (one can)
Olive oil (1 tbsp)
Tomato puree (2 tbsp)
0.5 small onions, finely chopped
1 garlic clove
Mixed Italian herbs (1 tbsp)
Brown sugar (1 tbsp)
Fresh basil, shredded
Short of time? A jar of shop bought pizza sauce is a suitable alternative.
For the toppings:
Mixed vegetables – we used red pepper and mushroom
Mozzarella
Pepperoni or ham (optional extra – we made ours vegetarian friendly!)
Method
1. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees Celsius.
2. While the oven is heating up, you can make your sauce. Heat the olive oil and fry the onion gently for around 15 minutes, until it has softened. Add the garlic and fry for another 2 minutes. Next, add the remaining sauce ingredients – tomatoes, tomato puree, sugar and herbs – and simmer gently for around 20 minutes.
3. Prepare your sourdough bases by chopping the loaf into thick, even slices. The exact number of slices you get will depend on the size of your sourdough, but a typical loaf should give you around 8 – 12 bases.
4. Toast the bread in the oven for 5 minutes. This step is essential, as it makes sure the bread is nice and firm, which stops if from absorbing too much sauce.
5. Take your bread out of the oven and brush one side with olive oil. Again, this will help to stop the bread from going soggy once you start adding your toppings.
6. Now that your bread is ready, it’s time for the fun part: loading it up with pizza toppings! Spoon a generous amount of sauce onto each slice of bread. You can use the back of the spoon to gently spread the sauce, making sure you get an even coverage.
7. Next add thin slices of mozzarella and a small amount of basil to each slice. We opted for the ‘less is more’ approach: if you add too much topping then you might find that the flavours overwhelm each other.
8. Last but not least, add your favourite toppings. Thin slices of mushroom and red pepper make a great healthy option. But really, the sky is the limit – you can add ham, pepperoni, other veggies or whatever else takes your fancy. If you’re going for pepper and mushroom then gently sauté them for approximately five minutes before adding to your sourdough pizzas.
9. Toast in the oven for ten minutes. If the cheese hasn’t quite melted when you get them out, then you can pop them back in for another minute or two to get the perfect finish.
These sourdough pizzas are best eaten straight away, although if you find that you have sauce leftover then that will keep in the fridge for 5-7 days. This is a great lunch to make with the family, and a really fun option for those who want to experiment with different flavours and topping ideas. Enjoy!