San Francisco Sourdough Pizza Dough

My supply of instant yeast stopped working for me at an inopportune moment--just when I was going to make a batch of pizza dough. 

Luckily, many moons ago I went through a sourdough baking phase and whipped up a batch of San Francisco Sourdough barm. I started with fresh grapes from Full Belly Farm to harvest the yeast from the grape skins, and also used Full Belly's fresh stone ground red wheat flour as the basis for the barm. 

I'd never started a pizza dough using barm, but guessed it would be fine to start with about 1/4 cup of the thick barm, mixed with 1/4 cup of water to thin it out a bit. 

I let that warm up to room temperature until it was bubbly, about 6 hours. Then I used that instead of yeast in my standard pizza dough recipe. The rise was a little slower than with instant yeast, and not as pronounced. 

I made the first pizza the same day I made the dough. It was delicious, with a slight sourdough flavor. It was crispier than my normal dough, and not quite as chewy on the edge of the crust. The real fun came on day 3 of the dough. I used the last of the dough, and the pizza crust was amazing! It had just the right about of sourness to lend it a bit of character, and it was a bit chewier as well. Yum!